Children of Arable

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Synopsis

After 20 years of pleasant, egalitarian, genderless civilization on the thousand plus planets of the Collectivity where babies are made only in baby labs, nine people decide to make their own babies in their own bodies. Eight can. One can not. So the concepts "woman" and "man" regain flesh. Only "woman" can. And so men had to start controlling women all over again, didn't they? The birthing circle would have remained a cozy elite fad but for Martin. Born on a green world, transferred to a metalbound city planet, she wanted to bring love and freedom to the whole galaxy. Jomo, the humble soy processor, who loved her, saw her astonishing transformation into a revolutionary. This is his story about her, told to their grandchildren. Martin is catapulted from her home farm into a galactic web of holie ghosts, pirates, buttoned-down followers of the Space Code, anarchists, sexless wraiths whose telekinetic powers spin the spaceships across the galaxy, spherical aliens and MAN, the virtual guru who keeps everyone under control. Gendering is a trilogy of stories about gender and God, revolution and religion. First published in 1987, Children of Arable is fully revised for this new edition as the first of the Gendering series.