Carroll & Graff, 1988. 210p.
Charlie Johns wakes up in a place called Ledom, where the inhabitantsâ clothing is strange and their sex indeterminate. He is introduced to various aspects of Ledom culture, mainly by a historian called Philos, and comes to understand he is in the future, homo sapiens is extinct and the Ledom are hermaphrodites. (Johns muses whether to consider the Ledom as men, Mars plus Y, or women, Venus plus X, hence the bookâs title.) During the explication process much emphasis is placed on the similarities between men and women as opposed to what are the very minor differences between the sexes, many manifestations of which are culturally determined in any case and, moreover, change over time.
The chapters in Ledom are alternated with others set in a human society with very 1950s attitudes to reproduction and gender roles. (Venus Plus X was first published in 1960.) These serve to underline the contrasts Sturgeon is seeking to make with the mores of his time and the unthinking cruelties perpetrated by those attitudes. In one of these a male character says (shockingly,) “Men are born out of the dirtiest part of a woman.” Misogyny and what perhaps gives rise to it have never been so effectively skewered.
Ledom technology, though explained, is almost indistinguishable from magic – for example there is a teaching device, a cerebrostyle, which works almost instantaneously but nevertheless instils the sequence of arguments/antitheses which lead to a conclusion. The history of human religion, the conterpointing of male and female dominated religious strands, its (male) warping to demonise sexual relations is unfolded to Johns in a session under the cerebrostyle. The human pathology of needing someone to look down on is laid out.
The essence of the Ledom is passage â movement, growth, change. In an expression of their philosophy Philos tells Johns, “You donât love, nor gain love, by imprisonment or command, or by treachery and lies.” Their near-idyllic existence is not dominated by their technology, which instead enables them to express themselves creatively and artistically.
Yet, inevitably, not all is what it appears. And the Ledom, while bemoaning humansâ need to feel superior to others, are not immune to it themselves.
Despite its age this is a book that, perhaps depressingly, still has lessons for the world but the manner of its telling has, Iâm afraid, dated. The characters are too often ciphers and its didacticism overwhelms any sense of story telling. The little bit of plot tacked on towards the conclusion feels rather forced.
The necessity for the depiction of a scantily clad female on the cover totally escapes me. That sort of commodification is part of what the novel implicitly argues against.
Overall, though, I’m glad I read it.
