Humans develop interstellar spaceflight--sing whatever FTL mechanism you like--(wormholes, warp drive, hyperspace, I don't care) and begin colonizing other planets (after whatever degree of terraforming required to make them habitable).

So one early colony effort sends out its terraforming probe, and then follows up (some years later) with a scouting mission that reports all is on schedule, and finally sets out with few thousands of hopeful colonists (and assorted supplies).

Disasterously, the planet is home to a bizzarely anomalous magnetic phenomenon (or there is a rogue asteriod belt intersecting the planet's orbit, gravitational singularity in orbit around the planet, enigmatic energy sucking parasites in the upper ionosphere, or whatever) that disables the colony ship at an extremely inopportune moment (either when they try for low orbit or as they go for reentry [or is that the correct term still when you enter an atmosphere for the first time?] or try some other colonizing type maneuver). Long story short, the entire ship, everyone aboard, and everything they have with them, is about to be destroyed (entering atmosphere at wrong angle with no systems working, unavoidable collision with asteriod/singularity/leftover alien minefield , imminent catastrophic reactor malfunction, doesn't matter, they're in big trouble).

Of course, since this is totally unforseen, and there's no way to save everything, so the crew makes a heroic, but tragically flawed decision. Women and children first...and since all of the colonists are young couples, that basically comes down to ladies only (maybe the guys were planning to come later, but they didn't make it in time, maybe by the time they eject, the radiation/debris/alien sucker sharks from the black hole/nuclear blast/collision/explosion/alien sucker sharks get them all).

End result, several hundred women in emergency jettison pods (or better yet, in makeshift adaptations of reserve terraforming torpedoes or whatnot) survive this harrowing experience out of the several thousand colonists. They have emergency medical supplies, a few days rations, and precious little else.

Astonishingly, not all is bad news. All our colonists are young, bright, determined women of the highest caliber. Several are medical students with at least some experience. One is even a real OB-GYN (there were several of those in the initial mission, since one of the original concerns was getting half the population pregnant as soon as possible) who develops a method of combining two eggs to get a viable zygote (the surviving colonists have, for the most part, not given up on the idea of having children despite their setbacks). They need this, since in the panic, not only all the men but all the genetic samples containing a Y chromesome got left behind.

Unfortunately, one bit of Good news remains strangely absent. Either as a result of the catastrophe altering the planet's EM signature, shoddy recordkeeping, lack of concern, interstellar war, FTL routes to that system being closed by natural or artificial means, or all of the above, no one ever checks up on the colony, and no rescue ship is ever sent.

For over a hundred years the women of New Eden (or perhaps they decide to rename the planet Desolation in view of events) scrape a living out of the half terraformed land, set up a social hierarchy, have children, safeguard the medical equipment that makes pregnancy possible for an all female population, tell stories about the bravery of the men they loved (and no doubt a few stories about how pigheaded men can be when they get all noble), speculate on eventual rescue, secure a better standard of living through agriculture, articulate an increasingly complex social hierarchy, have another generation of children, continue to guard the medical regalia of the Obegayen, tell myths about men (whom only the eldest women have ever seen), look forward to the day of rescue--when a ship full of men will come to take them all to a land of miracles, set up a absolute monarch in the person of the Obegayen, who controls all births, balanced by the religious authority of the Gennesine Sisterhood, who promise eventual salvation to the righteous and pure, when the men of the bright star Salvation will come to take away all grief and pain, and give them the gifts of husbanding and natural childbirth, after teaching them the mysteries of pure love made flesh (and so on).

And, after many generations, a young graduate student looking for her doctorate in Social Anthropology stumbles across the records of the lost colony of New Eden. Researching the subject tirelessly, she finally develops enough information to receive a grant that will allow her to hire a small starship and trace the probable route of the lost colony, and perhaps even find the colony itself, and learn its fate.

Her hired ship's crew consists of one pilot and one engineer, both women. She takes along an ex-marine with planetside survival experience, just in case she ever finds New Eden. To insure that things get complecated, he is a man.

Do I really need to say that our intrepid Grad student finds the planet? Or that the heroic efforts of the pilot and engineer save the stalwart little craft they crew from destruction by the same phenomenon that stranded the colonists? Or that the skills of the wily veteran enable them to survive after they crashland on the planet below?

And tell me again why we should be worried if someone has done an idea before? The chance of any story being JUST LIKE another is slim, and even if it is, if it stands on its own merits, who cares?

JP

I never read Virgin Planet, but...

I deliberately tried for a 'twist' on the idea of that story as it was described to me, i.e....

Our male character, an interesting person in his own right, is put in a situation where he is expected (by the women of New Eden) to step into the role of a near godlike savior. I like the fact that KDW brought up Ethan of Athos (very worth reading, by the way) in which the Athosians have a theology that implies that women (whom no Athosian has ever seen) are these demonic creatures that enslave men and turn them instantly into depraved sinners and all. Then, in a crisis, one poor soul has to go out into the larger, 'female dominated' world to save his planet. Great fun all around.

My main reason for choosing to tell the inverse story on a planet of women is technological...women could much more easily maintain reproduction in the abscence of men than men could in the abscence of women (the Athosians use a technology referred to as a uterine replicator, a kind of artificial womb), and also, men have both X and Y chromesomes, so a planet of men that wanted women could just clone them from their own DNA, whereas women do not have a Y chromesome, so they wouldn't be able to clone a man.

But the real point is that this is a regular guy (or not so regular, as the case may be...why, after all, is he an ex marine ) being asked to take on a truely bizzare savior role...

But another point is present as well...

Just because the initial story idea is very similar to PA or LMB, that doesn't mean the outcome is going to be the same. For instance, in Ethan of Athos, Ethan remains committed to his religious beliefs (and acculturated sexuality) even after allying himself with an attractive, intelligent, capable woman in order to save Athos. But you could tell an entirely different story in which Ethan throws off his dogmatic beliefs and saves his planet, but chooses to 'lose his soul'. Even better, you could have him resisting temptation, but the struggle to hate women turns him into a monster, and he becomes the villian (I don't think that LMB would have written it that way, but Victor Hugo might have). Or he returns to Athos, but with the seeds of doubt that will ultimately lead him to fundamentally change his world (in fact, this is very close to what happens, but not in the manner we've been discussing).

I apologize for not having read PA's take, since I should have balanced my list of potential variations on LMB with a few potential variations on PA. But the point should be clear. Even with plot device already used by someone else, your character has nearly infinite freedom in how to react to that situation. Not every person would react the same way, and not every reader would empathize with some possible reactions.

Survivor, have you considered making your story into a comedy? Suppose the women of New Eden have never seen a man before. All their knowledge about men comes from two sources: legends about how the men on the spaceship sacrificed themselves, and two old DVDs (perhaps The Perfect Storm and The Right Stuff) in which the men are very brave and heroic (choose movies with no male villains).

In the minds of the New Eden colonists, all men are epic heroes. As the story opens, they get a radio message from an Earth ship that is about to enter their starsystem. The colonists misunderstand the garbled message. They know there are men aboard the ship, and they hear words like "help" and "rescue", so they think the heroic men have finally come to save them.

In reality the message was a mayday. As the women prepare to welcome their saviors, the ship is experiencing the same system failures that marooned the colonists.

A few weeks go by. During that time, anticipation builds as the colonists make preparations to meet the men of the "rescue ship."

Then in a ball of fire the ship crashlands on New Eden. A few days later the colonists find the men (3 to 5 would be enough), and soon discover that they are a bunch of bald, overweight, helpless wimps. The men are afraid to eat the fruit from the trees, and they run in terror from the fuzzy little animals scurrying around New Eden. To heighten the tension, you might even make the bravest man in the group a lonesome homosexual.

The wimpy men come as a cultural shock to the colonists. What will happen next? There are lots of possibilities for misadventures. For example:

Being a single sex society, public nudity is common on New Eden. How will the men react to a planet full of naked women?

As the supposed "rescue ship" approaches, the New Eden colonists prepare an elaborate welcoming ceremony. The ceremony will allow all the women of New Eden to have their first glimpse of a man at the same time. Fifty thousand colonists will gather in a huge auditorium (stadium?). Then men will be brought onto a stage, each in a spotlight, and in a solomn ritual their genitals will be revealed to everyone.

To the colonists the welcome ceremony seems logical, even reverent. When the men learn of these plans, how will they react?

This could be a very funny story . . .

Oh, right...

:

I hadn't even thought of taking it in quite that direction...party because it wouldn't be very plausible (even on Earth, clothing is a survival issue for many primitive cultures, and "New Eden" isn't completely terraformed [I don't even know how much of an ozone layet it has], so I didn't really think of going "native" in that sense).

Mostly, though, I didn't because I think that it's much more interesting to have the characters try to deal with an inherently ludicross situation seriously. It takes more effort to raise the stakes, but having raised them, your audience is more likely to care about the story you tell.

I think that 'tis (I think I mentioned my feelings about this somewhere else) more effective if the man is really quite close to the ideal that the women of New Eden have created. He's physically strong and healthy, he's brave and resourceful, he actually has access to a semi-working spacecraft and enough technology to dramatically improve the lives of the colonists, he's not even homosexual (I just put that in as one possible plot twist).

But what should he do? Does he go for the gusto, try to set himself up as the godking of a religious cult venerating him as the promised icon of natural fertility? There are huge problems to be surmounted. He's dependent for his understanding of the New Eden culture on the Anthropologist, he needs the cooperation of the Engineer to keep the technology working, and he needs to Pilot to fly the ship (just to make sure that he can't learn to fly it himself, the ship uses a neuro-synaptic interface). Will they cooperate with his bid for the throne?

And what of the Obegayen? Will she cheerfully give up power? She has near absolute power because she controls access to reproduction, no child is concieved without the medical technology she controls. Surely it would occur to her that if something were to happen to the only man (he need not even die, just lose the ability to have children ) then her power would be reaffirmed and she would continue in office.

Then there's the secret cult that disobeys the restrictions on sex acts (I don't imagine that everyone would be secretly having sex, but surely not everyone is going to have waited for a mythical creature to show up before getting some). Would they embrace the arrival of man, or reject him (there's only one of him, after all, and they might like their current arrangements).

Finally, the Gennesine are going to have their own expectations. Some of them might be willing to cynically exploit his arrival to challenge the power of the Obegayen, but likely many will be true believers. Their expectations would be like a minefield far more dangerous than the intrigues of the crown or the cultists.

What it it's not even his idea to go for it? He's always been shy in his personal sexual life, he has a fiancee (which is why he's taking safe, low risk jobs like escorting a grad student on a research grant), he's homosexual (again), he's actually suffering from PTS-syndrome induced impotence (this really does happen) or something.

Even excluding the idea that he wants to, there are still plenty of people that are pushing for him to play the role, the Gennesines, for one (and it's the majority religion, even among those that belong to the secret cult). What if they need to build a launch cradle in order to repair and launch the spacecraft? What if it turns out that there's a valuable resource controlled by the New Edenites (say, an animal--oerhaps indigenous, perhaps a mutation in the terraforming sequence--that has some amazing property but exists no where else)? Then one or more of the women he came there with has a motive to set him up in business, his personal qualms notwithstanding (the fiancee idea works double duty here, he wants to get back before being declared missing, presumed dead, but he doesn't want to sleep with anyone to do it).

Or how about him being in love with one of the women he came there with? What if the Pilot and Engineer want to use him toexploit the colonists, while the Social Anthropologist (whom he is in love with) is under some kind of Oath not to use her knowledge to exploit people (if the social sciences became advanced enough, that seems at least possible)? What if it's not the Anthropologist that he's in love with, but the Pilot? She can't stand being stuck on the surface of a primitive planet, but to help her launch, he's got to lose her forever by marrying himself to the New Eden population.

Or how about him falling in love with one of the colonists? She's not particularly orthidox, and there's no chance that she could get near him if the Gennesines have their way, but she becomes a pawn in some deeper game between the Obegayen and the secret society that opposes both the civil and religious authorities....