I've been a fan of Poul Anderson's writing ever since I discovered his lyrical writing and very human characters in the Time Patrol series many years ago. When I discovered that Baen books had re-released this novel I was keen to read and review if for you after enjoying the sample chapters I wasn't able, however, to get a copy to review. Because I am very poor, this review had to wait until I could find a cheap, secondhand edition, and so I am basing this review on the Warner Paperback Library 1970 edition, which I managed to purchase for the bargain price of sixty cents US from a bookshop in Melbourne, Australia.

Virgin Planet is the story of Corporal Maiden Barbara Whitley of Freetoon, wing leader, hereditary huntress, and novice in the mysteries; a soldier amazon from a primitive planet. Atlantis is a world with a difference, settled by accident hundreds of years before by a ship with an all female crew. All the people there are women, reproducing by cloning technology which is jealously guarded by the powerful Doctors caste.

Onto this world stumbles Davis Bertram, a playboy explorer in a one man ship, looking for fame, fortune, and adventure among the stars. Predictably, mayhem follows in the classic Anderson style for the next 159 pages.

You need to remember that this is very old science fiction. Virgin Planet was originally written in 1959. The Warner edition was published at the height of the psychedelic sixties, and has a cover featuring a pink, green, and blue ostrich with a well tanned woman wearing a tight bikini top and a strategically airbrushed in shadow between her legs.

In 1959 Second Wave Feminism was in its infancy and political correctness was unheard of. The Feminist Chronicles list the most significant events of that year as the patenting of the pill and the introduction of the Barbie doll. In this context it was possible for Anderson to have his characters think “Some day the Men will come to claim us” with only the lightest possible dripping of irony.

I enjoyed this book. It was funny and a bit of a giggle, even if this kind of sexual humor - one man on a planet of women who all regard him as a freak and a monster rather than the buff pulp magazine hero - is a about as subtle as an iguanadon by modern standards. Once Anderson gets all of that stuff out of the way, however, there is a decent little historical or Military SF adventure lurking underneath. Also, this is one of the very few SF books to mention lesbian relationships, which are the dominant form of romance on Atlantis. Even many of the later writers of the Sexual Revolution preferred to push lesbians off the map as far as possible, but Anderson is too honest and logical to do that.

All the women on Atlantis have lesbian relationships or none at all, it's as simple as that, and the political implications of this are treated in a light, humorous vein. According to Anderson's thesis, biology is destiny; some of the clone women are destined to fall in love with other clone women, and their roles and tendencies are fixed and known from birth.

Perhaps it's a tribute to his skill that this can be handled lightly rather than becoming a major source of angst for his characters, or hopefully, the reader.

Later on the characters visit other parts of the planet where the villages are even more genetically restricted and only a few genetic individuals populate entire towns.

Virgin Planet is a light-hearted space adventure on a strange world. Its sexual politics are definitely twisted, but always logical, and it is full of Poul Anderson's trademark wry humor. Recommended if you like stories about space, men, women, lesbianism, and colorful ostriches.

The Baen edition also includes the story Star Ways, but I have not read this.

I liked this, what else is there that I can read?

If you like these you could also try the works of Harry Turtledove, or Poul Anderson. I recommend Anderson's Time Patrol series and The Boat of a Million Years.

David Brin's young adult adventure Glory Season is also worth a read, and also features a lone male visitor to a planet dominated by female clones.

Is there anything like this in Wyvern's Library?

Well... Nobody immediately springs to mind.

Know anyone else writing epic lesbian space opera I should have mentioned?
Please email me.

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Author: Poul Anderson