Tetsuo refers to "'...the known Galaxy...,'" (p. 16) not just to "the Galaxy." His terminology is more precise.
Davis Bertram's psychograph shows "'...a high goodwill quotient.'" (p. 17)
This means that:
it is safe for the Coordination Service to OK Davis's exploration of a planetary system where there might be vulnerable natives;
we see how psychotechnic science is applied in the Galactic period.
Davis visits a planet of women but not of Brobdingnagian women despite the attached cover image.
Earth has outgrown cities and private ostentation which still exist on the frontier, e.g., Stellamont and Davis Bertram. We see something of the Earth of this period in "The Pirate" and The Peregrine.
17 comments:
I think that cover (I have that edition) is meant to be metaphorical -- he's the only man on the planet, which 'reduces' him.
BTW, the date of writing shows in some aspects of the Virgin Planet -- situational homosexuality is sort of mentioned, but in a rather gingerly fashion. It would probably be (on an all-female planet) very common, tho' not necessarily universal.
As I remember it, homosexuality is explicit in the short version but not in the long version.
See "Ethan of Athos" by L. M. Bujold for an all male planet.
Since it was published in 1986, she could be more open about mentioning homosexuality as commonplace.
To make an all male planet more than a one generation thing requires the 'uterine replicator'. Some further limitations of reproduction that way makes a trip by Ethan to the wider galaxy necessary.
Jim: Yes, ETHAN OF ATHOS is a hoot, a very good piece of writing. Jim Baen grumbled about that when Lois sent it to him, and privately called it SAN FRANCISCO PLANET.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
Mr. Stirling: Then I should read the short version of VIRGIN PLANET, instead of only the longer form of that story (which I have in a copy of the 1959 Avalon edition).
I can see the hapless Davis Bertram being "reduced" on Avalon! One comic mishap after another shows him failing to live up to the exalted and grandiose expectations the women of that females only colony had of revered, wise, and saintly men.
I remember the lesbianism seen in VIRGIN PLANET. I missed it the first one or two times I read the story. Then I realized the boss Udall of Freetoon, Claudia, was intimate with Emily Dyckman. Lesbianism would inevitably be widespread on a planet with only women, who had to reproduce via artificial parthenogenesis.
Jim: Besides Bujold's story, which I've not read, there's also Cordwainer Smith's "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal," where there's a colonized planet inhabited only by men, Arachosia. Soon after the colony was founded, all the women started dying of cancer, because life on that world was carcinogenic for females. Artificial cloning of males was the only any kind of humans could live there. The result was a grotesque and violent culture evolving on Arachosia.
Ad astra! Sean
It seems that Bujold was more optimistic about an all male society *not* being grotesque and violent than Cordwainer Smith.
BTW look up Mount Athos for what she thought a relatively non-violent all male society would be modelled on. She noted that prisons armies & monasteries are the historically fairly common all male (sub) societies.
Kaor, Jim!
If that is or was how Bujold thought, then I would emphatically disagree with her. The unnatural strains and stresses to be expected in colonies with only men or women would make for grotesque societies with even higher levels of violence than that found in normal societies.
Oh, I knew about the eastern Orthodox monastic federation found on Mt. Athos. But these were RELIGIOUS communities, settled by male monks seeking union with God. There was no intention of forcing all males to become monks.
Yes, prisons can be too often horrible places. You will find in them a high concentration of bad and brutal male convicts, a certain percentage of whom will gratify depraved desires thru torture and rape of weaker male convicts.
Ad astra! Sean
From the portrayal in the novel Bujold didn't think it was actually a *good* idea, she just thought it could be much less bad than a prison. In the novel the Athos colony was founded by what I would consider religious nuts. The end of the story implies that the all-male nature of the society would end in a generation or two.
Kaor, Jim!
Good, that Bujold had doubts about the desirability of an all male colony. And that kind of set up would HAVE to soon end, unless some means of artificial reproduction was soon found.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: her Barrayar future history has artificial uterus tech capable of handling the entire gestation.
The planet Athos imports ova -- but someone sabotaged the shipments to them, possibly because they dislike the Athos setup.
The protagonist of ETHAN OF ATHOS is sent to remedy the situation, but he doesn't have many resources and he's comically ignorant of what the rest of the galaxy is like (and what women are).
There's some very funny stuff in it. Eg., on Athos child-care is fully monetized at market rates... which means that raising children is fantastically expensive...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
And if all male organizations/settings are not to be squalid hell holes they should be tightly controlled from the top down! Prisons are harder to manage because of the high concentration of nasty and violent male inmates.
Got it, women criminals tend to differ from males mostly from being less impulsive, and taking more care to think thru the risks and profits of their crimes. Of course, some women WILL be impulsive criminals!
I assume female chimps were more like Homo sapiens than the males!
Jim: You said the people in Bujold's all male colony were founded by eccentric sectarians. Were they kinda like the Shakers, people who rejected marriage and having children? Catholics, Orthodox, and most Protestants would all agree in rejecting such ideas as deeply heretical!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Thanks for your comments about Bujold's ETHAN OF ATHOS. You make the title character sound like a reverse Davis Bertram, from PA's VIRGIN PLANET. And more inept than Bertram!
What you said about ova being imported to Athos reminded me of Frank Herbert's grisly HELLSTROM'S HIVE and Jerry Pornelle/Larry Niven's THE BARSOOM GAME. The former shows a genetically engineered new species of hive "humans" using real but amputated female and male reproductive organs on "life support" used for breeding. The latter has a character raped as a child by her father and becoming pregnant. But, being a Catholic, she could not bring herself to have the child killed. So she had the embryo removed and placed in cryosleep, with the idea of bringing the infant to full term in an artificial womb when she was ready to become a mother.
Ad astra! Sean
The ony all-male setting I've experienced was the summer I turned 17 in an Ontario Junior Forest Ranger Camp. I would classify that as closer to the tightly controlled end. They also had all female camps. My younger sister spent a summer in one.
If you squint right you can take things in the Bible like Eve being blamed for the Fall & get the doctrine of the church on Athos that women are the source of evil & so get some men deciding to set up an all male society once the uterine replicator makes it possible.
Part of the society on Athos is severe censorship of what mixed sex societies are like. That is what makes Ethan naive. He is very definitely not stupid. Considering the limitation of the information he has, he is actually quite ept ;)
The thing that makes the society likely to change soon is something that would totally undermine the censorship.
Kaor, Jim!
Certainly, eccentric sectarians with dubious and peculiar interpretations of the Bible have founded oddball churches. And I can imagine some of them, anxious to get away from dominant societies hostile to them, setting up colonies in a star faring future.
Unless the sectarians of Athos tried to completely cut off all contact with the rest of the human race, it would seem impossible to have a one sex society for long. Esp. if women were also visiting that planet from to time.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the authorities on Ethos strictly limit visitors!
Kaor, Paul!
I am not surprised. The mere sight of women would be UNSETTLING.
Ad astra! Sean
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