In 1907, an African porter working for a British hunter starts cataloguing ogres of East Africa with the help of a woman informant. When she reveals she is an ogre herself, he must decide if he can help her fulfill her destiny.

On an alien world, a colony of humans has evolved to reproduce with one mother and many fathers. After delaying for years, one young woman finally chooses three fathers for her baby, but her desire for freedom draws her into the orbit of the post-human anthropologists who have come from the stars to study this quaint biological mating ritual.