Cyteen is the capital of Union, a interstellar society based on human cloning, genetic engineering and technologies in psychology that verge onto mind control. Cherryh set in the Alliance/Union universe. Hang in there: it gets much better.Cyteen is a 1988 science fiction novel by C. I love a good love story between two intelligent, complicated people, and in Cyteen both of these people just happen to be male.ĮTA, FYI: The first chapter of Cyteen is notoriously difficult to get through. But the central relationship between Justin and Grant is complex, multilayered, and in many places acts as the emotional anchor of the book. Their orientation doesn't drive the plot, per se - in a far-future society where sex, marriage, and reproduction have all been pretty conclusively separated, gay relationships aren't blinked at. It is both brain-expanding and, thanks to its strong and well-drawn cast of characters, heart-wrenching.īut what does all of this have to do with LGBTQ month, you're asking? Simply this: Justin and Grant are gay (as are some secondary characters).

Grant ALX Warrick, Justin's foster brother and later lover, is a first-class mind but a second-class citizen, a genetically and psychologically engineered human being who wrestles with the limits of his social status.Ĭyteen's complex plot deals with some huge ideas, principally identity and the construction of identity, but also and subtly intelligence, the ethics of power, nature versus nurture - nor does the novel shy away from the uglier implications of its constructed world. Justin Warrick, her young protégé-slash-enemy, has to fight for space and safety for himself, his family, and his work. Ariane Emory, ruthless, brilliant, and driven, heads the research city Reseune, and sets the plot in motion with her political and professional machinations. The main characters are all scientists, psychologists in a world where psychology is an experimental science. Cyteen is not always a friendly place its politics have a totalitarian strain, and its society is being actively engineered, with the free use of cloning, genetic engineering, and - getting to the heart of the book - psychological engineering. One of my all-time favorite SF novels, Cyteen was originally published in three volumes (subtitled, in order, Betrayal, Rebirth, and Vindication) due to its length, but is now available as a single book ( here, at Amazon).Ĭyteen is named after the planet where it's set, a world still undergoing slow terraforming, the head of a union of human colonies which have recently fought a bitter war for independence from Earth.

Cytern