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There was a book (it actually had a second book as well) where a guy gets paid with a group of others to go to a planet that is enclosed in a metallic sphere.

There are many species in this planet. I don't recall if they actually met the races in the first or the second book but there an incident where an alien in the first book ate fruit from a tree that removed any signs of gender from it.

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  • I am positive of what I posted in the very begining of the book it has the guy going through transporters around the world on his Birthday. Im open to all suggestions of what it could be because I read both books at once so the first book might be mixed with the second book.
    – Des
    Jul 4, 2015 at 18:09
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    @Des The guy teleporting around the world on his birthday is exactly the beginning of Ringworld. He is paid to travel with a couple of aliens to the Ringworld, deep in unknown space. Also, the General Products hull they fly in is spherical, though their destination is (as its name implies) a ring.
    – Chris Hayes
    Jul 4, 2015 at 18:11
  • THANK YOU !!!! Yeah sorry I thought it was a sphere not a ring thank you very much Chris Hayes.I thought there were only 2 books not 5 and I think I need to go back and reread them now that I know the name.
    – Des
    Jul 4, 2015 at 18:12
  • The plant that removed sex tranformed humans into a new life stage, which happens in the second book, and is the subject of yet another book.
    – Lexible
    Jul 4, 2015 at 18:18
  • Yeah sorry Im just glad people could figure out my jumbled up books and messed up area where it was a ring not a planet and still able to tell me what I needed to know.
    – Des
    Jul 4, 2015 at 18:20

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While not fitting your description correctly, bad memory would justify that as a loose description of some of Larry Niven's Ringworld.

  • The main protagonists were two humans (male and female), a Kzin (intelligent tiger) and a Pierson's Puppeteer (the organizer of the expedition).

  • The sphere was most likely the ship bringing the protagonists to the ringworld, a General Products hull

  • The many different species were hominids on the ringworld, which had evolved to fit all the ecological roles of animals (including disposing of corpses).

  • One of the travellers in the first novel (a human female) eat from the Tree of Life, becoming a (sexless) Pak Protector in the second novel.

If that rings a bell, they exit the ring in the first novel

through the crater of a "mountain" that actually is a hole left by a meteor strike.

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  • Yeah I remembered that part but didn't post the about her eating the fruit. Thank you.
    – Des
    Jul 4, 2015 at 18:23
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This sounds a little bit like the 1984 novel The Eye of the Queen by Phillip Mann. The xeno-anthropologist protagonist travels to the home-world of the technologically, and perhaps spiritually more advanced Pe-Ellian race aboard one of their ships sent for him. The ship is a giant green metallic sphere. Towards the end of his sojourn he prepares to meet the entity described as the queen of the Pe-Ellians, and is sexually neutered to do so.

The book has been published with many different kinds of cover art, some of which are here:

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  • Though the book you mentioned is interesting it is not the book I am refering to sorry. This had 2 complete books.
    – Des
    Jul 4, 2015 at 18:10

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