This is one of the more fascinating things about Varley's world.
Unlike today's primitive surgical and hormone treatments, they had a much more elegant solution. You would have a new body of the opposite sex grown in a tank, and when it was ready, a medico would remove your brain from your old body and place it into your new body.
So instead of being in a medical approximation of your new gender, you really were that gender, with your old brain and all your memories intact.
It was so commonplace that people may change back and forth many times. You might ask a friend in casual conversation, "When did you have your first Change?"
A "medico" was something like what we would call a "doctor" today, but they were not considered nearly as highly skilled and highly paid. Basically a mechanic for your brain and body.
This is one of the things I like most about his writing. In the scifi-whodunnit The Barbie Murders the concept of changing your body without too much trouble is used by a cult of people who all look exactly the same — lack of genitalia (i.e., 'Barbie'-like) included.
Varley wrote very much like Heinlein, but with the edgier parts of libertarianism shaved off.
Anyone looking for recommendations for reading Varley would do well to pick up some short story collections like The Persistence of Vision, The Barbie Murders, or Blue Champagne.
For a solid trilogy I can recommend the Gaea Trilogy (Titan, Wizard, and Demon), but that includes a lot of (fun!) cultural references which may be a tad harder on readers under 40.
His Eight Worlds books are great fun to read too. Pick up The Ophiuchi Hotline and see what you think to get a feel for those. These can be read independently of each other.
For young adults and anyone looking to read some scifi not quite as heavy and more reminiscent of Heinlein's juveniles, the Thunder and Lightning four book series is quite entertaining. One prescient social development he predicted there is that for an event you weren't present at to be believable (like something shown in a news broadcast or viral video) you would want a friend or a friend-of-a-friend to confirm it. If nobody was actually there, it was probably fake.
> In the scifi-whodunnit The Barbie Murders the concept of changing your body without too much trouble is used by a cult of people who all look exactly the same — lack of genitalia (i.e., 'Barbie'-like) included.
Did you see the Barbie movie? I bet you will enjoy it.
There is a scene where Ken and Barbie are rollerblading in Venice Beach, and some rude people are harassing them. They each announce, "I don't have a ..." (You can fill in the blank.)
And without giving too much away, there is another scene near the end that involves... Birkenstocks!
A dystopia I'd never want to witness. Or did this future also eliminate being straight?
To elaborate, men and women have fundamental differences. What makes someone a woman or a man? It's not just about the body, its about the experiences and even more so inexperiences people gather. Men are born without a understanding of how the female body works, same with women who are born with no understanding of how the male body works. Just placing ur brain in a new body wont magically unlearn all the things you know about the other body. So regardless of the body your brain was put into, you now have both genders because you experienced both sides. Personally, I am not attracted to men in the slightest regardless of their body now having female features. So while I am not against people swapping genders how they please, it would be a dystopia for me personally in my subjective view, because I wouldn't magically become bisexual.
Of course not. No one was forced or expected to have a Change.
It was just an option available to anyone with the curiosity to wonder what it would be like to be the opposite sex - and experience that fully - and then switch back again if they preferred where they started.
But you raise an interesting point. In the stories I read, all of the characters were "straight" in the way we think of that word today. This may be my poor memory, but I don't recall stories involving men who enjoy sex with men, or women who enjoy sex with women.
When a man had his brain transplanted into a woman's body made just for him, then she was attracted to men.
When a woman had her brain transplanted into a man's body made just for her, then he was attracted to women.
The characters were straight, from the point of view of their current body. It's just that they could change that body whenever they wanted.
I put my explanation in my earlier comment. Thats interesting, so their sexuality came from the bodies their brain was put into? So the brain essentially transforms too after that surgery. Like I know male and female brains have structural differences (which obviously doesnt have implications on anything else but the brains structure), but the experience people gather throughout their lifetime are heavily influenced by their gender.
> their sexuality came from the bodies their brain was put into? So the brain essentially transforms too after that surgery.
Yes! And of course it's a mix of their previous memories and experiences, and their new bodies with all the hormones flooding into their brains. They don't stop being who they were, but they also become someone new.
Some of the stories deal with this very question. One in particular I'm trying to remember involves two guys who are best friends and buddies. One of them has a Change, and then they go camping in an inflatable bubble on the Moon... And things get awkward and interesting!
(If anyone remembers this specific story, please do tell.)
Since you are someone who has thought about these issues, I have a feeling you will enjoy these stories.
I most likely will. I'm bad at expressing myself so I can see why I get down voted as this is a sensitive topic for many. Just know I have trans aquintances and I have zero issues with people transitioning to live their life however they prefer.
> I'm bad at expressing myself so I can see why I get down voted
Don't beat yourself up over it!
If it helps any, one thing I noticed is that you got some quick downvotes on your first short comment. But then you edited it to add some insightful thoughts, the kind that should be welcome here and indeed led to an interesting conversation.
If I could suggest one thing, it would be to wait until you have that insightful thought and then post it.
(Yes, I realize that the guidelines say "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." That's a good general principle, but I hope we can make an exception when someone is genuinely looking to improve their way of interaction, as you are. We can all learn from that, myself included.)
> Men are born without a understanding of how the female body works, same with women who are born with no understanding of how the male body works.
Men are also born without an undertanding of how the male body works and the same is true, mutatis mutandis, with women.
> Just placing ur brain in a new body wont magically unlearn all the things you know about the other body.
I mean, absent knowledge of what it takes to make a brain work with a new body, putting it in one is also magic and what other magical (from our perspective) effects do or do not come along with that is... highly speculative. It might be that accessing some of those as anything different than the memories of counterfactual dreams isn’t possible without connections, or biochemical conditions, that don’t exist without intentional intervention in a body configured differently.
> So regardless of the body your brain was put into, you now have both genders because you experienced both sides.
No, gender (either ascribed gender or gender identity) is not inherently tied to “what combination of anatomical and hormonal sex traits have I experienced”. It might be that having this kind of experience affects gender identity, but (even assuming initial gender identity was in one or the other position on the traditional binary, whether or not the side stereotypically associated with gross anatomy of the original body) it doesn't automatically make it encompass both sides of the gender binary. And what it does or doesn't do for ascribed gender is dependent on the viewss of the society in which it occurs, not an outside observer in our society.
> Personally, I am not attracted to men in the slightest regardless of their body now having female features. So while I am not against people swapping genders how they please, it would be a dystopia for me personally in my subjective view, because I wouldn't magically become bisexual.
It would be a dystopia becuase people would be free to engage in one more choice than they are in our current society that, because of your quirky views about the relation of gender to biological history of the individual, would render them sexually uninteresting to you?
Of course not. This is a sci fi story so you wouldn’t magically become bisexual you would scientifically become bisexual. The flavor and style of bisexual that you become, however, would be pretty different from and less troublesome than what irks you in the 21st century by the simple fact of a completely different set of societal mores having been in place long before your birth (ie your bisexuality would not be thrust upon you, your bisexuality would be what you were born and grew up with)
gender identity and sexual orientation are different concepts, that have been married by European Christian dogma. harmonization in missionary work included harmonizing into a binary gender paradigm alongside a binary sex. many cultures across the Americas and Oceania had and have non-binary systems, before the swell of representation seen in the last decade or so.
although gender and sex is used interchangeably - even in the most progressive circles - gender is a reference to a set of cultural behaviors and roles, a form of expression, while sex is functional and 99.9999% chromosomal and binary in humans
you are familiar with this, for example, when someone says "be a man" in response to someone's lack of assertiveness, this has nothing to do with whether they have a penis and the binary male contributions to reproduction, it is referring to a behavior expression that is indeed arbitrary but shared
swapping genders therefore has nothing to do with what sex you are attracted to, when adopting that paradigm, especially when adding genders outside of the binary cultural behaviors
hence being "straight" doesn't change and is only a problem for someone else
> many cultures across the Americas and Oceania had and have non-binary systems,
As I understand it, this is because these cultures had deeply sexist ideas about how women and men should behave, so they created additional categories to shovel everyone who didn't conform into. In practice this tended to mean that gay men would be placed in some sort of "non-man" male category. So while sexuality and gender are different things, in practice they end up linked through this mechanism of othering.
> Long, long ago, when I was yet unpublished, I found myself talking with Isaac Asimov at I forget which convention, when John Varley cruised by, trailed by enthusiastic fans. Asimov gazed sadly after him and said, "Look at him. A decade ago, everybody was asking, 'Who is John Varley?' A decade from now, everybody will be asking, 'Who is Isaac Asimov?'"
I picked it up one day with the intent to just read the first paragraph to see what it was about. 3-4 hours letter I had finished the book without realising.
This is one of the more fascinating things about Varley's world.
Unlike today's primitive surgical and hormone treatments, they had a much more elegant solution. You would have a new body of the opposite sex grown in a tank, and when it was ready, a medico would remove your brain from your old body and place it into your new body.
So instead of being in a medical approximation of your new gender, you really were that gender, with your old brain and all your memories intact.
It was so commonplace that people may change back and forth many times. You might ask a friend in casual conversation, "When did you have your first Change?"
A "medico" was something like what we would call a "doctor" today, but they were not considered nearly as highly skilled and highly paid. Basically a mechanic for your brain and body.
Varley wrote very much like Heinlein, but with the edgier parts of libertarianism shaved off.
Anyone looking for recommendations for reading Varley would do well to pick up some short story collections like The Persistence of Vision, The Barbie Murders, or Blue Champagne.
For a solid trilogy I can recommend the Gaea Trilogy (Titan, Wizard, and Demon), but that includes a lot of (fun!) cultural references which may be a tad harder on readers under 40.
His Eight Worlds books are great fun to read too. Pick up The Ophiuchi Hotline and see what you think to get a feel for those. These can be read independently of each other.
For young adults and anyone looking to read some scifi not quite as heavy and more reminiscent of Heinlein's juveniles, the Thunder and Lightning four book series is quite entertaining. One prescient social development he predicted there is that for an event you weren't present at to be believable (like something shown in a news broadcast or viral video) you would want a friend or a friend-of-a-friend to confirm it. If nobody was actually there, it was probably fake.
I only read Wizard, how much am I missing out on the other two?
I found the whole trilogy enjoyable, and quite unique. If you enjoyed Wizard, pick up the other two and (re)read the whole trilogy.
Did you see the Barbie movie? I bet you will enjoy it.
There is a scene where Ken and Barbie are rollerblading in Venice Beach, and some rude people are harassing them. They each announce, "I don't have a ..." (You can fill in the blank.)
And without giving too much away, there is another scene near the end that involves... Birkenstocks!
To elaborate, men and women have fundamental differences. What makes someone a woman or a man? It's not just about the body, its about the experiences and even more so inexperiences people gather. Men are born without a understanding of how the female body works, same with women who are born with no understanding of how the male body works. Just placing ur brain in a new body wont magically unlearn all the things you know about the other body. So regardless of the body your brain was put into, you now have both genders because you experienced both sides. Personally, I am not attracted to men in the slightest regardless of their body now having female features. So while I am not against people swapping genders how they please, it would be a dystopia for me personally in my subjective view, because I wouldn't magically become bisexual.
Of course not. No one was forced or expected to have a Change.
It was just an option available to anyone with the curiosity to wonder what it would be like to be the opposite sex - and experience that fully - and then switch back again if they preferred where they started.
But you raise an interesting point. In the stories I read, all of the characters were "straight" in the way we think of that word today. This may be my poor memory, but I don't recall stories involving men who enjoy sex with men, or women who enjoy sex with women.
When a man had his brain transplanted into a woman's body made just for him, then she was attracted to men.
When a woman had her brain transplanted into a man's body made just for her, then he was attracted to women.
The characters were straight, from the point of view of their current body. It's just that they could change that body whenever they wanted.
Yes! And of course it's a mix of their previous memories and experiences, and their new bodies with all the hormones flooding into their brains. They don't stop being who they were, but they also become someone new.
Some of the stories deal with this very question. One in particular I'm trying to remember involves two guys who are best friends and buddies. One of them has a Change, and then they go camping in an inflatable bubble on the Moon... And things get awkward and interesting!
(If anyone remembers this specific story, please do tell.)
Since you are someone who has thought about these issues, I have a feeling you will enjoy these stories.
Don't beat yourself up over it!
If it helps any, one thing I noticed is that you got some quick downvotes on your first short comment. But then you edited it to add some insightful thoughts, the kind that should be welcome here and indeed led to an interesting conversation.
If I could suggest one thing, it would be to wait until you have that insightful thought and then post it.
(Yes, I realize that the guidelines say "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." That's a good general principle, but I hope we can make an exception when someone is genuinely looking to improve their way of interaction, as you are. We can all learn from that, myself included.)
Men are also born without an undertanding of how the male body works and the same is true, mutatis mutandis, with women.
> Just placing ur brain in a new body wont magically unlearn all the things you know about the other body.
I mean, absent knowledge of what it takes to make a brain work with a new body, putting it in one is also magic and what other magical (from our perspective) effects do or do not come along with that is... highly speculative. It might be that accessing some of those as anything different than the memories of counterfactual dreams isn’t possible without connections, or biochemical conditions, that don’t exist without intentional intervention in a body configured differently.
> So regardless of the body your brain was put into, you now have both genders because you experienced both sides.
No, gender (either ascribed gender or gender identity) is not inherently tied to “what combination of anatomical and hormonal sex traits have I experienced”. It might be that having this kind of experience affects gender identity, but (even assuming initial gender identity was in one or the other position on the traditional binary, whether or not the side stereotypically associated with gross anatomy of the original body) it doesn't automatically make it encompass both sides of the gender binary. And what it does or doesn't do for ascribed gender is dependent on the viewss of the society in which it occurs, not an outside observer in our society.
> Personally, I am not attracted to men in the slightest regardless of their body now having female features. So while I am not against people swapping genders how they please, it would be a dystopia for me personally in my subjective view, because I wouldn't magically become bisexual.
It would be a dystopia becuase people would be free to engage in one more choice than they are in our current society that, because of your quirky views about the relation of gender to biological history of the individual, would render them sexually uninteresting to you?
That seems more than a little narcissistic.
Of course not. This is a sci fi story so you wouldn’t magically become bisexual you would scientifically become bisexual. The flavor and style of bisexual that you become, however, would be pretty different from and less troublesome than what irks you in the 21st century by the simple fact of a completely different set of societal mores having been in place long before your birth (ie your bisexuality would not be thrust upon you, your bisexuality would be what you were born and grew up with)
although gender and sex is used interchangeably - even in the most progressive circles - gender is a reference to a set of cultural behaviors and roles, a form of expression, while sex is functional and 99.9999% chromosomal and binary in humans
you are familiar with this, for example, when someone says "be a man" in response to someone's lack of assertiveness, this has nothing to do with whether they have a penis and the binary male contributions to reproduction, it is referring to a behavior expression that is indeed arbitrary but shared
swapping genders therefore has nothing to do with what sex you are attracted to, when adopting that paradigm, especially when adding genders outside of the binary cultural behaviors
hence being "straight" doesn't change and is only a problem for someone else
As I understand it, this is because these cultures had deeply sexist ideas about how women and men should behave, so they created additional categories to shovel everyone who didn't conform into. In practice this tended to mean that gay men would be placed in some sort of "non-man" male category. So while sexuality and gender are different things, in practice they end up linked through this mechanism of othering.
A contradiction in terms.
Asimov seems to have been a very modest man...
I picked it up one day with the intent to just read the first paragraph to see what it was about. 3-4 hours letter I had finished the book without realising.
This happened again, twice. Such a good book.
May he rest in peace.
https://varley.net/