Halfway Human is Carolyn Ives Gilman's first novel.
Valerie Endrada is a young scientist and scholar from a planet called Capella Two. She meets Tedla when she is called in to the hospital to meet it after an attempted suicide. The book alternates perspectives as Val first listens to Tedla give an oral account of its life story, then reads the field notes of another scientist - Alair Galele - reflecting on his interactions with Tedla.
Tedla is from a planet known to the Capellan scientists as Gammadis. On Gammadis, there are three genders: men, women, and an asexual third gender known as neuters (or blands). Children on Gammadis are born without gender, and live that way until they matriculate at age 14. Matriculation is described as a coming-of-age ritual when undifferentiated young people begin to develop sexual characteristics. Blands are those whose bodies do not change, but remain physically asexual. The society looks down on blands, regarding them as mentally and socially inferior. Treatment of blands ranges from childlike condescension to fear, disgust, and abuse. They are kept physically separated, forced to live in "grayspace" (basically service corridors) and work in menial jobs such as laundry, kitchen, and housekeeping. Blands are also the primary caregivers to children and work in manual labor positions like ranching and mining. Meanwhile, humans (blands are not considered human by anyone on Gammadis, including the blands themselves) live high-minded lives of art, music, culture, or study. Their jobs, for example, might be journalists, researchers, geneticists, healers, or artists.
[Halfway Human] contains examples of:
- Dehumanization: Blands are not considered humans by anyone on Gammadis (neither men, women, nor blands themselves).
- Everybody Wants the Hermaphrodite: Tedla, constantly.
- First Contact: The Capellan legal system requires first contact to be done carefully, because intellectual property is considered the universe's most valuable commodity. Scientists work for infocompanies that monetize their research.
- First Contact Team: Capella Two sends one to Gammadis with the dual purpose of academic study and the preservation of valuable proprietary information.
- No Biological Sex: All children are born undifferentiated. Adults who do not develop sexual characteristics (including genitalia) are known as neuters or blands.
- No Blood Ties: Women are paid to have babies, which are then raised in nurseries. The justification for this is speculated on by the First Contact Team, and they suggest that it could be so that no one will ever find out that they are related to a bland.
- Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: WAC and Epco, the infocompanies on Capella 2, spend most of the novel at odds with each other over what to do with Tedla.
- Parents as People: Val and Max are a great example. They are occasionally stressed out, broke, tired, etc. But they love their kid.Val: She's a little fiend.Tedla: You don't like her, then?Val: Don't be silly, Tedla. Of course I like her.Tedla: But... fiend means something horrible.Val: I just know her, Tedla. Children are nasty little brutes, you know. And we love them anyway.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Gossup is this. He may be subject to the infocompanies, but they seem to defer to his judgement pretty often.
- Trauma Conga Line: Tedla's life after becoming a bland is the definition of this trope. It's forced into slavery, dehumanized, repeatedly raped, and is unable to stop it's lover from commiting suicide. Even after leaving Gammadis and gaining "freedom", Tedla ends up poor and living in a slum, eventually becoming a depressed, drug-abusing prostitute.
- Urban Segregation: The blands live and work in service corridors called "grayspace". Nearly every room in the city has a "graydoor" that allow them to access human space for cleaning and other chores.
