The character (in several books) Elizabeth Andrew Jackson Libby Long. "Slipstick Libby". The most accurate portrayal of a TS woman I know, sketchy though it is.

Heinlein must have known someone TS very well.

A ridiculous number of us are engineers, mathematicians, or rocket scientists.

For that matter, add RAH's "I will fear no evil".

And Le Guin's "Left hand of Darkness" of course.

Cheryl,
Good selection. I noticed that Robert A. Heinlein classic "I Will Fear No Evil," released in 1970, gave a sci-fi head start on all of the other books you mentioned. An old, rich man get the brain of a young woman. For a young fledging trans person in the 1970s, this was a book I enjoyed over and over. "Stranger In a Strange Land" skirted the edges of this idea, however, because the main character moves from Mars to Earth, he feels out of place, like trans people sometimes feel.

I have written a few Sci-Fi novels as well, and only had one of them pulished in the early 1990s and it is no longer in print. I wrote all of them before I started my transition and all but one has a trans character in them. Some of my sci-fi short stories also have a trans theme. They are fun to write, but it would be more fun to see more of my sci-fi work in print.

Thanks for the list, Cheryl. I'm not much of a sci-fi reader, but I've always heard that Leguin's books are really good. So maybe I'll actually give them a try now.

In my transgender history class at the U of Iowa I usually assign Fred Pohl's "Day Million," from the BioFutures anthology.

I'd be curious to know your take on "The Breeds of Man" by F. M. Busby. It was my first exposure to SF dealing with gender identity.

But, but, but...

What about the Wraeththu books? I keep trying to track down Storm Constantine to see if she'd be willing to join the blog, but I've never found a way to contact her.

I too read the Heinlein when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure that there's something going on there. On the other hand, given his general attitudes to women, I suspect that any attempt to portray Heinlein as trans-friendly would lead to hard-line feminists saying that proves that trans people fetishize womanhood. Also, of course, it would cause outrage amongst all the far-right Starship Troopers fans out there.

Kat: interesting suggestion that I shall definitely follow up.

As for things like the Le Guin and the Wraeththu, they are certainly very interesting from the point of view of examining gender roles. However, the beings in question are not human. They do what they do "naturally". One of the most common charges laid against transgender people is that they are "unnatural". Writing about interesting aliens won't necessarily help transgender humans, nor will transgender humans necessarily identify with those aliens. Is it possible for a Genthian or a Wraeththu to be uncomfortable with his/her gender?

I've not read the Busby, but it sounds like the same thing.

just wanted to add isaac asimov to the list. on the planet solaria in the book 'foundation and earth', humans have genetically modified themselves to be hermaphroditic, possessing both male and female genitalia in order to complete their goal of each human being completely isolated (and therefore, completely "free") from other humans.

If you get a chance, I highly recommend finding a copy of Shadow Man by Melissa Scott. It's out of print but I was able to get a used copy through Amazon.

I'm not great with book descriptions so I'm just pasting from an Amazon review here:
"In the future, humanity has developed five distinct sexes due to the effects of a drug that allows faster-than-light travel. The Concorde worlds have officially recognized all five sexes, but on the isolated planet Hara those in between male and female are considered mutations who must choose to live as one of the two traditional sexes. When Hara regains contact with the Concorde worlds, it's an opportunity for Warreven--a "herm"--to break the long-standing role society has forced on him. But it will also put him in the center of a political battle that will span the stars. Shadow Man won the 1996 Lambda Award."

I don't know how relevant or accurate the book is in terms of transgender or intersex experience, but for me it was definitely food for thought on all kinds of gender fronts. Plus it forced me to get more used to using alternate pronouns (ze, hir, etc.).

The Wraeththu may be a different species, but the first generation of them began as human males. After they become Wraeththu they have to accept their new identity as members of a third gender, and when they learn to reproduce some of them have a hard time accepting the idea of being pregnant.

Tegan:

You are quite right there, and some of the most interesting aspects of the Wraeththu books are the differences between Wraeththu who were originally men and those who were originally women. Even amongst those who were originally men, there are some who prefer to do the getting pregnant and others who prefer to do the making pregnant. Storm does a fabulous job of gender deconstruction. But it is unclear what Wraeththu society will be like 10 generations down the road.

No Jack Chalker? The man made a career out of body swapping.

Svenn:

Body swapping in and of itself is not necessarily anything to do with transgender people. Indeed it is just as often used as an excuse for claiming that the feelings of transgender people are invalid because a body is no more than a set of clothes that people wear.

Being mindful of discussions elsewhere today, I'm happy to admit that are people within the transgender community for whom that is all that bodies mean to them, but it is by no means a generally applicable description.

Of the Heinlein books (and yes, I read I Will Fear No Evil), the one that most resonated with my experience was Friday. The questioning of Marjorie Baldwin's humanness, her concern about being detected (especially in terms of strength and speed), relationships that were destroyed because of her natal history, and her sterility all struck a chord.

Two other books come to mind. A Civil Campaign by Bujold has a FtM character in it. It isn't the main character, but he does show up and cause a bit of a stir.

Charles Stross' Glasshouse is another far-future setting where body-swapping is common as breathing, but the twist of the plot is where the characters get stuck somewhere where that can't be done. It does directly address gender identity as a societal construct in several ways.

How about Iain Banks' Culture books? It's set in a posthuman society where every human has a vast array of enhancements, one of which is the ability to consciously decide to change sex.

It's not specifically true to the trans experience, beyond the fact that everyone has the power to choose their sex, which probably means the trans experience in the Culture is fairly unremarkable.

Apparently, it's popular for couples in the Culture to arrange things so both partners are pregnant at the same time.

I'll give a shout out to Rachel Pollack's short story 'The Second Generation' from 1976 which a recent conversation with Cheryl had me searching out again. Pollack's future in that story has pills available for all which can effect immediate sex change (she doesn't bother with the science, the process is more akin to magic) and the relationship she describes between a pair of teenage lovers I found to be thrilling and dizzying in its implications. I was 14 when I read it and this was my first contact in fiction not only with queer themes but with a queer identity being presented as natural and universally acceptable. Unlike John Varley above, she has the two characters discussing their "inner" gender and the meaning of gender itself when anyone can choose how they want to be.

What a great overview, Cheryl!

I am not surprized that Gael Baudino's DragonSword trilogy wasn't discussed. Published by Penguin Books" ROC fantasy division, 1988 through 1992, it delt with several issues. The first book of the trilogy dealt with acceptance, both individual and societal of transsexuals and women in general. Of course, the setting is mostly in the Fifth Century C.E. Britian, which was a very mysogonistic (sp?)time. This theme continues in the other two book of the trilogy. Although in the second book, a 20th Century feminist, anti-transsexual character is added and this carries over into the final book.

I wish I could go into more detail, but then that would be giving away too much of the story.

As an interesting aside, I found the first book in a collection of books while I was serving in Southwest Asia during the first Gulf War. The books were collected and sent to units serving in the Gulf Area.

Pax,
Gwen

Don't know for sure but I think Glasshouse should have been mentioned... but I guess it's more transhumanism then transgender.

As Glasshouse has been mentioned twice now I should perhaps direct you to my review and to Timmi Duchamp's.

Theodore Sturgeon's 1953 story "The Golden Helix" comes immediately to mind that seems to predate most of the others mentioned.
Interesting sidenote is that Sturgeon postulated the DNA helix independent of the actual discovery of the helical structure at the same time.

He also wrote a number of other short stories that touched on non-traditional gender traits.

Great article!

On the televisual front, the new series of "Doctor Who" featured a comic trans-gender villainess called Cassandra in the episodes "The End of the World" and "New Earth." Cassandra was originally a boy, transitioned at some point, and by the time we meet her she's had so many face-lifts she's just a piece of translucent skin, with eyes and lips, stretched onto a metal frame connected to a brain in a jar. So not just transgender, but post-human...and morbidly proud of her "thin and gorgeous" looks. In the second episode, Cassandra indulges in some body-swapping hi-jinks, inhabiting bodies both male and female. Author Russell T. Davis says the character was inspired by the parade of anorexic face-lifted actresses at the Oscar ceremonies.

Commitment Hour by James Gardner. Everyone cycles through genders until they are forced to choose one in late puberty. Not a great book.

Maria V. Snyder's Study series features a character...well, I can't say more without spoiling, but that character's gender issues play out over the first three books in an interesting way, with twists and turns.

Two sci-fi stories I have read which deal with transgender issue and stuck in my mind are the novel "Crygender" by Thomas T. Thomas and the short story "Changes" by Neil Gaiman.

In the novel, a detective tracks down a criminal who has completely dropped from public notice. In the investigation, he ends up at a resort run by the character Crygender who has surgically modified themselves to be half male and half female (split left/right) with the functional genitalia of each.

In the Gaiman short story, a cure for cancer is discovered and put into pill form. The pill cures cancer very quickly (in a matter of hours), but has the side effect of causing the person to switch physical gender. This leads to a subculture of individuals who take the drug recreationally to spend the day/week as the opposite sex. Additionally, it introduces new prejudices regarding an individual's "true gender" such that if you attempt to enter establishments as the gender you were not born with (or was otherwise not appropriate to you), then you were barred entry.

The people in _The Left Hand of Darkness_ are human, if you read the meta-background of her Ekumen stories. (There are two versions of her earlier story "Winter's King", one with all female pronouns, the other with all male.)

Her short story "Old Mountain Ways" may also be of interest.

-FedoraLV