(Hi, found this link hopping from various places) Have you read John Varley's Gaea trilogy (Titan, Wizard, Demon)? It involves a NASA expedition to Saturn which discovers that there's an extra satellite orbiting Saturn, which turns out to be a living organism shaped like a hollow ring, with spokes leading to the hub. It is basically a goddess to many other organisms living inside of her. There's an awesome video that was made recently showing some of the landscape of Gaea.
Gaea is thousands of years old, close to the end of her life cycle, and more than a little insane. She picked up Earth TV signals and decided to create (in addition to other species already in existence) a sentient species called Titanides, centaur like beings with three sets of sexual organs: front female or male which determine their gender, middle male and rear female.
All Titanides can bear children, and all can breastfeed. The number of individuals involved in producing offspring can vary between one and four. They speak in song, and give their children music based names which follow the pattern of Musical instrument (Manner of conception) Chord, which corresponds to human clan or family name and is typically a musical form or genre (e.g. Valiha (Aeolian Solo) Madrigal, Phase Shifter (Double-Sharped Lydian Trio) Rock'n'Roll). They are in communication with their hindmother during gestation, who thinks about various instruments until the child chooses the one to bear as the name; the hindmother then makes it and presents it as a gift to the child. The children can walk and talk within hours of being born, and one child was born with knowledge of English, transferred to him by his mother. In later books one of te human characters is essential for Titanide reproduction, and without her Titanides would die out as a species.
There's a good explanation of Titanide reproduction practices and family groups on Wikipedia; I'm afraid I get too tangled up when I try to explain it! Hindsex is casual and indulged in by all Titanides (and some human settlers - there are hybrids, some of who look... interesting, to say the least), but frontalsex carries a great deal of emotional baggage. I wish I could find a scan of the diagrams Varley included explaining the reproduction modes!
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Gaea is thousands of years old, close to the end of her life cycle, and more than a little insane. She picked up Earth TV signals and decided to create (in addition to other species already in existence) a sentient species called Titanides, centaur like beings with three sets of sexual organs: front female or male which determine their gender, middle male and rear female.
All Titanides can bear children, and all can breastfeed. The number of individuals involved in producing offspring can vary between one and four. They speak in song, and give their children music based names which follow the pattern of Musical instrument (Manner of conception) Chord, which corresponds to human clan or family name and is typically a musical form or genre (e.g. Valiha (Aeolian Solo) Madrigal, Phase Shifter (Double-Sharped Lydian Trio) Rock'n'Roll). They are in communication with their hindmother during gestation, who thinks about various instruments until the child chooses the one to bear as the name; the hindmother then makes it and presents it as a gift to the child. The children can walk and talk within hours of being born, and one child was born with knowledge of English, transferred to him by his mother. In later books one of te human characters is essential for Titanide reproduction, and without her Titanides would die out as a species.
There's a good explanation of Titanide reproduction practices and family groups on Wikipedia; I'm afraid I get too tangled up when I try to explain it! Hindsex is casual and indulged in by all Titanides (and some human settlers - there are hybrids, some of who look... interesting, to say the least), but frontalsex carries a great deal of emotional baggage. I wish I could find a scan of the diagrams Varley included explaining the reproduction modes!