Ik denk dat dit de roman van Theodorus van 1960 is, Venus Plus X.
van het item Wikipedia :
Charlie Johns has been snatched from his home on 61 North 34th Street and delivered to the strange future world of Ledom. Here, violence is a vague and improbable notion. Technology has triumphed over hunger, overpopulation, pollution, even time and space. But there is a change Charlie finds even more shocking: gender is a thing of the past. Venus Plus X is Theodore Sturgeon's brilliant evocation of a civilization for whom tensions between male and female and the human preoccupation with sex no longer exist.
As Charlie Johns explores Ledom and its people, he finds that the human precepts he holds dear are profane in this new world. But has Charlie learned all there is to know about this advanced society? And why are the Ledom so intent on gaining Charlie's approval? Unsettling, compelling, and no less than visionary, here is science fiction at its boldest: a novel whose wisdom and lyricism make it one of the most original and insightful speculations on gender ever produced.
Dit is de meest beschrijvende scène:
The room was now
totally dark, and the charts blazed with light In full color, they
were the front and side views of a Ledom, clad only in the silky
sporran which began perhaps an inch under the navel and fell, widening
from perhaps a palm’s breadth at the top, to its lower edge, which was
roughly three inches above mid-thigh, and which extended from die
front of one leg to the front of the other. Charlie had seen them,
already, longer and shorter than this, and also red, green, blue,
purple and snowy white, but he had yet to see the Ledom who went
without one. It was obviously a tight taboo, and he did not
comment.
“We shall dissect,” said Mielwis,
and by means unperceived by Charlie Johns, he caused the chart to
change: blip! And the sporran, as well as the superficial skin under
it, were gone, exposing the fascia and some of the muscle fibres of
the abdominal wall. With a long black pointer he magically produced,
he indicated the organs and functions he described. The tip of the
pointer was a needle, a circle, an arrow and a sort of
half-parenthesis at his will, and his language was concise and
ultimately geared to Charlie’s questions.
The anatomical details were
fascinating, as such things so often are, and for the usual reason
which overwhelms anyone with the vestiges of a sense of wonder: the
ingenuity, the invention, the efficient complexity of a living
thing.
First of all, the Ledom clearly
possessed both sexes, in an active form. First of all, the
intromittent organ was rooted far back in what might be called, in
homo sap., the vaginal fossa. The base of the organ had, on each side
of it, an os uteri, opening to the two cervixes, for the Ledom had two
uteri and always gave birth to fraternal twins. On erection the
phallus descended and emerged; when flaccid it was completely
enclosed, and it, in turn, contained the urethra. Coupling was
mutual—indeed, it would be virtually impossible any other way. The
testicles were neither internal nor external, but superficial, lying
in the groin just under the skin. And throughout, there was the most
marvelous reorganization of the nervous plexi, at least two new sets
of sphincter muscles, and an elaborate redistribution of such
functions as those of Bartholin’s and Cowper’s glands.
When he was quite, quite satisfied that he had
the answers, and when he could think of no more, and when Mielwis had
exhausted his own promptings, Mielwis flicked the two charts with the
back of his hand and they slid up and disappeared into their slots,
while the lights came up.
Charlie sat
quietly for a moment. He had a vision of Laura—of all women … of all
men. Biology, he remembered irrelevantly; they used to use the
astronomical symbols for Mars and Venus for male and female… . What in
hell would they use for these? Mars plus y? Venus plus x? Saturn
turned upside down? Then he heeled his eyes and looked up at Mielwis,
blinking. “How in the name of all that’s holy did humanity get that
churned up?”
Charlie laat in het boek te laat weten dat de Ledom het product was van chirurgische transplantatie in plaats van mutatie:
“What changed you, Charlie Johns? You thought very well of us a few hours ago. What changed you?”
“Only the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That there is no mutation.”
“Our doing it ourselves makes that much difference? Why is what we have done worse to you than a genetic accident?”
“Just because you do it.” Charlie heaved a deep breath, and almost spit as he said, “Philos told me how old a people you are. Why is what you do evil? Men marrying men. Incest, perversion, there isn’t anything rotten you don’t do.”
“Do you think,” said Mielwis courteously, “that your attitude is unusual, or would be if the bulk of mankind had your information?”
“About a hundred and two percent unanimous,” Charlie growled.
“Yet a mutation would have made us innocent.”
“A mutation would have been natural. Can you say that about yourself?”