Never forget that our memories, whether natural or artificial, hold us together

I never knew Steve was so ‘substantial.’ But then again, how could I have when all our flirting had been circling-the-airport banter and sideways glances through the half-decade we had known one another. Maybe now that he and his self-titled “Meeky-Geeky Quad” had finished the grand experiment, we’d get time to explore our attraction.

That is if I could rise from my swishy stupor sitting across from him, my eyes and libido locked on my phone’s face.

“Well?”

“You were a lot skinnier then, huh?” I asked, trying to diffuse the sexual tension as I watched the downloaded scene unfold. 

I was being treated to Steve’s memory movie from his POV (which I assumed would be the case when viewing anything from anybody’s Dump) looking down at his naked body, then up to the door where he was (or ‘had been’) watching and waiting for a woman named Janine to enter his bedroom. That all this had occurred ten years ago, that I hadn’t ever met Janine, (or the fact that Steve’s bedroom décor had not changed in a decade) nor would I recognize her when she came through that door—and she’d be as naked as Steve, he assured me—that Steve’s tummy was indeed bigger now and that I had actually accessed this sexual snippet from out of his head, stored as it now was in The Dump’s cloud storage didn’t forgive the fact that I was basically playing voyeur and might just, in a few seconds, get so overwrought I might just squiggle myself off the front of my chair.

Scientific breakthrough of the century be damned; this was hot!

I have a friend, Anita, who has suffered from degenerative peripheral vision loss over the past two years. Anita uses a cane and ‘tracks’ any space she’s in by moving her head with painful slowness from left to right. It’s the only way she can digest surrounding details so as not to trip over something beyond her limited vision. On one recent particular August Saturday, the curly-haired redhead and I happened to get out and about and during our city romp we happened upon some chalk sidewalk art in a bohemian neighborhood on our way to our favorite Thai eatery. Later, while looking at a few of the pictures I took of that art while sitting at the restaurant Anita and I were pleasantly shocked, that from the snaps on my iPhone screen, she could see all that my picture captured, more of that street sketch than she would have ever seen unaided. It had been a poignant reminder of what our handheld world was allowing beyond human restrictions.

I thought of that moment then as the heat between my legs increased and I peeked further into Steve’s past dalliance. 

That Steve and his three buds had found a way to tap into memories, then download them for view, was an unprecedented strike, to be sure. But as he had reminded me again and again, electronic impulses, no matter their source or content, could, theoretically, always be digitized and, if digitized, downloaded. And although Steve’s bros might very well inherit the Earth, by tapping into our lusts first and foremost with their Earth-shattering invention, they were sure to score funding for The Dump all that much faster.

Adult content and technology; the best of bedfellows.

I lifted my eyes finally from my phone’s face just about when Steve’s bedroom door opened and a stunning (and very nude) Janine walked into the room. I wasn’t above wanting to stare long and hard at her metered approach or Steve and their long-ago lovemaking, but I thought it better to disengage (difficult as that was). It was one thing to be allowed access to my buddy’s mind spank-bank storage, but I felt it might be an intrusion on the privacy of someone who had no idea I was peeking in on her pink parts, even though Janine was long gone from Steve’s acquaintance. 

 Steve had reminded me, very much like the extinction of the bald eagle or the encroachment of AI singularity, The Dump could only have been invented because humans had evolved to this point, a point we very much wanted to be. And not to be even more distracted as I was already with all that was flying into my brain (don’t ever let it be said that I can’t multitask) I instantly thought of that speech Spencer Tracy gives in Inherit the Wind, playing lawyer Henry Drummond. “Madam, you may vote, but at a price,” he begins about what we get and gain with progress. “You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat. Mr., you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.”

Could I smell that gasoline now? Or more precisely…lube? 

“We definitely got to get you hooked up; the look on your face is priceless…and so hot,” Steve said.

I hadn’t even thought what it would be like downloading the good, the bad, and the fugly of my sexual encounters. But if Steve wanted my particular dump to continue his work to watch my sexual play from years ago (or watch me watch it?), who was I to deny him? 

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander when the goose is digital. 

Then again…

“You know, I think I’d rather the real thing, at least for right now,” I said, pushing my iPhone across my dining room table in front of me. 

Standing I turned to my buddy who, catching the gist of what I was onto, pushed his glasses up his long nose, a move I knew him to execute whenever he was suddenly surprised, and sat back even harder into his chair.

I dropped to my knees.

Staving off the smell of gasoline (lube), at least for now, I knew Anita would be proud.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

#

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Now and again, finding yourself means losing who you were before

On a kaleidoscopically quilted, mountainous bed, painted dour red and soaring yellow from two of Asphodel’s three suns, the air redolent with simmering perrofish and fuming honeywine from the street below, Mia said, “You’re not Bojan.”

Head between their muscular thighs, their face glossed with moisture, lips tingling with their flavors, ears distantly aching from the strength of their spasmodic, clenching ecstasy, Bojan grinned up at them.

Meeting Mia’s puzzled, slightly alarmed expression with calm gentility laced with benign mischievousness, they answered, “What makes you think so?”

“Bojan, the real Bojan, was pleasant. Pleasant enough to be invited back into my bed after all these cycles, but they lived too much in their skull, barely peeking out at the rest of the world… least of all to me.”

The last few words were punctuated by a squeeze from their sculpted thighs. “You’re not Bojan.”

In response, they patiently forced their head between them, planting a tender kiss where they joined.

Mia sighed. “What did you do with them?” she half-said, half-whispered.

Tender became ardent, ardent became zealous, zealous became fervent—then the perrofish and honeywine sellers’ raucous ballyhoos vanished, overwhelmed by Mia’s keening moan of release.

Breath returning, Mia sweetly murmured, “Whatever it was… whoever you are… I don’t care.”

#

Like clockwork, the Falltown Station to Wasteaway Point late-afternoon Maglev express came between Hamistagan’s massive star and Daeva’s lifebox, its strobing light making the InfoArchivist think yet again of ancient, nearly forgotten cellulose nitrate Saturday matinees, title card expositions, and house organ accompaniments.

Rolling their head away from the flashing window and pushing it into a sofa cushion, Daeva mumbled, “I don’t miss them… I really don’t miss them.”

“Oh, and what makes you say that?”

Also muffled by fluff and stitching, Daeva said, “I shouldn’t say.”

“I don’t mind.” Hands tracing the lengths, cords, and periodic knots of Daeva’s muscles, teasing out the tightest of the latter with their palms and fingers, Bojan leaned down and kindly, sweetly kissed the hard rises of the InfoArchivist’s spine.

Twisting their head so they could look back as well as speak clearly, Daeva said, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“But you said I’m not them, so how could saying something hurt my feelings?” Same kisses to the same spine, each received with a subtle twitch of contented pleasure.

Straightening up, Bojan used their own muscles to pull Daeva up onto their knees, pressing against them with every tug.

Daeva hissed; silent movie memories supplanted by images of billowing steam locomotives entering tunnels. Their dark hands, fingers—sporting cosmically blue-sheened fingernails highlighted with neodiamond glitter—clawed between and into the couch’s sturdy fabric.

Hard, steady thrusts climbed up and over into vigorously pounding jolts, breaking Daeva’s words into jagged-edged fragments: “They… gave… they took… and never gave… back!”

Shudder ebbing, spasm fading, and—with a sweet, lip-curled grin on their face—Daeva drooled.

Retrieving the Van Gogh Starry Night holographically patterned blanket from where it had slid to the floor, Bojan tucked its bursting colors around Daeva’s deflated body, concluding with one more (but not last) kiss to the back of their neck.

#

A distant—very distant—descendant of what had been a Terran gecko skittered soundlessly up, across, and down the far wall before vanishing behind Roehel’s bioprinter.

“Are you trying to trick me?” they said, soft words edged with old wounds.

Stretched out next to them, close but not touching, Bojan shook their head. “May I touch your shoulder?”

“Please,” Roehel said, tilting their head, exposing more of it to them.

A finger to begin, a second to accompany it, concluding with four and a thumb: each delicately, sensually, appreciatively traced Roehel’s curves.

Dropping tenderly to a whimper, they cooed, “It felt like they didn’t… I mean, respect is so hard to come by; I shouldn’t have been disappointed they didn’t show me any.”

“Can I kiss the back of your neck?” Bojan asked reverently.

Roehel nodded, turning their body to reveal more of themselves. The kiss was hot, though not aggressive; sweet, yet not saccharine; affectionate, not cloying.

As Roehel’s voice descended to a throaty sigh, they said, “I almost blocked you, deleted you from my system entirely.”

“Would you like me to cup your left breast?” they said, feather-light words in Roehel’s ear.

A clearly confirming nod, preceded by a directly approving, “I’d like that.”

The same fingers, the same thumb went from appreciating the architecture of their shoulder to respectfully relishing the curve, weight, and heat of their breast—never grazing the faint scars running beneath them.

“I never knew if they were rude on purpose or didn’t care.” Roehel lifted a hand, fingers for fingers, thumb with thumb.

“Sorry,” Bojan purred into Roehel’s auburn curls. “I’m so sorry,” Bojan repeated, drawing them closer, melding their bodies together.

With a shake of their head, Roehel asked, “Whatever happened to him?”

#

Before reaching out to Mia, messaging Daeva, pinging Roehel, and the others (so many others), there had been that Jahannam winter: avenues slick with caustic ice, Servomats geysering plumes of brittle white while trying, and mostly failing, to keep the methane-laced crystals at bay.

Business over and done with sooner than expected, Bojan sat alone in an O’Malley’s—with all the fuzziness, indistinctness, and unremarkableness stemming from replicating the same Irish pub a billion times on a billion different worlds—before suddenly realizing they weren’t.

A cloud of dark hair overshadowing the plains and peaks of their face, wide glasses concealing the color of their eyes, Bojan had smiled that smile, employed their usual, crudely forged flirt, and purchased another of whatever they were drinking. After finishing it and two others, Bojan, while stroking the back of their hand, suggested they find somewhere more private.

Signaled by the closing door, it was they, not Bojan, who pounced. Eyes shut, ears deaf to everything they didn’t want to hear, they took, they used, and when they were finished with them, they threw Bojan away, leaving them as rough and cold as the bitter wind howling outside the hotel room’s window.

Lost, alone, abandoned, disposed of, Bojan had stood, staring at their mirrored self. Looking at first, but not seeing, then, as time unwound around and inside them, they saw what they had tried so long not to accept.

Collapsing into a jumbled pile of regret and shame, Bojan fell so low that the only place left was up.

#

After revisiting Mia, Raimond, Roehel, and the others (so many others), Bojan finally found what they had lost—themself.

Image Sources: M.Christian

The post “Found Among the Lost”—An Erotic Speculative Fiction Story appeared first on Future of Sex.

What they foresaw, didn’t see coming, and what might be yet to come

More than half a century ago, while visiting a San Francisco Bay Area Science Fiction convention, the adult magazine Sexscope [NSFW] asked a panel of highly respected writers to share their thoughts on how social and technological changes might change the face of sex and human intimacy in the years ahead.

Though many of the writers’ forecasts were less-than-optimistic—reflecting the tumult of the 1970s sexual revolution—Sexscope’s editor however points out that, “Surprisingly enough, our panel came to the conclusion that sex, while a perennial source of trouble, has a great future.” 

“A mind-stretching force for the creation of the habit of anticipation”

Opening with the above quote from the late Alvin Toffler’s, Future Shock on science fiction’s role in society, Sexscope introduces our experts:

• Robert Silverberg, a Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inductee, genre Grandmaster, and winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards.
• Jean Marie Stine whose underground work of “antipornography,” Season of the Witch, was hailed when it appeared as the first mature blending of science fiction and eroticism. 
• Jack Jardine, whose Agent of Terra books, written under the byline Larry Maddock, were the best-selling science fiction series of their time. 
• Jane Gallion, the feminist literary rebel who wrote Biker, Stoned, and Why Get Married, former editor of the Feminine Response, and a contributor to a number of alternative publications over the years. 
• William Rotsler, a legendary cartoonist, filmmaker, and science fiction writer whose work appeared in Adam, Knight, Galaxy, and many other publications has become legendary.
• Paul Turner, a former ordnance engineer for ballistic missiles, photographer, who also contributed to numerous adult magazines.

“Not the old rules at all”

Though many of the  issues the panelists discussed have become commonplace, this was a time when frank talk was on the rise and a lot of “firsts” were happening.”

After discussing how relationships have begun moving away from traditional gender roles of men working while women raise children. The panelists then began speculating about the shift towards the science of sex and its current and future discoveries:

STINE: Masters and Johnson are finally discovering exactly what goes on during the sex act, which no one ever knew before, physiologically speaking. And as a result of this they’ve gone a long way toward defining what healthy sexuality is, and what impairs it or causes sexual dysfunction, as well as how to cure it. Now there is hope for all those frustrated, suffering millions whose marriages have been one long sexual failure. And freedom from guilt, too—something not to be discounted. They can be free to enjoy their sex lives now instead of later on in life when, if they’re lucky, they get their heads straightened out about sex and get over a lot of their conditioned hang-ups. Because until now, the sad truth is, most people have never gotten their heads together about this, and probably less than one in every fifty is really satisfying or pleasurable to them.

JARDINE: The new people are growing up in an entirely different universe. 

TURNER: The rules are all different today. They’re not the old rules at all. So they’re not going to have to overcome all those hang-ups, because they’re not acquiring them. They don’t have to—they have the means, chemical and mechanical, to avoid having to go through all those traumas.

SEXSCOPE: What do you mean: chemical and mechanical?

TURNER: Contraception. Universal contraception.

RECOMMENDED READ: Futurologist’s 2015 Sexbot Prediction: Laughably off Base or Surprisingly Accurate?

SILVERBERG: The sexual revolution now is something qualitatively different from the sexual revolution of the 1920’s or the1930’s. For the first time there is an absolute separation between sex and reproduction, and that is taking the consequences out of sex, turning it into merely a meeting of bodies, which it has never been before. I don’t mean merely a meeting of bodies, but that anybody, at any given time, is free to do as he pleases without fear of the result. This is something brand new and it is having explosive consequences.

“Sex as media”

Pirouetting away from reproduction, birth control, and how they might fuel sexual liberation in the future, the panels pondered what might happen if the social pendulum should swing the other way:

JARDINE: Somebody had a story a few years ago, “Coming of Age Day,’ by Jorgenson, in which there was an appliance, a living tissue that each person was given on his thirteenth birthday and wore on the genitals from then on, The appliance gave each person a satisfying sex life of his own so there was no need for interaction or contact with other people.

GALLION: Sounds downright unnatural to me. Besides, a thing like that would completely eliminate the aspect of sex as media.

STINE: What does sex have to do with media?

GALLION: It’s a communications device. It’s like words.

JARDINE: Sex is much more than playing skillfully with each other’s genitals.

GALLION: That’s why all these studies, like Masters and Johnson, can only go so far. They teach sex just as mechanics.

STINE: Oh, no. There’s much more to it than that. In the first program they used that approach, but only because no one else had ever investigated it thoroughly

enough to have a clear idea of what really went on. After all, without knowing what it is, there’s no way to start making it better. In the second program, the treatment program, their stated goal was to treat it as communication and to improve the communications system. They sat down with people who had a block against sexual communication in their relationship, and tried to help them learn to communicate on that level. They don’t try to cure the people, they try to cure the relationship. That’s what they say the patient is, not the people.

STINE: I think that one of the taboos we can foresee will be against having more than a certain number of children, and this could be one of the big ones. A guy who fathers six or seven kids could become as much of a social outcast as someone who displays his genitals publicly today. Another future taboo could be that it may become very socially unacceptable not to keep your clap shots up. People may become hung up about venereal disease in a whole new way.

SILVERBERG: That’s not really a hang-up; it’s more like brushing your teeth; it’s a matter of common courtesy. Common courtesy is not a hang-up.

STINE: But what starts out as common courtesy often ends up as a taboo. Don’t forget that in ancient Egypt they had signs warning, “Don’t piss in the streets. That’s what animals do, not what men do.” And it’s no longer just common courtesy not to piss in public anymore, it’s a taboo. And it hangs some men up so bad they can’t even piss in a public john unless they are hidden in a booth. There’s even a specific name for the psychological disorder.

“Exclusive anything is generally a bit pathological”

The panelists next offered thoughts on the evolution of gender and sexual attraction:

JARDINE: There seems to be a trend in the counter-culture towards increasing bisexual behavior. And I think one of the keynotes in the future of sex will be a less gender-oriented sex drive.

STINE: Well, once you take it out of the area of reproduction, you open it up wide because it really doesn’t matter any more who or what or how or why, merely whether or not it feels good.

SILVERBERG: As you move toward a concept of sex as body communication, the more bodies of all sorts that you can communicate with the greater will be the amount of information you take in; and arbitrarily to cut off fifty percent of the possible information flow is something that I think is going to die out when our present hang-ups in that direction, which are very powerful, begin to eliminate themselves. It may become unusual to be exclusively heterosexual.

JARDINE: Exclusive anything is generally a bit pathological. Society itself seems to be becoming less goal oriented than I recall it having been fifteen, twenty years ago… and I suspect that this is slopping over onto sex, Sexual participation is probably increasingly less orgasm-oriented, less looking forward to the con- summation and more concerned with what’s actually happening right now, whenever now is. I agree with Jane, it’s a form of communication, a highly important form of communication. If you really want to get to know someone, that’s almost a necessity, to totally know them, because it’s a form of communication that can’t be done in any other way.

STINE: All of these people enjoying sex, not just having it, not just going through the ritual, but enjoying it and communicating and being close to other human beings, is going to have such an effect on their heads. People are gonna walk up to each other and they’re not going to feel as threatened or frightened anymore.

“Well, we’re living in the future”

Even with fifty four years separating us, it’s fascinating to see the importance of trying to stay positive about the human sexuality’s future:

SILVERBERG: Everything we’ve been discussing so far is really just a small part of what’s going on in the future, right?

JARDINE: Mainly; what’s going on now?

STINE: Well, we’re living in the future, as Dave McDaniel or George Clayton Johnson would say.

TURNER: It’s simply a small part of what’s happening, and sex is going to be affected even further by the technological phenomenon that we’re living in now. A sexual experience is communication at a most basic level. I just don’t see any way to really anticipate that completely. Where we’re at now is the beginning of all that. We’re at the beginning of a complete and total change in all aspects of our lives—sex just happens to be one of them—but it’s really impossible to say what’s going to happen in the future. All we’ve been talking about is what’s happening now, at the moment.

STINE: I think inevitably if we’re going to see increasing sexual activity, we’re going to see increasing combinations, you know, the whole concept of group sex.

It’s not gonna be just little swing parties out in the suburbs, it’s gonna be like four or five people are going to be living together, and one afternoon they’re all going to be sitting down and somebody’s gonna say, “Let’s all go have sex.” Then it’s gonna be this whole writhing pile of bodies, all of whom are communicating seriously and deliberately to each other, and all of them feeling good about it when it’s happening, no guilt, no hang-ups, no inhibitions.

SILVERBERG: That’s a hard act to follow.

TURNER: I’ll drink to that, but not with this water.

SILVERBERG: Even the future of water is deteriorating.

JARDINE: The future of everything is deteriorating, except sex, which seems to be looking up. 

Image Sources: Depositphots

The post Flashbacks & Flashforwards: Legendary Science Fiction Authors Predicted Sex’s Far Future—In 1971 appeared first on Future of Sex.

Life is the flower for which love is the honey

Dellingr’s pale, indigo eyes weren’t blurring from the painfully glaring wide-spectrum Simu-Sun aerostat that Noboru Taiyō Group’s Shōmei Division had meticulously positioned, rigorously anchored above Aogashima Island’s Maruyama crater the year previous. Nor were they blurring from the gently fuming Biotic-Fabricates, Organo-Congregates, or Meso-Formulates drip lines Dellingr was perhaps less meticulously, maybe not as rigorously attempting to maintain.

Pressing their right-hand heel into their right eye socket, streaking their dusty cheeks with stinging tears, repeating, with a grating inhalation, a raspy exhalation with the left hand, left eye, Dellingr checked the Biotic-Fabricates, Organo-Congregates, Meso-Formulates….

Gefjun had said, more times than Dellingr could remember, the key to Gefjun’s Bio-Artistry was “a little bit of this, a little bit of that—and lots and lots of dashes”

Wreathing-Willows delicately genuflecting, leaves, stems, branches, languidly coiling, uncoiling, conjuring an octopus’s orchard.

Kaleido-Chrysanthemums pulsing with spectrums real or imaginary, hypnotically spinning petals flaring, ebbing, invoking a cosmic mandala.

Metamo-Roses twirling in and out of themselves, a maddeningly variegated botanical Möbius loop, summoning a glistening-skinned djinn.

Eye-Irises looking everywhere, seeing everything with their voltage-sparking clusters of photoreceptive anthers, mischievously deceiving their watchers.

And-Orchids hut-one, hut-two, hut-three-ing in strict order, weaving breathtaking geometry, seeding, sprouting, growing, and as quickly dying like a watchmaker’s dream.

Eclect-Lotuses, Trans-Pines, Muli-Maples, Evo-Azaleas, Recast-Camellias … Dellingr heavily trudged the length of their rows, soullessly walking beside their beds, mindlessly checking holographic displays without thought or care adjusting when absolutely necessary their Fabricates, Congregates, or Formulates.

“Words,” Gefjun had said, “aren’t easy.  I guess it’s because I think I have a lot to give.  More than enough for you, always enough for you.”

Dellingr’s washed-out azure eyes flooded as the memory bit down, drew blood. Gefjun pleading, begging; Dellingr howling, demanding, “I should be enough for you!”  Over and over again, driving Gefjun away, forcing them out into that dying day, that furiously approaching night jammed with pounding rain, flaring lightning, and roaring winds.

The Recast-Camellias drooped, stems buckling under their semi-translucent bulbs; the Evo-Azaleas popped and sizzled, high-voltage stigma angrily shorting out, and the Muli-Maples thunderously groaned, seeds clumsy when they should have spun, descending like miniature ballerinas.

Dellingr tapped icon after icon, strolling then sprinting from planter to planter until the Recast-Camellias flawlessly played their black and white movies again, the Evo-Azaleas happily hummed their harmonic frequencies, and the Muli-Maples filled the air with pliés, relevés, and Chassés.

A hushed curtain pulled over Gefjun’s Kibō, their tsubo-niwa garden, a liminal space lying not between the public and the private but the made and the grown—and with the arrival of that suddenly ponderous quiet, Dellingr’s legs failed them, sending them crashing into the artificially ariated loam, the chemically enriched soil, the synthetically augmented ground.

Throat aching, lungs burning, Dellingr wailed as their hands dug deep, unearthing deep, dark, foul memories: the URGENT URGENT message, the shrieking alert sprayed in crimson laser light across the inside of the Kibō’s polyplastic tented primary workspace, the sound, the light, brutally slapping Dellingr awake, Shuyō dōro de no jūshō jiko—

“Main access road. Serious injury accident,” their mind instinctively translated, words looping, broken only by a name, the person who’d been driving the shuyō akusesu dōro, who was involved in the jūshō jiko, who died before Dellingr could get to Aogashima’s understaffed, undersized emergency clinic.

Dellinger’s pallid, aqua eyes neither blurred nor flooded but erupted with bitter tears, a cascade of steaming, brackish rain poking the artificial, chemical, augmented dirt beneath their scream-racked face.

A ghostly touch?  A faint caress?  A vague embrace? An indistinct stroke? An indefinite fondle?  

Dellingr’s sallow, cobalt eyes closed and opened, each blink bringing increasing clarity.  Yes, the Wreathing-Willows were tenderly touching their back. Yes, the Kaleido-Chrysanthemums were softly caressing their cheeks. Yes, the Metamo-Roses were daintily embracing them. Yes, the Eye-Irises were subtly stroking their hair. Yes, the And-Orchids were amiably fondling their chest.

No doubt, no uncertainty: the Eclect-Lotuses were kissing them, the Trans-Pines were snuggling them, the Muli-Maples were firmly holding them, the Evo-Azaleas were plucking away their clothes, and the Recast-Camellias were loving them.

“I’ve put so much into you and my garden; my passion, my life, my joy,” Gefjun had also said. “You and it, it and you; sharing one with the other. More than enough to go around.”

Below Noboru Taiyō Group’s Shōmei Division’s brilliantly shimmering Simu-Sun, Dellingr and Gefjun’s Kibō phytological magnum opus frolicked, cavorted, reveled, laughed, moaned, together—as Dellingr wept sparkling, gleeful, ecstatic, and overwhelmingly wide-eyed, blissful tears.

#

Barely one hundred before nearly two hundred. Almost a thousand a month later, then slightly short of two thousand at the start of the next. Aogashima’s prefecture paid Dellingr an exceedingly formal, undoubtedly official visit to express the residents’ concerns over the rise in foreign tourists—whose yachts and massive cruise ships choking the island’s picturesque harbor.

Concerns Dellingr greeted with a seriously beaming grin, pledging to donate all the proceeds—sans necessities for Gefjun’s Kibō upkeep—to staffing Aogashima’s new, state-of-the-art-hospital.

And Dellingr was there as they came up from the docks, pointing out the Wreathing-Willows’ gracefully bowing shoots and leaves, showing off the Kaleido-Chrysanthemums’ mesmerizing bioluminescent firework displays, giggling at the Metamo-Roses’ endlessly captivating gyrations, applauding the Eye-Irises’ phantasmagoric soul-searching perceptions, and highlighting how expertly the And-Orchids’ resolutely marched to and fro.

Dellingr was there, among the Eclect-Lotuses, the Trans-Pines, the Muli-Maples, the Evo-Azaleas, and the Recast-Camellias—happier than Dellingr had been before the storm—for in every twinkling eye, euphoric expression, or admiring gasp was more than wonder, awe, or amazement, sharing Gefjun’s inexhaustible love.

Image Sources: M.Christian

#

Have an erotic speculative fiction tale to tell?  If so, here’s what we’re looking for and how to send it our way: Call for Future of Sex Short Story Submissions

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Oppressive or empowering, cruel or kind, tomorrow is what we make of it

Wire-stiff brambles stung, clawed, scratched, drew blood, mixing painful with terrified tears. But lips, though quivering feverishly, kept pressed tightly shut, aching screams swallowed whole.

They’re not like us, Louisa; they’re… different, in a bad way. I know, trust me, trust your mother, don’t let them catch you. Never let them catch you. Run, run as fast as you can—if you don’t, they’ll do terrible things to you.

Suddenly, shockingly, the world fell from underfoot; cruelly cold water sank needle-pointed teeth into first one foot, then both feet, ankles, calves—nearly cresting up and over thighs. 

The too-bright stars, the too-brilliantly sharp crescent moon, was there then not—replaced by methodically sweeping, ultra-high-intensity lights: back and forth, up and down, stirring heart-pounding fright, breath-searing flight as they pinned a swaying, skeletal branch, a lazily bobbing log, or a cluster of gently swaying cattails.

Who told you about them? No, it doesn’t matter; they were right to do so. It’s… I wanted to tell you about them when you were old enough. You have to understand that some people are … they’re wrong, I guess you could say. They don’t see the world like we do. What? No, we don’t hate them, but it’s important to warn children like you, Louisa—my precious, innocent daughter—to stay far away from them … far, far, far away…

Balance—already precarious, hobbled by the culvert’s muddy bottom and tugging, shoving, freezing currents—teetering, and with it that chilling sound; the braying of surgically modified hounds, where once were baleful eyes now were pairs of glossy black ultrasonic phased arrays. Day or night, fog or not, their quarry inescapable.

Yes, my child, sorry to have to tell you, but the rumors you’ve heard are true; they are out there, waiting for the right moment to snatch you and others like you up, spirit you away to who-knows-where, and do horrifying things to you, to your body. Pray with all your might you’re never, ever seen by them. For if you are, they’ll pursue and, worse yet, capture you—and you do not ever want to know what’ll happen next—

A bank … no, an embankment; steeper than nature: a concrete, dirt-clodded, steeply-angled barrier rising higher than anyone could possibly reach. Madly clawing, ferociously digging into its frustratingly sodden crust, trying to get through, begging to gain the slightest purchase, haul up and free from the canal’s icy grip—only for hope to crumble while falling back with alarmingly loud splashes over and over again.

My cousin’s sister’s friend told me all about them, so I know it’s true! Like how they lure you in, seduce you with promises of illicit pleasure only to trap you, force you to do sexual things, then operate on you, make you into a monster, something horrible no one would, could ever love … laughing as they cut you up!

Fingers stabbing into the putrid, reeking loam, thrusting down, searching for something, anything solid enough to grip hold of, find any sort of leverage to fight the frigid current’s stubborn pull—

—then soggy dirt, not wet soil, not loose but firm, solid, unyielding… metal? Twisted rebar, remnants of a disused irrigation system? Didn’t matter; all that did was it didn’t move, and with wracking sobs, nearly hysterical screams, and every effort of strength, the culvert steadily fell behind.

Remember, students, as law-abiding, socially responsible citizens, it’s imperative you remain ever-vigilant. Stay away from unauthorized communication technologies, be wary of anyone who wants to be a so-called “friend,” and inform law enforcement personnel immediately if you have any suspicious encounters, however innocent they may initially appear. For they will use any trick or make any promise to get their filthy claws on you.

Up, on, and over to lay panting, chest heaving, at the top, staring unseeingly upwards, eyes glazed, cloudy from wind, cold, and tears, for a fleeting second unable to differentiate stars from moon.

Surrender was a sweet temptation: give up, let them come … but the hounds’ rapidly approaching, ear-aching ultrasonics and—new panic, new hysteria—the distinctive, overlapping whines of AI-networked autonomous microdrones were a galvanic jolt, forcing arms and legs to push, lift … and move!

They spit in the eye of everything pure, simple, and natural!  Heed my words, Louisa, pervert the bodies of the innocent, condemn everyone they touch to the fires of hell!  They are nothing short of evil, and for the safety of everyone who believes in the power of faith and community, they must be eradicated!  

Hundreds or thousands of feet? A mile, two, three? Unsure, uncaring, unsure if runing in the right direction—grasping desperately to the clear reality of ears no longer aching, the stars and moon neither searchlights or drones.

A cyclical, warbling howl, an almost deafening windstorm, and with it running became tumbling backward, landing unceremoniously on the pebble-and-mud-puddle peppered path. 

A dazzling, nearly blinding light silhouetted a trio of vague shapes, the nearest of which shrank as it knelt forward, extending an open hand, yelling against the helicopter’s deafening roar, “It’s okay … you’re safe!”

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Puddled together in a pool of late afternoon sun, Cansa’s rainbow-hued curls cascading across their bare stomach, their hand tightly knitted with his, both gazing lazily up at the starry sky mobile they’d made together, each knowing before paper met mache they’d inevitably lie under it—and shared a long, deep, relaxing, mutually contented, post-orgasm sigh.

“What was it like?” Cansa asked eventually. “Only if you want to—”

Louis smiled, wishing they could bend far enough forward to delicately kiss Cansa’s forehead, but settled for tenderly twirling one of his locks. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

After a deeper but less calming, more steadying breath, they said, “They’re not bad people; no one really is. I think they’re… well, they’re scared.”

“Of what? And why did they… treat you the way they did for all that time?”

Closing their eyes, briefly wrapping themselves in familiar darkness, Louis went on, “I’m not sure. I guess, I mean, maybe they’re frightened of happiness: to be who you truly are and—” sliding their hand gracefully along Cansa’s cheek “—love how and whoever you want.”

Image Sources: M.Christian

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Have an erotic speculative fiction tale to tell?  If so, here’s what we’re looking for and how to send it our way: Call for Future of Sex Short Story Submissions

The post “A Cautionary Tale”—an Erotic Speculative Fiction Story appeared first on Future of Sex.

Five boundary-redefining works from legends in the genre

Like a lot of genres, science fiction took a bit of time to discover that one special, yet very basic, component of humanity.

Yes, I’m talking about sex.

But unlike mystery, horror, romance, thriller—and every flavor of literature you can name—when these science fiction authors explored eroticism, it didn’t just change that genre. Using visions of the future, they changed the way many people came to look at sex itself.

While there are many writers working today who are exploring sexuality in science fiction (hint, hint), here are five works personally feel go far above and far beyond the known limits of both sex and science fiction.

Oh, and be prepared for some very minor plot spoilers—but I promise not to give too much away.

The Lovers by Philip Jose Farmer

Remarkably, there are very few disagreements as to when science fiction looked not just up at the stars, but below its own belt.  Sure, during the heyday of the pulp magazines, mainly during the 20s and the 30s, many authors played with simple titillation but none of them described any real (ahem) details.

In 1953, one author changed all that.The Lovers was not just Philip Jose Farmer’s (1918–2009) first published work, but the novella won him the coveted Hugo Award (one of the most prestigious awards in the genre), and introduced sexuality to science fiction. In a big way.

Still poignant and evocative today, I won’t ruin your experience discovering this groundbreaking work by getting too much into the details of the plot. In many ways it reads like the opening to every science fiction novel ever: human hero dispatched to an alien world, Earthling “Powers That Be” have a hidden agenda, human hero encounters alluring member of an alien species, human hero falls in love, human hero stands up against the “Powers That Be”.

But The Lovers is so much more than that.  Farmer not just leaves the lights on for the alien-human close encounters, but he actually had the bravery, or simple honesty, to include an actual orgasm.

Farmer continued his beautiful melding of sensuality in his science fiction work, one of the best examples being his collection of stories Strange Relations. Farmer also penned two—to put it politely—outrageous, and very sexually explicit novels called Image of the Beast and Blown. Pick them up if you want to see what happens when an acclaimed science-fiction author lets his erotic imagination run totally wild.

Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon

Without hyperbole, Theodore Sturgeon (1918 –1985) remains a science-fiction grandmaster. His novels More Than Human (1953), The Dreaming Jewels(1950), The Cosmic Rape (1958), and others are considered, rightly so, masterpieces of the genre.

As any fan of Sturgeon knows, he has also never shied away from understanding and celebrating sexuality. One of his very special books, published in—are you sitting down?—1960 is Venus Plus X. What it has to say about gender and humanity resonates loudly, even 55 years later.

The story is deceptively simple: our protagonist, Charlie Johns, finds himself in the world of the Lendom, an intelligent, highly advanced, and peaceful offshoot of humanity … that happens to physically combine male and female sex organs.

What makes Venus Plus X so powerful is that Sturgeon presents it without judgment, of course beyond those brought to the book by Charlie himself. Sturgeon revisited this same non-prejudicial style in his story “If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?”, which first appeared in Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison in 1967. However, in Venus Plus X  he shows us a world without a certain taboo; the taboo of incest.

The Female Man by Joanna Russ

In the 1960s and 1970s, science fiction experienced the New Wave: a change in the genre reflecting what was happening in the world around it. Part of this New Wave explosion was the mislabeled subgenre of feminist science fiction.

I say mislabeled because it’s far too lazy to simply look at what many writers were doing at the time and dismiss it as “feminist.” Jody Scott, Alice B. Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.), Ursula K. Le Guin, and many others were not just empowering female characters, and women authors, but altering how many people saw science fiction, and sexuality itself.

One of the brightest of the New Wave was Joanna Russ (1937 –2011). Her novel, The Female Man (1970), still stands tall as not just brilliant science fiction, but as a work that delves into almost every conceivable possibility regarding gender and sexuality.

In a (brief) nutshell, The Female Man is about a series of parallel worlds where the “war of the sexes” played out differently.

One of these worlds called Whileaway explores an Earth where men have become extinct, but humanity continues—quite beautifully—through artificial parthenogenesis.

Russ’s writing is powerful, as much today as when much of her work was first published.  To see it as just part of the counterculture movement, both in the world as well as science fiction does the beauty and bravery of her work a huge disservice.

Season of the Witch by Jean Marie Stine

While, again, often categorized as part of the New Wave, Jean Marie Stine’s (b. 1945) Season of the Witch transcends all labels, which is exactly the point of this staggering novel.

While many works before, such as the already mentioned Venus Plus X and The Female Manexamined gender and sexuality in forms of quasi-abstracts, Jean Marie Stine’s novel took a much more direct approach.

Psychedelic and stylish, but always remaining accessible as well as remarkably heartfelt, Season Of The Witch deals with Andre, who is found guilty of rape and murder. In this dystopian future Earth, he receives an appropriate punishment: his consciousness is transferred into the body of a woman.

It is remarkable that this novel, first published in 1968, was one of the very first to take such a deceptively simple concept—to truly travel where no man has gone before.  Luckily, Jean Marie Stine was the person to do it and Season Of The Witch is a perfect meld of science-fiction literature and gender/sexuality investigation—with a particularly beautiful sensitivity.

The World Inside by Robert Silverberg

This last part is where the list gets a bit fuzzy. The fact is if there is one single master of science fiction who deserves to be on this list, it is Robert Silverberg (b. 1935). From his first published work in 1955, Silverberg has shown time and again that he’s not just a phenomenal and insanely prolific author, but one in science fiction who has always perfectly melded the genre with a beautiful appreciation of sensuality.

Because he is the author of so many works (non-fiction books, short stories, novels, anthologies edited, and over 100 science fiction novels), it is extremely hard to point to just a single work by Silverberg as being groundbreaking in regards to sexuality.  If anything, almost every book by Silverberg should be on this list.

Homosexuality to bisexuality, polyamory to beyond, sex for characters in Silverberg novels isn’t something that happens to them, rather their eroticism is an integral part of their humanity— and is a beautiful thing.

But, as our space is limited, one of his books that personally rings as a standout is his 1971 novel The World Inside. Set in the year 2381, the novel looks at the idea of quantity versus quality. In this case, the quantity is human reproduction as the culture of The World Inside is one where procreation has become almost the single most important driving force.

So powerful is it, that men are encouraged to go “night walking” to freely visit, and hopefully impregnate, as many women as possible. While many books have played with the concept of the human population explosion in clumsy dystopias—Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room! (which inspired the film  Soylent Green in 1973) is an example of how to do it right—The World Inside shows the issue in an even more chilling light.  By giving it a happy, yet emptily, grinning face.

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Science fiction has always been a genre of exploration, especially where it reflects on what it means to be human. These fantastic works and their authors looked out at the universe as well as inward at sexuality, creating some truly staggering pieces of literature.

And, for their readers as well as many others, they altered the very idea of what sex is … and could be.

Image sources: Depositphotos, Amazon

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