landman@SUN.COM (Howard A. Landman) (03/24/89)
In article <8903230413.AA09051@athos.rutgers.edu> toms@NCIFCRF.GOV (Tom Schneider) writes: > With the Y chromosome changed to X. This is pretty sexist. Half the people in the world have no Y chromosome to change. Anyway, for makeing a female from a male it would be easier to just duplicate the existing X chromosome. >[Would it be considered incest to have sex with yourself in this way, > or merely an elaborate form of masturbation? > --JoSH] Not sure. Ursula LeGuin wrote a story in which a whole caboodle of male and female clone-twins operated as a family unit, which was very efficient due to the near-telepathic communication and understanding they shared. They were, of course, completely sexually self-sufficient, since any reasonably conceivable act could be carried out "in the family". In John Varley's "Lollipop and the Tar Baby", a woman on a multi-decade space prospecting trip clones herself a daughter, and they take care of each other once she's old enough. But categorizing that act takes a back seat to the "genetic copyright" issues - if they ever return to civilization, the daughter would be immediately eliminated. The daughter doesn't know that ... but the "tar baby" does ... Genetic copyright also influences the action in another Varley story. I don't remember the title, but the jacket blurb says something like "being murdered can be a problem; especially after the third time". Howard A. Landman landman@hanami.sun.com [Speaking of Varley stories, in many of them people are able to change sex at will (or at least after a quick run to the neighborhood sexamorphosis-r-us). Nanotech implies this capability pretty straightforwardly, I should think. And this should be the simplest, most obvious of the capabilities along that line we'll see, I suspect. --JoSH]