Jack L Chalker was a very fucked up and kinky author who I am utterly convinced was either a deeply closeted trans woman or the biggest chaser who ever wrote a book.
every single chalker story involved gender bending. almost always some magic or alien tech forcefem that involve hypnosis/brainwashing to make the character's mind match her new body. even the tamer stuff like the well world books were pretty erotically charged, but then there's the web of the chozen(which i probably should not have been allowed to read at 13, the sex scene of the main character, after having been transformed into a female goat-alien thing, going into heat and being taken by a male, definitely left some kind of early psycohsexual imprint on me) or the soul rider series, are basically porn.
there is so much weirdy kinky shit in the soul rider series. one of the main characters is literally transformed into a squishy fat shortstack sex godess. i'm talking comical proportions. she gets shrunk down to 4 feet and her tits, ass, and belly get inflated to the point where she can barely walk. this is important to turn her into an ontological anchor, a reality focus to keep an area of primordial chaos in a stable state for people to live in.
i cannot fucking *believe* i was allowed to read this growing up. like, my dad just had these books in the family library and i was able to take them off the shelf, take them to my room, and read them with no consequence. you know, aside from them irrevocably changing who i am as a person.
OH LUNA I GOT CARRIED AWAY. SOMEONE ASKED ME ME TO DESCRIBE WHAT THE WELL WORLD WAS BECAUSE I WANT TO WRITE A MASSIVE CROSSOVER INCLUDING IT.
FEEL FREE TO SEE MY SPEWING OF TEXT UNDER THE CUT.
Oh jeez, that's a good question. Erm, to attempt an explanation (I'm not very good at those), the Well World/Well of Souls is a hard/semi-hard science fiction with dabbles of fantasy-explained-as-"science" series of novels by Jack Chalker, written in 80s. Some of the terminology is outdated and those very sensitive to the gender binary may have issues with how it perceives that universe.
(After the fact inclusion, I uh... got really carried away I'm sorry.)
The very basic gist of it is that everything, literally everything, is controlled by math. In a way, it takes a stance on the whole "everything's a computer simulation" by way of a singular "Well World" that an ancient race of aliens spawned pretty much all life in the universe when they had themselves evolved to what could be considered "The end". They had grown so well in technology that they had everything that they literally ever want with just a thought or tentacle-wave.
They became bored and lamented their evolution, thinking that something had gone wrong in their growth as a species. So from there, they created a planet that housed a computer from under the crust to the core that controlled everything in little worlds called "hexes" on the surface. Within these hexes, there's a strictly controlled level of technology, referred to as High, Semi, and No Tech. No tech, they have rudimentary dwellings and use lanterns for light. Things like high-tech laser pistols simply will not work here. I think things like flintlock firearms would, I can't recall though. Steam power is popular. Semi tech, they can't use nuclear or electrical energy from being use. High tech has absolutely no limits imposed on them.
Back to the aliens however.
On this Well World, they created various races and after a time they just started copying and mish-mashing various parts together from their colleagues' work. It gets fucking crazy sometimes. 4-foot tall velociraptors that talk are one thing, so are cockroaches, frogs, centaurs, plant people and other such critters, but imagine, if you will, a fire-engine red elephant with a skinny body, two trunks, broad feet, and no arms. The trunks have fingers on them. And they're really nice! How about a walrus-headed, six-armed creature with the body and tail of a snake?
It gets really fucking out there, honestly.
The well itself is said to have 1,560 hexes on it, but this math is known to be actually really wrong? With how big the hexes are supposed to be, they simply wouldn't fit with the equator dividing north from south.
Oh yeah. The Southern hemisphere is home to carbon-based lifeforms. The North is home to EVERYTHING BUT carbon-based lifeforms. We hear a bit about them, but it's not really expanded upon because some are silicon-based, some appear as colorful smears, etc. Generally speaking, if you come in as a carbon-based lifeform, you don't get spat out up north.
Oh yeah. When you wind up on the Well World by way of hex-shaped gateway (the ancient race was apparently nutty about the number 6, though this isn't that readily apparent), you go through a bit of an orientation about what the place is, how you probably got there, and how you're never, ever, ever going back home, you get to step through the primary bit of computer that randomizes your molecules and turns you into one of over a thousand critters and that's how you're stuck from then on! (99.99999% of the time. Nathan Brazil is an outlier that fucks this up from being 100%.)
(Note, we don't get to see even half the races for the southern hemisphere, so it leaves a LOT open to what races could be called and look like.)
And due to a hiatus, Jack does cause some inconsistencies between the first six and the last three with races. He had written them before computers were a thing, and the last thing afterward.
Um. I think that's it for an overall briefing on what it is and what's on it. Some other shenanigans ensue, and they are ridiculous (such as one guy's ego-fueled power trip where he literally created himself a harem and tried to take over the Well World...).
Oh, yeah. On Nathan? I have read the entire series, I just can't remember the last three since they were the ones I read first when I was like... in 6th? 7th? grade??? But I'm working on rereading them now, but work and Rune Factory 4 has me distracted from them. And if not that, then it's Final Fantasy 8. And soon it'll be a homebrew settings for D&D 4th Ed.
BUT I AM WILLING TO GUSH ABOUT THE WELL WORLD IF THIS DIDN'T MAKE YOU RUN SCREAMING IN THE OTHER DIRECTION.
Oh yeah. If you couldn't tell, Chalker was hard into transformation porn because of people coming in one species and going out another. Also Nathan does have some shit go on with his body and there's a scene with a centuar that has a massive, massive, massive thing for him because he saved her from a thing called Sponge that essentially eats your brain and there's a syndicate that uses this to control various organizations and yeah. Shit gets weird, but it's a fun trip! BUT anything sexytime-related doesn't really go into detail? and is largely fade-to-black and we don't get to read it as though it's actual smut. BUT YEAH SHIT GETS WEIRD. But it's fun!
Is it’s premise practically tailor made for me, specifically, to love it on a weird subconscious level where I’m more likely to dream about it than think about it? Yes
