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Sci-fi explores asexuality...


monpetitpetaq

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monpetitpetaq

I'm a hardcore SF fan, and some would say it's all about sex (like Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land; Ballard's Crash- which literally has a sex scene every other page).

However, SF is all about exploring alternative sexualities, and that includes asexuality.

Things I would recommend:

Samuel R. Delany's short storyAye, and Gomorrah, which is about neutered spacers and the men and women who love spacers exclusively romantically, becaue they cannot have sex with them.

Brain W. Aldiss's novel White Mars, which features an asexual named Cang Hai and quotes like this:

"It is sometimes difficult for us to speak our minds. Perhaps it is because I have reverence for you that I agree with what you say. Yet not only that...I have not found great pleasure in sex, with either men or women. Is there something lacking in me? I seem to have no..warmth? I love, but only platonically, I'm ashamed to admit.

"You need feel no shame. We are brought up in a culture where those who seek solitude or chastity are made to think of themselves as unwell-fit subjects for new sciences like psychurgy or metascopism-almost beyond the pale of society. It was not always so and will not be so again. Once, men who sought solitude were revered."

Any of the Star Wars novelizations written by Daniel Keys Moran about Boba Fett. His characterization of Boba is really beautiful-

"He'd never so much as held a woman in his arms, Boba Fett, and the desire for a woman came to him less frequently, with the passage of the years; but in Fett's mind, his chastity made him no less a man"

Or Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, which is not about asexuals but is about small children, so there's no romance or sex whatsoever but it's advenurous and screws with your mind and has deep subtext, plus it's cute as hell.

Also, although it's not science fiction, one of Oprah's recent book club books (Pillars of Earth by Ken Follet) features an asexual prior whom I'm very fond of.

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I've mentioned it before, but there's an excellent short story by Theodore Sturgeon, called "The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff". It pretty much explicitly describes asexuality, as well as just plain being a nice read. It's almost lost though, and my copy is disintegrating rapidly. I should probably scan/copy it in before it's too late....

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  • 1 year later...
Or Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, which is not about asexuals but is about small children, so there's no romance or sex whatsoever but it's advenurous and screws with your mind and has deep subtext, plus it's cute as hell.

If you liked Ender's Game, keep reading the series. It splits off in two directions: the Shadow series (Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon...), which I haven't read, and I think those all take place on Earth. The other set of books follows Ender and the rest of his journey to another society where they have found another intelligent species. He never really has a sexual relationship in any of the books. He's accompanied by his sister for a while and then makes a friend who doesn't even have a body - not really a spirit, but something else entirely. REALLY good stuff. The order of the series is: Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind (I think, although there may be more to the series that I haven't come across yet.)

Also... the other intelligent species they find has a REALLY weird reproduction cycle. They're capable of reproducing but it's not really sex. So all of those characters might be considered asexual, as well.

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Ender in Exile spends some exploring his sexual side. In some sense I guess sexuality is villainous, because his temptations almost throw things into disarray. I imagine Card intended this to be allegorical in a Biblical sense, rather than exploring sexuality itself (read: temptation, isn't it just vile?). Card is a staunch opponent of gay marriage, so I have some suspicious that his opinions on asexuality would be less than progressive.

It is interesting that when Ender has 'children' they are not the fruit of sexual labour, but rather the product of his mind and some rather strange properties of that netherworld that Card concocts to explain away faster-than-light communications ('Children of the Mind'). I suspect Card considers sex impure in some manner and wanted to steer his messiah-like protagonist clear of it (chronologically, Children of the Mind occurs long after Ender in Exile, though EIE was written after COTM).

For something that might be considered an asexuality community, there is the planet of Solaris in Asimov's Foundation series (it's in Robots too, but long before the society has evolved to the point it has in Foundation). It's been a long time since I read those books, but I seem to recall that over time Solaris seems to reject physical intimacy entirely.

Some say science-fiction is about taking ideas and then imaging what things would be like when those ideas are pushed to their natural conclusion, or at least a look at what a world influenced by those ideas would be like down the line. In this case, Asimov seems to suggest that this society would try to take sex out of the equation as a necessity for survival; the Solarians, if I remember correctly, alter themselves to reproduce without the need for a genetic partner.

Asimov paints this culture as being something quite cold and hostile. They consider 'normal' humans as being 'subhuman', and show callous disregard for their lives. In the close of the entire Foundation series, Asimov seems to hint that Solaria, or a particular Solarian, is the very "alien" threat that Trevize chooses Galaxia to protect humanity from (this will make very little sense to those who haven't read the books).

Asimov perhaps considered sexual intimacy to be something necessary for a 'complete' human.

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Please be aware that this thread had been silent for over a year. We don't have any actual policy on thread necromancy, but it's generally in bad taste.

Also, I consider the "Shadow" series to be far superior to the original set of sequels (which started weak and gradually improved), though of course Ender's Game is still possibly the best book OSC has put out.

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  • 3 months later...
sinisterporpoise

And to add to the problem, if you thought Ender's Game was cute, you didn't really read it. There's a lot of subtle Mormon theology going on as well.

Ender in the first book is essentially being manipulated by people above him to commit genocide. He's given very little choice in the matter.

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And to add to the problem, if you thought Ender's Game was cute, you didn't really read it. There's a lot of subtle Mormon theology going on as well.

Ender in the first book is essentially being manipulated by people above him to commit genocide. He's given very little choice in the matter.

(EDIT - conversation about thread necromancy split to Site Comments)

Yes, OSC injects a lot of theology into his books. It's increasingly obvious in the later Ender ones, too. Still, I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing; I'd honestly like to see more writers talking about what they sincerely believe, arguing a worldview persuasively. It doesn't happen enough, we're too conservative about taking a stance, and the result is often a sort of generic pap without any philosophical depth to it. When people want to be deep, they often detour into a sort of predictable nihilistic sophistry that's rather vacuous in its own way. At least Ender's Game had content.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Not to mention mormon theology is very interesting in itself. Seriously, take a good look at what they believe, and you'll get a good sense as to why they run into so much trouble with other christian groups.

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Guest Heligan

Anyone watching 'Defying Gravity'.

Last weeks episode they were given 'halos' which stopped them feeling either libido or sexual attraction (it was a bit vague).... something about sexuality being confusing and destructive in space (seems to be its destructive on earth too, but nevermind....lol)

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