Children of Arable — David Belden

No dysfunctional families here ? no families. No gender wars here ? no gender. In a galactic civilization so scared of emotion it has abolished gender and families, a young person decides to give birth. And so does the person's lover. But only one of them can do it. Only one of them is female. The Collectivity was an Eden without knowledge of man and woman; she reached for that knowledge and destroyed its peace forever. He tells the story of how she challenged their world, and left him behind. The Birthing Circle would have remained a cozy elite fad but for Martin. Born on a green world and transferred to a metalbound city planet, Martin is catapulted from her home farm into a space opera of holie ghosts, pirates, buttoned-down followers of the Space Code, anarchists, sexless wraiths whose telekinetic powers zap spaceships across the galaxy, spherical aliens and MAN, the virtual guru who keeps everyone under control. She sets out to remake the whole galaxy, to bring back love and freedom. Jomo, the humble soy processor who loves her, sees her astonishing transformation into a revolutionary. Gendering is a trilogy of big ideas about gender and God, revolution and religion. Formerly published in 1987, Children of Arable is fully revised for this new edition as the first of the Gendering series.