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32nd out of 121 books
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23 voters
My rating:
add to my books
Venus Plus X
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 Sturge...more
Paperback, 224 pages
Published
October 5th 1999
by Vintage
(first published 1960)
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Badly dated lecture disguised as a novel about possible sexual evolution. Charlie Johns is caught by a time machine and brought to the world of the Ledom, hermaphroditic beings living in a world of bliss. They escort him around their world, showing him its various aspects, explaining that later they will "want his opinion." The better parts take place in or around the 1960 publication date of the novel, where Sturgeon has fun showing us the lives of husbands and wives who just might be...more
A really great book, if a little obvious in its explanations, until the twist at the end. It wasn't like a murder mystery twist, and I respected the sentiment, but it ended up a little black and white, and showed Sturgeon's own homo sapien type bias that he projected on his fictional Ledom characters. It ended up saying more about us in the end than he intended...and it intended quite a lot.
But the idea of single gendered humans is still a great place to start talking about gender and...more
But the idea of single gendered humans is still a great place to start talking about gender and...more
I honestly don’t know how I feel about Sturgeon’s novel. I’ve been trying to think of it in context. In 1960, the sexual revolution hadn’t happened yet. Science fiction novels were often still boring boys adventure fantasies. And the complex unraveling of sex and gender in sf that came with the New Wave and Ursula K. LeGuin’s masterpiece "The Left Hand of Darkness" was still a few years away. So I applaud Sturgeon for his adventurous storytelling relative to the time. I also found the ...more
Returned to the library 3/4 read (well, digital copy expired. Kind of like repossession). Consciousness raising novel re gender roles, also re advanced science and it's uses to make life better. Told in the voice of a 60s? era renaissance working class man, who's been kidnapped by aliens/time travelers/mad scientists, so now he decides his current girlfriend should really have been his true love/baby mama. Plus interludes in the life of a suburban couple raising their children in a crazy gen...more
Brilliant! Amazing that something written in the 1950s could have such clarity about sex/gender in the context of an engaging story. I thought it would be good, as I found the title in Seattle's Experience Music Project/Science Fiction museum and Sturgeon's daughter was one of my Master's thesis committee members in college, but it surpassed all expectation. Highly recommended for fans of mind-bending science fiction, and those willing to be challenged out of their comfort zone a bit.
Perry Whitford
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Perry by:
Sci-fi golden age completists only.
Time travel morality tale, drawing attention to 1950s gender mores through contrasting a contemporary "everyman" character, Charlie Johns, with a future post-human species, the Ledoms, with a seemingly Utopian society.
Charlie's future shock story is juxtaposed alongside a series of vignettes into gender and sexual attitudes just before the sexual revolution of the swinging 60s, and its these scenes that intrigued, appalled and even at times befuddled me a bit, reading them ...more
Charlie's future shock story is juxtaposed alongside a series of vignettes into gender and sexual attitudes just before the sexual revolution of the swinging 60s, and its these scenes that intrigued, appalled and even at times befuddled me a bit, reading them ...more
Sturgeon is a skilled writer and he has lots of interesting ideas. The problem with this book is its lack of plot. Nothing really happens until the last 40 pages or so. We just get a description of Ledom and some musings on gender issues. It would have been better if he actually put together a story around them.
More like a 3.5.
Really, the majority of my low rating, besides the fact that the book is pretty much Golden Age SF and reads like it, comes from the fact that I had issues with the denouement (not the climax or ending, just the very end). To avoid spoilers, I'll have to leave it at that.
Really, the majority of my low rating, besides the fact that the book is pretty much Golden Age SF and reads like it, comes from the fact that I had issues with the denouement (not the climax or ending, just the very end). To avoid spoilers, I'll have to leave it at that.
Amblingbooks.com
marked it as to-read
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
available-on-audio,
science-fiction
"One of the masters of modern science fiction."-Washington Post Book World
Listen to Venus Plus X on your smartphone.
Listen to Venus Plus X on your smartphone.
brilliant book in it's day. probably a bit dated now.
What is this book about?
Hmm...where to begin? Its about a man called Charlie Johns... or is it? Its about a journey through time... or is it? Its about a race of hermaphrodites... or is it? Its a tale about learning who you are... or is it? And finally... its a tale of love... or is it?
Read it and decide for yourself... just remember that the author is the weird and amazing... Theodore Sturgeon!
'Nuff said! I liked it, but it was difficult to read at times, mos...more
Hmm...where to begin? Its about a man called Charlie Johns... or is it? Its about a journey through time... or is it? Its about a race of hermaphrodites... or is it? Its a tale about learning who you are... or is it? And finally... its a tale of love... or is it?
Read it and decide for yourself... just remember that the author is the weird and amazing... Theodore Sturgeon!
'Nuff said! I liked it, but it was difficult to read at times, mos...more
I almost put this down in the beginning. It took me until well over half the novel before I really got into it. It seemed kinda rushed at the end (probably becuase it took so long to start), but I did like the way it was wrapped up. If any potential readers liked The Village by M. Night Shyamalan, then hold out until the end; its the coolest thing about the novel. Overall I liked it, probably wouldnt read it again, but I would check out more stuff by Sturgeon.
more of a treatise on the sexes, (preceding the sexual revolution), and definitely of its time. but a quite enjoyable read, and a showcase for the author's vast imagination.
While I'm sure it was ground-breaking when it was published, I personally don't feel it's stood the test of time. About halfway through I began skimming the chapters, more to get a sense of what the final 'twist' would be, than to really follow the plot. A few late chapters detailing the nature of the hermaphrodite race caught my attention, and are probably the only reason I would recommend picking this one up.
So far this is my least favorite Sturgeon book. I don't like the way it alternates every chapter, between the main story and what is, I guess you could say, an illustration of the point the author was trying to make. Moralizing was a bit in my face, which I prefer to be more subtle.
Better as a thought exercise than as a novel. The exploration of ideas related to gender identity, gender roles and enculturation was interesting but... well, it was published in 1960 and you can kind of tell in the dialog, unspoken biases, etc.
Very 1960. Reasonable exploration of gender and duality, especially for the time period. Not up to the snuff I expect from Sturgeon. Paled in comparison to Left Hand of Darkness, but then so does most gender-related SF.
Interesting book...but I saw the "surprise" ending coming from a mile away. I think I must agree with the main character (Charlie Johns) take on the Ledom at the end of the book when...OK I won't spoil it
A man gets accidentally frozen and awakens in a utopia in which humanity has evolved beyond gender, but is everything what it appears to be?
My least favorite Sturgeon novel.
Not much to recommend beyond the solid prose.
Not much to recommend beyond the solid prose.
Read it again on 10 Apr 2001
Erika Chow
marked it as to-read
Karen
marked it as to-read
Jasmine
is currently reading it
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Theodore Sturgeon was an American science fiction author. He was born Edward Hamilton Waldo in Staten Island, New York; in 1929, after a divorce, his mother married William Sturgeon, and Edward changed his name to Theodore the better to match his nickname, "Ted".
Sturgeon died on May 8, 1985, of lung fibrosis, in Eugene, Oregon. Sturgeon lived for several years in the neighbor...more
More about Theodore Sturgeon...
Sturgeon died on May 8, 1985, of lung fibrosis, in Eugene, Oregon. Sturgeon lived for several years in the neighbor...more
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