Exploring different ways of procréation

[Okilele]

I read a long time ago, maybe 40 years ago, a collection of short stories that explored different strange ways of procreating, where male were also female, or the son impregnating his mother and other amazing combinations which changed the perspectives, which is the purpose of science fiction.

I forgot the title and the author, it seems to me that it was a woman and having a certain notoriety. I couldn't find anything at Marion Zimmer Bradley or Ursula Le Guin.

Does this mean anything to anyone?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Although the date doesn't match up, could it be Not of Woman Born, an anthology edited by Constance Ash?

 

[Okilele]

No, it was not an anthology but a collection of short stories by a single author, well known enough to be translated into French.
But thanks anyway for that: I Googled your reference and found this sentence that I really like: "The human brain is often too complicated a mechanism to function perfectly"

 

[farntfar]

There is one short story that contains the cases/situations you speak of. Namely All you zombies by Robert Heinlein.

As it was 40 years ago, could it be that?

 

[Ravensquawk]

There is one short story that contains the cases/situations you speak of. Namely All you zombies by Robert Heinlein.

As it was 40 years ago, could it be that?

Well, Heinlein certainly couldn't keep his writing fingers or maybe anything else off the topic of procreation for very long, but iirc it was pretty much all with humans, and his women just squirming to produce babies -- even Friday.

And his rolling furry tape-recorder Martian and his Hroshiia princess were probably egg-hatched.
So the idea of him exploring that many nonhuman ways of procreating seems like a long long stretch.

It sounds familiar to me, too, but so far I'm remembering whole novels by LeGuin (if anyone would be the one, she would be the one), rather than a collection of short stories on that subject.

(e.g. the few of hers I've read whole novel The Left Hand of Darkness* and The Dispossessed* very much on the theme, and The Wind's Twelve Quarters a collection of her stories but on any theme.)

It's a nagging enough memory to have me looking.

The closest I've come so far is a collection with the most obvious subject being the title,

"Alien Sex" by Ellen Datlow.

It's an anthology of different authors though.
A further search of these stories would show what collections they were in.

Looking at the content story titles, I have vague memories of many of them.

I started with James Tiptree as the next most likely author in that anthology.

She explored gender roles as in "The Women Men Don't See", in which earth women asked to come along when the aliens repaired their ship and left, and at least one sentient-animal reproduction cycle in "Love Is the Plan, The Plan is Death". **

(*Highly recommended.)

This anthology and these authors are gonna lead somewhere.

 

[Matteo]

My first thought was that you were on the wrong forum for that kind of question. My next, though it doesn't quite fit, is
Son of Man by Silverberg.

 

[Snicklefritz]

No, it was not an anthology but a collection of short stories by a single author, well known enough to be translated into French.
But thanks anyway for that: I Googled your reference and found this sentence that I really like: "The human brain is often too complicated a mechanism to function perfectly"

That's going to be my new excuse.

 

[Ravensquawk]

That's going to be my new excuse.

I know, I know.
Seriously though (why do I feel like saying "Serially, though"?) -- get on that anthology on ISFDB, open each story in a new tab, and see what anthologies it is in.

That's what I've started doing out of interest, but it's gonna take a while.

I'd bet a beer that that will lead to the collection in question.

Maybe branching out a few links and leads down, but if it is not too obscure, it will show up.

 

[farntfar]

Not all on the subject of procreation; he was maybe too straight-laced for that; but displaced love (in time or space) in some of the others in the book; look at Consider her Ways by John Wyndham.
The title story certainly has a different form of procreation.

 

[Snicklefritz]

I read a long time ago, maybe 40 years ago, a collection of short stories that explored different strange ways of procreating, where male were also female, or the son impregnating his mother and other amazing combinations which changed the perspectives, which is the purpose of science fiction.

I forgot the title and the author, it seems to me that it was a woman and having a certain notoriety. I couldn't find anything at Marion Zimmer Bradley or Ursula Le Guin.

Does this mean anything to anyone?

"The Wind's Twelve Quarters" by Ursula K. Le Guin ? written 1975 Many of the stories explore themes of gender, sexuality, and reproduction, as well as the relationship between human beings and the natural world.

 

[Ravensquawk]

"The Wind's Twelve Quarters" by Ursula K. Le Guin ? written 1975 Many of the stories explore themes of gender, sexuality, and reproduction, as well as the relationship between human beings and the natural world.

That's why I answered with it as a lead for further stories.

I read it so many years ago that it's vague now; I just checked its contents again.

Amazingly it doesn't include "Love is the Plan, The Plan is Death" which is very on-point about the reproduction, life stages, and full life cycle of an alien animal.

AND how it is stressed and changed by climactic pattern shifts.
"The winters grow." This is from the story, not a TV show.

Told in the first person! It's fascinating reading the first-person account of the narrating animal about how he loses all awareness when he kills and tears to pieces his brother, after the merest hint that his brother might be a mating rival. (Something like "I come to, surrounded by pieces of Frim.")
It masterfully shows a viewpoint of something sentient just after the choiceless animal mating drive destroyed its sentience.

I'm checking all the anthologies it is in now. It's so quintessentially alien reproduction*. I'm looking at real science fiction; alien life includes animals, and even Earth's animals can be pretty alien to us; this is way beyond the scope of Hollywood stories of romances with mermen and Star Trek aliens who look like humans with different foreheads and noses.

* Still highly recommended. If what animals on Earth do is so strange that there are TV specials on them, science fiction can just expand on that and get some real weirdness.

I still think exploring links for each of the stories in similar anthologies can lead to the collection in question.

 

[Ravensquawk]

Oh, too late to edit: I caught myself conflating two authors.
I would have put the catch in the edits rather than edit it out, but it's too, you know, late.
Well, happy hunting as you explore them both to find the collection without conflating them!

 

[Suzecog]

You could take a look at PJF’s Strange Relations, from what I remember there’s some pretty weird stuff in there like you remember and it was translated into French as Des Rapports Etranges.

 

[Ravensquawk]

We can help you, but you gotta help us help you.
Any more specifications to work with?

Does it include animal life? Is it xenobiology?

Is it only about humans or humanoids?

The latter rules out “Love Is the Plan, The Plan is Death”.

“son impregnating his mother”

That wording suggests humans and humanoids – as opposed to animal offspring names like foal, pup, chick, whelps, and so on. But there isn’t much certainty to go on in the question.
If we can narrow it down to human-like people, that rules out a lot of search items.

“where male were also female”

But

“a collection of short stories”

*Rules out the nongendered novels about the “kemmer” process by Leguin. And collections of her short stories that aren't exclusively that theme.

*Rules out single stories like “All You Zombies” unless it’s in a collection of Heinlein’s similar stories.

*Rules out a Dean Koontz novel about a person who impregnated herself to have her son.

* Rules out Sturgeon collections. He wrote about same-gender couples, and incest, and who knows what else, but it wasn’t really alternative procreation. Many collections of his stories, but (iirc) not one on any single theme.

“explored different strange ways of procreating”

Is the main topic procreation? Is it procreation only? Or sexuality without reproducing? Romance? Is egg-laying involved? Parthenogenesis? Budding? Three-gender triads “melting” to produce an offspring? Interspecies hybrids? Changing through the life cycle from plant to animal?

Knowing these would help include as possible or rule out a story collection.

"Procreation-only" rules out stories about alien sexuality without procreation. It rules out attraction, romances, nonreproductive sex, marriages, sociology of couples (or triples or singles), etc..

If you rule out animals, is it human only?
e.g.:
"Old Folks At Home" by Michael Bishop is about, well, an “old folks home” which has “marriages” of five or seven people. Never an even number, so that people don’t start to form pairs. All of the women and all of the men in a marriage rotate bed partners every night.
(I wrote him and told him it should be in more anthologies and much more well-known.)

Or is it human-alien?
e.g.:
“Bits” by Naomi Kritzer. Which involves silicone toys to match Earth human and alien… bits.

The subject already has more extensive coverage in "Sex and sexuality in speculative fiction".

The page has more novels and single short stories named that you can rule out.

It describes a collection, "Eight Worlds" series by John Varley. However it might be too far-ranging; maybe it only includes some of these themes, rather than being about them.

You might see something you recognize.