New Wave era (1960–70s) By the late 1960s, science fiction and fantasy began to reflect the changes prompted by the civil rights movement and the emergence of a counterculture. Within the genres, these changes were incorporated into a movement called "the
New Wave," a movement more skeptical of technology, more liberated socially, and more interested in stylistic experimentation. New Wave writers were more likely to claim an interest in "inner space" instead of outer space. They were less shy about explicit sexuality and more sympathetic to reconsiderations of gender roles and the social status of sexual minorities. Notable authors who often wrote on sexual themes included
Joanna Russ,
Thomas M. Disch,
John Varley,
James Tiptree, Jr., and
Samuel R. Delany. Under the influence of New Wave editors and authors such as
Michael Moorcock (editor of the influential
New Worlds magazine) and
Ursula K. Le Guin, sympathetic depictions of alternative sexuality and gender multiplied in science fiction and fantasy, becoming commonplace. Once again, sex is not the focus of the novel, although it does contain some of the first explicitly described scenes of
gay sex in science fiction. Delany depicts, mostly with affection, characters with a wide variety of motivations and behaviours, with the effect of revealing to the reader the fact that these kinds of people exist in the real world. In later works, Delany blurs the line between science fiction and gay pornography. Delany faced resistance from book distribution companies for his treatment of these topics. That deleted scene has never appeared with the novel, even in later editions when mores had become more elastic, but has been printed for the first time in
The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume 3: This Mortal Mountain. In his 1972 novel
The Gods Themselves,
Isaac Asimov describes an alien race with three sexes, all of them necessary for sexual reproduction. One sex produces a form of sperm, another sex provides the energy needed for reproduction, and members of the
third sex bear and raise the offspring. All three genders are included in sexual and social norms of expected and acceptable behavior. In this same novel, the hazards and problems of
sex in microgravity are described, and while people born on the Moon are proficient at it, people from Earth are not. Similarly,
Poul Anderson's
Three Worlds to Conquer depicts centaur-like beings living on
Jupiter who have three genders: female, male and "demi-male". In order to conceive, a female must have sex with both a male and a demi-male within a short time of each other. In the society of the protagonist, there are stable, harmonious three-way families, in effect a formalized
Menage a Trois, with the three partners on equal terms with each other. An individual in that society feels a strong attachment to all three parents – mother, father and demi-father – who all take part in bringing up the young. Conversely, among the harsh invaders who threaten to destroy the protagonist's homeland and culture, males are totally dominant over both females and demi-males; the latter are either killed at birth or preserved in subjugation for reproduction – which the protagonist regards as a barbaric aberration. In Anderson's satirical story
A Feast for the Gods, the Greek god
Hermes visits modern America and has casual sex with an American woman, who tells him that she is "on the pill" and does not take seriously Hermes telling her that "The Embrace of a God is always fertile". She ends up pregnant and destined to give birth to a modern
demi god.
Feminist science fiction authors imagined cultures in which homo- and bisexuality and a variety of gender models are the norm. Russ was largely responsible for introducing radical
lesbian feminism into science fiction. The bisexual female writer Alice Bradley Sheldon, who used
James Tiptree, Jr. as her
pen name, explored the
sexual impulse as her main theme. Lynn's
The Chronicles of Tornor (1979–80) series of novels, the first of which won the
World Fantasy Award, were among the first fantasy novels to include gay relationships as an unremarkable part of the cultural background. Lynn also wrote novels depicting
sadomasochism.
John Varley, who also came to prominence in the 1970s, is another writer who examined sexual themes in his work.
Modern SF (post-New Wave) After the pushing back of boundaries in the 1960s and 70s, sex in genre science fiction gained wider acceptance and was often incorporated into otherwise conventional science fiction stories with little comment. In 1968
Jack Vance introduced the
Planet of Adventure, inhabited by four different alien races, each with its own distinct society and culture. One of these – the predatory, part feline, part bird-like
Dirdir – is described as having a very complex sexuality, with many different genders that leads to many different combinations of gender-compatibility when it comes to sex and breeding, though each breeding still seems to involve only two individuals.
Jack L. Chalker's
Well World series, launched in 1977, depicts a world – designed by the super science of a vanished extraterrestrial race, the Markovians – which is divided into numerous "hexes", each inhabited by different sentient race. Anyone entering one of these hexes is transformed into a member of the local race. This plot device gives a wide scope for exploring the divergent biology and cultures of the various species – including their sex life. For example, a human entering a hex inhabited by an insectoid intelligent race is transformed into a female of that species, feels sexual desire for a male and mates with him. Too late does she discover that in this species, pregnancy is fatal – the mother being devoured from the inside by her
larvae. In a later part, a very
macho villain gains control of a supercomputer whose power includes the ability to "redesign" people's bodies to almost any specification. He uses the computer to give himself a "super-virile" body, capable of a virtually unlimited number of erections and ejaculations – and then proceeds to transform his male enemies into beautiful women and induce in them a strong sexual desire towards himself. However, a computer breakdown restores to these captives their normal minds. Though they are still in women's bodies, these bodies were designed with great strength and stamina, so as to enable them to undergo repeated sexual encounters. Thus, they are well-equipped to chase, catch and suitably punish their abuser. In
Frederik Pohl's
Jem, humans exploring the eponymous planet Jem discover by experience that local beings emit a
milt which has a strong aphrodisiac effect on humans. Characters who were hitherto not at all drawn to each other find themselves suddenly involved in wild, uncontrollable sex. At the ironic ending, their descendants who colonize the planet and build up a distinctive society and culture develop the custom of celebrating Christmas by deliberately stimulating the local beings into emitting the milt, and then taking off their clothes and engaging in a wild indiscriminate
orgy – their copulations accompanied by a chorus of the planet's enslaved indigenous beings who were taught to sing "
Good King Wenceslas", with the song's Christian significance long forgotten. Also set on an alien planet,
Octavia E. Butler's acclaimed short story "
Bloodchild" (1984) depicts the complex relationship between human
refugees and the insect-like aliens who keep them in a
preserve to protect them, but also to use them as
hosts for breeding their young. Sometimes called Butler's "pregnant man story," "Bloodchild" won the
Nebula Award,
Hugo Award, and
Locus Award. Other of Butler's works explore
miscegenation,
non-consensual sex, and
hybridity. In
Robert Silverberg's 1982 novella
Homefaring, the protagonist enters the mind of an intelligent
lobster of the very far future and experiences all aspects of lobster life, including sex: "He approached a female, knowing precisely which one was the appropriate one, and sang to her, and she acknowledged his song with a song of her own, and raised her third pair of legs for him, and let him plant his
gametes beside her
oviducts. There was no apparent pleasure in it, as he remembered pleasure from his time as a human. Yet it brought him a subtle but unmistakable sense of fulfillment, of the completion of biological destiny, that had a kind of orgasmic finality about it, and left him calm and anchored at the absolute dead center of his soul". When finally returning to his human body and his human lover, he keeps longing for the lobster life, to "his mate and her millions of
larvae". Quentin and Alice, the extremely shy and insecure protagonists of
Lev Grossman's fantasy novel
The Magicians, spend years as fellow students at a
School of Magic without admitting to being deeply in love with each other. Only the experience of being magically turned into
foxes enables them at last to break through their reserve: "Increasingly, Quentin noticed one scent more than the others. It was a sharp, acrid, skunky musk that probably would have smelled like cat piss to a human being, but to a fox it was like a drug. He tackled the source of the smell, buried his snuffling muzzle in her fur, because he had known all along, with what was left of his consciousness, that what he was smelling was Alice. Vulpine hormones and instincts were powering up, taking over, manhandling what was left of his rational human mind." The next sequence depicts animal sex: "He locked his teeth in the thick fur of her neck. It didn't seem to hurt her any, or at least not in a way that was easily distinguishable from pleasure. He caught a glimpse of Alice's wild, dark fox eyes rolling with terror and then half shutting with pleasure. Their tiny quick breathes puffed white in the air and mingled and disappeared. Her white fox fur was coarse and smooth at the same time, and she made little yipping sounds every time he pushed himself deeper inside her. He never wanted to stop". When resuming their human bodies, Quentin and Alice are initially even more shy and awkward with each other, and only after going through some harrowing magical experiences are they finally able to have human sex.
Lois McMaster Bujold explores many areas of sexuality in the multiple award-winning novels and stories of her
Vorkosigan Saga (1986-ongoing), which are set in a fictional universe influenced by the availability of
uterine replicators and significant
genetic engineering. These areas include an all-male society,
promiscuity,
monastic celibacy, hermaphroditism, and bisexuality. In the
Mythopoeic Award-winning novel
Unicorn Mountain (1988),
Michael Bishop includes a gay male
AIDS patient among the carefully drawn central characters who must respond to an
irruption of dying
unicorns at their Colorado
ranch. The death of the hedonistic
gay culture, and the
safe sex campaign resulting from the AIDS epidemic, are explored, both literally and metaphorically. Sex has a major role in
Harry Turtledove's 1990 novel
A World of Difference, taking place on the planet Minerva (a more habitable analogue of
Mars). Minervan animals (including the
sentient Minervans) are
hexameristically radially symmetrical. This means that they have six eyes spaced equally all around, see in all directions and have no "back" where somebody could sneak on them unnoticed. Females (referred to as "mates" by the Minervans) give birth to litters that consist of one male and five females, and the "mates" always die after reproducing because of torrential bleeding from the places where the six
fetuses were attached; this gives a population multiplication of 5 per generation if all females live to adolescence and reproduce. Females reach puberty while still hardly out of childhood, and typically experience sex only once in the lifetime – leading to pregnancy and death at birth-giving. Thus, in Minervan society male dominance seems truly determined by a biological imperative – though it takes different forms in various Minervan societies: in some females are considered expendable and traded as property, in other they are cherished and their tragic fate mourned – but still, their dependent status is taken for granted. The American women arriving on Minerva and discovering this situation consider it intolerable; a major plot element is their efforts, using the resources of Earth medical science, to find a way of saving the Minervan females and letting them survive birth-giving. At the end, they do manage to save a particularly sympathetic Minervan female – potentially opening the way for a complete upheaval in Minervan society. Sex is also an important ingredient in another of
Harry Turtledove's works, the
Worldwar Series of
Alternative History, based on the premise of reptile extraterrestrials, nicknamed "The Lizards", invading Earth in 1942, forcing humans to terminate the
Second World War and unite against this common enemy. As depicted by Turtledove, the "Lizards" have no concept whatever that sex ought to be private, and they engage in it in public as in any other activity. This leads to human beings in areas occupied by them feeling shocked and outraged by the "immorality" of their new masters - especially that the invaders, preferring hot climates, prioritize conquest of the Arab and Islamic countries. For their part, the invaders are genuinely puzzled by the Humans' insistence on having privacy for sex and their outrage when reptile warriors walk in on them when engaged in it. As gradually becomes clear, on their home planet, the "Lizards" have a clearly defined
mating season, when normal activity ceases and they engage in a days-long, indiscriminate
orgy; as their young can fend for themselves from the moment of hatching from the egg, there is no of parental care and they have no marriages or families, and thus there is no reason to establish paternity. Outside the mating season, sex does not occur among them and does not concern them. However, when arriving on Earth they soon discover that
ginger, an innocuous spice to humans, acts as a powerful
narcotic on the invaders' physiology - and that it causes their females to become sexually active and emit pheromones, out of the normal season. This causes an unaccustomed disruption of their daily activity, with females who had taken ginger suddenly becoming sexual, males and females then feeling compelled to immediately engage in mating before they could resume their daily work. This also arises the phenomenon of females deliberately taking ginger in return for payment -
prostitution having been completely unknown in their society before their arrival on Earth. In the far future human colony of
Frederik Pohl's
The World at the End of Time, the common way to produce new humans is for a geneticist to take DNA samples from two or more "parents" – regardless of their being male or female. The DNA is then combined in a laboratory, and the parents arrive to pick up the baby nine months later. The few couples who prefer to do it in the old fashioned way, a man sexually impregnating a woman, are considered strange but harmless eccentrics.
Glory Season (1993) by
David Brin is set on the planet Stratos, inhabited by a strain of human beings designed to conceive clones in winter, and normal children in summer. All clones are female, because males cannot reproduce themselves individually. Further, males and females have opposed seasons of sexual receptivity; women are sexually receptive in winter, and men in summer. (This unusual
heterogamous reproductive cycle is known to be evolutionarily advantageous for some species of
aphids.) The novel treats themes of
separatist feminism and
biological determinism.
Elizabeth Bear's novel
Carnival (2006) revisits the
trope of the
single-gender world, as a pair of gay male ambassador-spies attempt to infiltrate and subvert the predominately lesbian civilization of New Amazonia, whose
matriarchal rulers have all but
enslaved their men. The fantasy world of
Scott Lynch's 2007
Red Seas Under Red Skies offers a new variation on the long-established genre of
pirate literature – depicting a pirate ship which is run on the basis of complete gender equality. The pirate crew is composed of a roughly equal number of men and women, and crew members may freely engage in sex – homosexual or heterosexual, as they choose – when off duty. Since shipboard life offers little chance of privacy, the sound of people having a noisy orgasm is a normal part of night time routine on board the
Poison Orchid. However, any attempt at a sexual act without the other person's
sexual consent is punished immediately and severely. The formidable Captain Zamira Drakasha is raising her two children aboard, and is well able to combine being a deadly fighter and strict disciplinarian with her role as a loving and doting mother – but having children aboard is a privilege reserved to the Captain alone; other female pirates who get pregnant must leave their children on shore. The plot of
The Tamír Triad by
Lynn Flewelling has a major
transsexual element. To begin with the protagonist, Prince Tobin, is to all appearances a male – both in his own perception and in that of others. Boys who swim naked together with Tobin have no reason to doubt his male anatomy. Yet, due to the magical reasons which are an important part of the plot, in the underlying, essential identity Tobin had always been a disguised girl. In the series' cataclysmic scene of magical change, this becomes an evident physical fact, and Prince Tobin becomes Queen Tamír, shedding the male body and gaining a fully functioning female one. Yet, it takes Tamír a considerable time and effort to come to terms with her female sexuality. In
Lateral Magazine,
The freedom of a genre: Sexuality in speculative fiction:In another twist of today's society,
Nontraditional Love by
Rafael Grugman (2008) puts together an upside-down society where heterosexuality is outlawed, and homosexuality is the norm. A 'traditional' family unit consists of two dads with a surrogate mother. Alternatively, two mothers, one of whom bears a child. In a nod to the always-progressive Netherlands, this country is the only country progressive enough to allow opposite sex marriage. This is perhaps the most obvious example of cognitive estrangement. It puts the reader in the shoes of the oppressed by modelling an entire world of opposites around a fairly "normal" everyday heterosexual protagonist. A heterosexual reader would not only be able to identify with the main character but be immersed in a world as oppressive and bigoted as the real world has been for homosexuals and the queer community throughout history.The 2018
Fantasy novel
Stone Unturned, set in
Lawrence Watt-Evans' magical world of
Ethshar, begins with the young wizard Morvash of the Shadows discovering that some of the statues in his uncle's house were real people turned to stone, and sets out to do the right thing. What Morvash considered the most disturbing of these statues "was hidden away in a sort of marble grotto in the garden behind the house, and depicted a young man and a young woman in what might politely be called an intimate embrace, or a compromising position. They were not in the sort of elegant pose that artists use for erotica, with graceful lines displaying the female's curves and the male's muscles. They were in an earthier position. The woman — a girl, really — was on her back, with her knees drawn up to her chest and her head raised as her blank stone eyes stared perpetually at the man's belly. Her mouth was open as if panting. Her partner was kneeling between her legs, leaning forward over her, one hand grabbing her shoulder, the other occupied elsewhere. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was also open; Morvash thought it was more of a moan than a pant. He could almost smell the sweat. Neither wore any clothing whatsoever, nor were there any artfully-placed draperies or fig leaves to obscure the details. Had the wizard responsible for this petrifaction timed it deliberately, or had he caught them in this position by accident?" Eventually, it turns out that the couple were Prince Marek of Melitha and Darissa the Witch's Apprentice, who had fallen deeply in love with each other during a war that threatened their kingdom and who sought to celebrate victory with a bout of intensive love-making in the privacy of the Prince's bedchamber – but were surprised and turned into stone by a wizard in the employ of the Prince's envious sister, who sought to seize the throne. Afterwards, the couple spent forty petrified years, dimly conscious, perpetually caught in their sexual act and forming a prized item in Lord Landessin's sculpture collection. When the wizard Morvash finally manages to bring them back to life, they find themselves lying on the floor in a big hall, surrounded by various other people who were also revived from petrifaction, and hasten to disengage and look for something to cover their nakedness. After various other adventures, they finally get married and fully clothed mount the throne of Melitha as King and Queen. ==See also==