Crossdressers and Science Fiction

[AmiFL]

I have been looking at everyone's profile and noticed an interesting common denominator. A lot of us here read sci-fi. I happen to love it too.

I could fill the page with authors names that i like. However everyone here should pick up the "Sex Gates" by Darrell Bain. It is a series of stories about gates that appear all over the world. Passing through one changes a person's sex. Sometimes permenantly, sometimes reversible. An interesting read.

So who else likes sci-fi out there, Let us all know.................

[Kate Simmons]

I find it very interesting, given that science and science fiction are beginning to merge as the reality program winds down. This is one of the indicators and it's no accident that a lot of TG folks read Sci-Fi.

[Miranda09]

I too love Sci-Fi. I'll have to pick up this book. Sounds like a classic Sci-Fi theme of "what if..." Thanks for posting.

[Jamie001]

I loved the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk traded bodies with Dr Janice Lester. Too bad the episode didn't go into more detail about how it felt to be a woman. I love that episode.

[meri]

I really enjoyed the "Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin. The inhabitants of the planet Winter are androgynous and indifferent to all things sexual most of the time. However, when the mood grabs them, they gravitate toward one gender or another in order to procreate. Interesting concept --

[StephHamilton]

love sci-fi too...
do u know what episode of star trek that was. (love it)

[Lorileah]

I have to get that book. It seems to be a common tread in Sci-fi books. My favorite author who wrote about changing sexes was Jack L Chalker. I think it was the Well of souls set

[Vieja]

Oh Woe. To be a sci fi junkie is a terrible fate. I have a stack of scifi books that I can't get to because the library has so many good ones and I can't read them fast enough.


Vieja

[Lorileah]

love sci-fi too...
do u know what episode of star trek that was. (love it)

I think it was Turnabout Intruder

[MelanieCA]

Maybe somebody can help me out here.

I remember as a teenager reading a light-hearted science fiction book, about a group of people and the wonderfully weird things that happen to them when they modify Planck's constant.

What I remember most about this was a male character, who during some period when the laws of the universe were in flux, turned into a woman as some kind of wish fulfillment. He explained that it made sense, that he loved women so much he wanted to be one.

That's pretty much the only scene I remember about it (obviously). I'd love to read it again, but for the life of me I don't remember the title or author. I do think it was the first part of a series that I didn't continue.

Any ideas?

[Persephone]

I have been looking at everyone's profile and noticed an interesting common denominator. A lot of us here read sci-fi. I happen to love it too.

Interesting! But is it really because crossdressers read sci-fi more than others do? Or is it simply because there are lots and lots of sci-fi readers and some of us are also some of them?

I read someplace, but don't really know if it is true, that more contemporary sci-fi readers are women rather than men. Is this true?

Certainly in the "old days" of sci-fi it was definitely a guy read, but has that changed?

I could fill the page with authors names that i like. However everyone here should pick up the "Sex Gates" by Darrell Bain. It is a series of stories about gates that appear all over the world. Passing through one changes a person's sex. Sometimes permenantly, sometimes reversible. An interesting read.

I went to Amazon to order it and found that there were two different versions.

One appears to be part of a trilogy, with a cover that looks like this:

The other is supposed to be the "orginal version" :

"This is the Sex Gates novel as originally written by Darrell Bain alone. It has a completely different ending, and it contains one more major character and several more supporting ones. In this original version, all questions are answered and all issues resolved in this one book. It is being published now in response to all the fan mail and interest the trilogy generated?and continues to generate. The Sex Gates has already become a science fiction cult classic and this book should be a significant addition to the sex gates universe."

That cover seems to look like this:

Do you recommend one over the other?

[Stephanie-L]

Possibly the ultimate SF book on gender change is "I Will Fear No Evil" by Robert Heinlein. It is about a very rich man who is so afraid of dying that at his "death" he has his brain transplanted into another body, a woman's. This book is dated as are most of Heinlein's works of the era but it brings up a lot of interesting themes. What is gender, what is the nature of identity, what is love, how much of our personality is affected by our physical body, what are the legal, moral and societal ramifications of altering/changing one's body? As I said the book is rather dated, the "rich" man has only half a billion dollars. The sexual side of things is a bit over the top as Heinlein adult works often tend to be, I do not know if he thought the sexual revolution that was starting then would continue or he was just exploring his fantasies. Anyway, it is an interesting book and does make you think a bit.....Stephanie

[TxKimberly]

. . . However everyone here should pick up the "Sex Gates" by Darrell Bain. It is a series of stories about gates that appear all over the world. Passing through one changes a person's sex. Sometimes permenantly, sometimes reversible.. . .

I am a serious SciFi fan and have a house with paper backs stacked all over it. Sounds like an interesting book - gonna have to look it up!

I loved the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk traded bodies with Dr Janice Lester. Too bad the episode didn't go into more detail about how it felt to be a woman. I love that episode.

Also one of my favorite episodes. I'm assuming that most SciFi fans here have read "I will fear no eveil" too?

I have to get that book. It seems to be a common tread in Sci-fi books. My favorite author who wrote about changing sexes was Jack L Chalker. I think it was the Well of souls set

Wow it's been years since I've thought of "The Well of Souls". I LOVED that series!

[KarenCDFL]

Another serious Scifi fan here too.

It seems this trend is more than a love of the genre. I have also noticed that quite a few of us are involved in some kind of technology or the sciences too.

I have always wondered why this is so. I have seen this trend since my Compuserve Gender Forum days back in the very early 1980's.

And P.S. to SYFY Channel, It is pronouced "SKIF FEE" not SYFY. It is amazing that our own channel is run by a bunch of Mundanes!

[meri]

Perhaps our love of Sci-Fi is related to crossdressing. In Sci-Fi, we escape our daily lives and are transported elsewhere into another world, time, place. In crossdressing, we are also transported into a fantasy body, we can become someone else if only for a short period of time.

I also love fantasy books for the same reason, they transport me to a different world and into the mind of someone else.

Could it be that we just don't have enough fun in our own lives? In our own skins?

[StaceyJane]

I love to read good action packed Sci Fi. I particularly like Peter F. Hamilton. One book that was discussed before on this forum was "Steel Beach". Apparently in the future sex changes will be quite common on the moon.

[Rebecca Jayne]

Kurt Vonnegut , Ray Bradbury, JR R Tolkien and Ill even mention Ken Kesey.

[Cristi]

As I was reading this thread, I was wondering if I was going to be the first one to mention "I Will Fear No Evil" by Robert Heinlein, but Stephanie-L beat me to it

Similar themes wound through a lot of Heinlein books. One character that appeared in many books in the Lazarus Long universe started off as a man, then ended up as female by the book "The Number of the Beast" ('slipstick' Libby).

Lazarus Long himself, through time travel and sex change during cloning, ended up being his own mother.

Finally, many of Heinlein's characters wore kilts, probably the most he could get away in the direction of 'crossdressing'. When I was young reading all of his books, I was pretty convinced that he was probably a closet crossdresser.

On a more general note... HELL ya I'm a died in the wool old school science fiction reader! I have probably ready every science fiction book worth reading written, starting with Jules Verne and H.G. Wells up through the present. Our library is now up over 1500 books, and those are just the ones we considered worth keeping.

There is one other particular book I read quite a while ago that I can't remember the name of... it might have just been a short story. Basically a young man wanted a disguise to hide from people who were looking at him and thought that if he were a woman nobody would ever find him. Somehow, over the course of a few weeks, he managed to control his body and slowly transformed himself into a woman. It turned out later in the story that he was an alien who had shape-shifting abilities, but he didn't know that at the time so was quite confused about what was happening to him.

I know I've read other scifi that had CD or trans plot lines. I'll post them as I remember.

And yeah... that Trek episode used to excite me SO much when it was on. I never knew why Kirk ever wanted to change his body back!

I particularly like Peter F. Hamilton.

I JUST finished reading my way through is books. Yeah, I was late but never discovered them earlier for some reason.

I tend, when I find a new author, to read everything that person has ever written since I'm so desperate for good books. Right now, I'm just finishing up another new find, John Scalzi. If you like good Heinlein 'space opera' scifi, read "Old Man's War". You will not be disapointed.

Anybody feel free to PM me with good book ideas!

[GINA-CD]

I'm reading now Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick which is the novel in which Blade Runner is based upon. Very good book and explains a lot that does not appear in the movie, even in the Director's Cut version which is the one I have.

[Emily01]

i'm an avid sci-fi fan too and i wish this theme were explored further and more often than it is. i suppose it would take one of us to have the passion to do that though.

it's an awfully common thing in sci-fi but it almost always lacks the wonder and contrast that i would experience. big sigh!!

[varinia]

All of you talking about Star Trek forgot about the episode "Return to Tomorrow" where for a short time Spock's essence was in Nurse Chapel. Spock must have thought it most illogical to have all those new sensations.

[erickka]

I am a sci-fi junkie myself. Roddenberry, Asimov, etc.Just to drop a couple of names.

[abigailf]

I love Sci-Fi. I am going to order Sex Gates. I was looking for a new read.

I just reread the R.A. Salvatore Drizzt series. It is an adventure novel in a fantasy setting about a character from an evil dark elf society that did not fit in because he was born with a good nature. Funny, I just realized the parity there (as I said before I am slow sometimes).

Does anyone remember the move Switch? It came out in the 90’s by Blake Edwards. A man who womanized blondes was murdered and god sent him back to earth as a blonde woman.

[TheresaJTS]

I love Sci-Fi. I am going to order Sex Gates. I was looking for a new read.

I just reread the R.A. Salvatore Drizzt series. It is an adventure novel in a fantasy setting about a character from an evil dark elf society that did not fit in because he was born with a good nature. Funny, I just realized the parity there (as I said before I am slow sometimes).

Does anyone remember the move Switch? It came out in the 90’s by Blake Edwards. A man who womanized blondes was murdered and god sent him back to earth as a blonde woman.

Switch was a remake of the movie Goodbye Charlie http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058154/

which was a remake of I believe a french film.

Another version from 1985 TV http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0250409/

[Lorileah]

All of you talking about Star Trek forgot about the episode "Return to Tomorrow" where for a short time Spock's essence was in Nurse Chapel. Spock must have thought it most illogical to have all those new sensations.

Nope that is a different episode. But it shows that Gene Roddenberry used that idea twice. Thanks for bringing that up

The one where Kirk and Dr Janice Lester switched was "Turnabout Intruder"

And we know that Kirk wasn't normal, otherwise he would have opted to keep Dr Lester's body and wear those mini outfits. Shows you that the whole Star Trek thing was fiction. Raise your hands who here would have stayed as Dr Lester?:??