"It took anything up to a year to alter yourself from a female to a male, or vice-versa. The process..."
It took anything up to a year to alter yourself from a female to a male, or vice-versa. The process was painless and set in action simply by thinking about it; you went into a sort of trance-like state. If you looked in the right place in your mind, there was an image of yourself as you were now. A little thought would make the image change from your present gender to the opposite sex. You came out of the trance, and that was it. Your body would already be starting to change, glands sending out the relevant vital and hormonal signals which would start the gradual process of conversion.
Within a year a woman who had been capable of carrying a child–who, indeed, might have been a mother–would be a man fully capable of fathering a child. Most people in the Culture changed sex at some point in their lives, though not all had children while they were female. Generally people eventually changed back to their congenital sex, but not always, and some people cycled back and forth between male and female all their lives, while some settled for an androgynous in-between state, finding there a comfortable equanimity.
”-
Excession, by Ian M. Banks.
I’m fascinated by this idea and absolutely want it to exist. That not being the case, I am more than ready and able to bring it about in my writing. The prize of these books by Ian M. Banks, I’ve heard, is the incredible forward thinking ideas he doesn’t shy away from in his sci-fi and, instead, puts forth.
