Pregnancy in science fiction
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Numerous science fiction, utopian and dystopian novels revolve around sexual reproduction, pregnancy and infertility. Some examples:
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915) (parthenogenesis in an all-female society)
- Karel Čapek: R.U.R. (1921) (universal infertility, invented the word robot, hint at sex between robots)
- Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932) (all children produced in artificial wombs and engineered for specific social niches)
- John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) (human women simultaneously impregnated with identical alien children)
- Philip José Farmer: The Lovers (short story) (1961) (reportedly the first alien/human sex relationship in Sci-Fi literature)
- Anthony Burgess: The Wanting Seed (1962)
- Brian Aldiss: Greybeard (1964) (universal infertility)
- Frank Herbert's Dune series (1965) (Bene Gesserit sisterhood has intense breeding program lasting thousands of years)
- Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) (planet inhabited by androgynes, biologically bisexual humans; who can both sire and bear children)
- Naomi Mitchison: Solution Three (1975) (utopia via mandatory homosexuality, reproduction via surrogate mothers carrying cloned children)
- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle: The Mote in God's Eye (1975) (alien race that has to continuously breed and the consequences of its resulting overpopulation crisis)
- Marge Piercy: Woman on the Edge of Time (1976) (fetuses raised externally in breeders rather than in the female womb)
- Frank Herbert's The_White_Plague (1982) (grieving scientist creats a plague that targets women only)
- Shelley Singer Demeter's Flower (1982) (a post-apocalyptic utopian novel. Society of women impregnated by eating a certain flower.)
- Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
- Geoff Ryman: The Warrior Who Carried Life 1985 (widespread infertility in a theocratic United States)
- Lois McMaster Bujold: Ethan of Athos (1986) (all-male society, reproduction via artificial wombs)
- Octavia Butler: Xenogenesis trilogy (1987,1988, 1989) (alien and human females impregnated by alien intermediary-sex individuals with the DNA of males, in "fivesomes")
- David Brin: Glory Season (1994) (mixture of parthenogenesis and sexual reproduction in a mainly female society)
- P.D. James: The Children of Men (1992) (universal infertility)
- Nancy Kress: Maximum Light (1997) (widespread infertility due to environmental pollution, hybrid human/chimpanzees used as surrogate children)
- Alejandro Jodorowsky: Metabarons (1992-2003) series (Aghora, a transman who still has his ovaries intact, impregnates himself with a clone taken from the biologically male DNA of his brain)
- Padme Amidala: Star Wars Episode III
Among themes regularly encountered in science fiction are inter-species reproduction (see Star Trek), artificial wombs, and male pregnancy.
