Will we soon be able to buy his synthetic companions wholesale?

As far as franchises go, Blade Runner is remarkably diverse. From video games to authorized follow-up novels, comic books to clothing, and even toys, it has become a huge part of popular culture

At its core, though, there are just three key works behind it all: the original novel by Philip K. Dick, its 1982 movie adaption, and Denis Villeneuve’s follow up film.

The novel that started it all

And now, in 2017—only two years away from the original film’s timeline of 2019—we’re seeing that Blade Runner isn’t just entertainment but a possible glimpse into the future of human sexuality.

Written in 1968, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is considered by many to be a fine, if not brilliant, story of a science-fiction master at the height of his powers. The book takes place in a near future devastated by nuclear war, where animal life is nearly extinct—save for those owned by the wealthy. Everyone else, meanwhile, has to make do with robotic creatures designed to look and act exactly like the real thing.

Trying to preserve humanity, the government encourages people to emigrate off-world to Mars. To entice Earth residents to make they move they are promised a personal replicant: an android servant that, like the animals, is practically indistinguishable from organic beings.

Our protagonist is Rick Deckard, who accepts an assignment to hunt down six rogue replicants who have returned to Earth from Mars—all so he can afford to purchase an actual, biological pet.

A new life awaits you

If this is starting sound familiar it’s because Ridley’s Scott’s 1982 film, retitled Blade Runner, does have a lot in common with the original novel by Dick. Yet while the two also have many differences, their core plot is the same: Deckard pursues rogue replicants, and in the course of doing so, deals with questions of identity, memory, and what it means to be human.

In Electric Sheep, Dick plays with one of his favorite themes: androids so realistic they can pass for human beings. In both the novel and in Scott’s film adaptation, replicants are so lifelike the only way to tell them apart from people is by using a sophisticated test that measures their reaction to emotional stimuli. (Trivia time: the questions that Deckard asks in the 1982 film are almost identical to the ones Dick uses in his original novel.)

While we may be a century or more away from being able to create anything close to a replicant, there are researchers working on giving artificial intelligence something akin to emotion.

Robots that love

As we have already reported, National Taipei University Assistant Professor Hooman Samani has been studying what he calls lovotics: the way human beings develop emotional attachments to technology. Using devices like his Mini-Surrogate, he may be on the path to making it easier to us to desire robots—and for them to have feelings for us in return.

Part of this erotic connection would require ways for robots to accurately read our emotions, which would, in turn, enable our android lovers to perfect their sexual skills thanks to loads of stored data on past encounters.

Robots that can read us

This is far from far-fetched, in fact, we’ve already seen steps in this direction like how a team from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT released its work on EQ-Radio: a system that uses WiFi to read a subject’s emotional state.

Right now it’s still pretty basic but give it a few more years and technology like this will be able to read not just your emotional state but maybe even your unconscious thoughts.  As mentioned, more data means a much more perfect android lover.

Coincidentally, we recently explored the idea of artificial intelligence as  lover in Blade Runner 2049, based on the relationship between the new Blade Runner, K (played by Ryan Gosling), and his hologram girlfriend (played Ana de Armas).

But what if you want to alter emotions, not simply have them read, perhaps as yet another way for your replicant to sexually arouse you?

The Penfield mood organ

It’s interesting that with all the iterations of Blade Runner, from comic books to toys, so few have noticed a bit of technological foresight on Dick’s part—the one that could have as much as an impact on sex as replicants.

In Electric Sheep there is something called a Penfield mood organ, a technology that Dick has used in quite a few of his books. The basic idea behind it is it is a machine that allows users to choose their emotional states. The apparatus is a way to dispel boredom and (wait for it) increase sexual desire.

It’s also an invention that’s closer than you think. Liminal VR, headed by Damian Moratti, is working on creating a device similar to Dick’s Penfield mood organ: a VR-based system that works to “combine neuroscience and design principles in virtual reality to induce a range of cognitive and emotional states, affording you the ability to control and augment your state of mind.”

We’re not sure how far Liminal VR has gone with its development but the science is certainly sound. Researchers have already established that emotions can be changed using either invasive techniques, such as with electrodes or through non-invasive means using electromagnetism.

There is even the possibility that we may be able to affect both emotion and memory, a key plot device in Electric Sheep, Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner, and even Denis Villeneuve’s sequel Blade Runner 2049.

More human than human

Putting these pieces together, it’s not hard to picture a near future where we will have android lovers that have been created to be sexually pleasurable. They may even display something very similar to human emotional reactions.

They’d know us perhaps even better than we know ourselves, being able to read our arousal and so meet our erotic needs before we can even voice them. And, if you’d like, you’ll also be able to adjust your own sexual arousal level: fine-tuning your excitement as much or as little as you want.

What this all means is what while replicants might be some years off, it looks very much like other elements in both the films as well as the original novel may arrive sooner than you think.

We can only hope that when they do, they’ll be part of a world that’s not as bleak and dystrophic as Blade Runner—in all its many forms.

Image sources: IMDB

The post Philip K. Dick’s Erotically Electric Dreams: Today’s Reality? 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.

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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

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Pleasure pills, orgasmatrons, replicants, and more could be right around the corner

Spaceships, aliens, robots—we all love a good science fiction film. But aside from a few lucky guesses on the filmmakers’ parts, we rarely think of them as being truly prophetic.

Especially when it comes to their depictions of futuristic sex.

However, with new developments in pharmacology, virtual reality, robotics, telepresence, and artificial intelligence, more than a few classic, and sort of classic,science-fiction films are getting very close to erotic reality.

Here is a subjective look at five science-fiction films where their depictions of futuristic sex are fast-becoming less cinematic fantasy and more everyday sexual reality.

Sex pills from Barbarella (1968)

Barbarella: “Make love? But no one’s done that for hundreds of centuries!”

Featuring Jane Fonda’s zero-gravity striptease and life-threatening pleasure machine, Roger Vadim’s romp has become the benchmark of erotic science-fiction films. Based on the French comic by Jean-Claude Forest, Barbarella is pretty tame by modern standards, but when it was released in 1968 it raised more than a few eyebrows.

As part of the erotic phantasmagoria was the concept of sex pills. The explanation being given that Earth had evolved far beyond simple… well, physical love.

Yet we are possibly no more than a few years away from an actual, practical orgasm drug. Pharmaceutical researchers have already stumbled across medications like Anafranil, an anti-depressant that has the rather odd side effect of giving users orgasms when they yawn.
More than likely, many drug companies are working on turning that reaction into an actual pleasure-inducing little pill.

What will happen to human society when sexual pleasure no longer has to be physically derived is anyone’s guess. But if Barbarella is any indication, there will always be human beings more than willing to do it “the old-fashioned way.”

2. Virtual Sex from Demolition Man (1993)

John Spartan: “Look, Huxley, why don’t we just do it the old-fashioned way?”
Lenina Huxley: “Eeewww, disgusting! You mean … fluid transfer?”

Falsely imprisoned in a cryogenic prison, John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) is defrosted into a ridiculously passive future to deal with another previous century throwback, one dangerously bonkers Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) in Demolition Man.

In this film directed by John Flynn, Spartan doesn’t just have to catch Phoenix, but he has to deal with a world where good old messy sex has been replaced by a form of virtual reality.

Virtual reality, when the film was made back in 1993, was pretty much just speculation. But we now have products like Apple’s Vision Pro and the Meta Quest 2 and many others.

Many developers are already rushing to create erotic virtual reality systems, where users will be able to don a pair of optical goggles and immerse themselves solo or with others—in a practically infinite world of erotic pleasure.

Let’s just hope that when virtual reality sex becomes mainstream, we won’t have to deal with the three seashells that perplexed John Spartan (see the movie to get the joke).

3. The Orgasmatron from Sleeper (1973)

Miles Monroe: “Perform sex? Uh, uh, I don’t think I’m up to a performance, but I’ll rehearse with you if you like.”
Luna Schlosser: “Okay. I just thought you might want to; they have a machine here.”
Miles Monroe: “Machine? I’m not getting into that thing. I, I’m strictly a hand operator; you know, I, I… I don’t like anything with moving parts that are not my own.

Woody Allen’s 1973 movie Sleeper is only a laugh fest, but it’s also a pretty solid piece of science-fiction cinema.

Thawed out from cryogenic suspension, New York health food store owner Miles Monroe is thrust into a future where robot servants are commonplace, a healthy diet has been discovered to be steak and hot fudge sundaes, a despotic president rules everyone, and sex is enjoyed via an apparently mechanical “orgasmatron” booth.

While little detail is shown about the operations of the booth beyond that couples enter and leave… satisfied.

Woody’s adverse initial reaction to the device is pre 21st century—though his obvious pleasure after a solo interaction is more than evident. Preference to “hand operation” aside, we are actually on the verge of  our own version of the orgasmatron.

Arguably, the basic idea has been around since 1734 when the French invented the hand-operated Tremoussoir (and a steam-powered version appeared in 1869). These days we call them vibrators.

But even this basic technology is undergoing tremendous transformations. Modern sex toys are often Bluetooth enabled, programmable, interactive, and almost infinitely flexible. No matter your sexual itch, more than a few of them can scratch it.

Very soon, though, we’ll see haptic sex toys mated with virtual reality to create truly immersive and physical sexual experiences with holograms. In fact, we are already seeing a form of this.

This technology will mean that in your VR sexual paradise, when you reach out to touch someone you will really, actually be able to feel the contact. Then, in a few more years, we might see actual electric stimulation of the brain to induce orgasm.

Soon we will erotically, and literally, agree with Miles Monroe: “My brain? It’s my second favorite organ!”

4. Surrogate sex from Surrogates (2009)

Female Counsel: “Agent Greer, we’re not doctors.”
Tom Greer: “Honey, I don’t know what you are. I mean, for all I know, you could be some big, fat dude sitting in his stim chair.”

While justifiably not ranked among the great science-fiction films, Jonathan Mostow’s 2009 movie Surrogates (based on Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele’s graphic novel) does feature a unique depiction of future sex tech.

In this world of the near future, most of humanity spend their days in isolation, preferring to deal with the outside world and each other via the titular “surrogates:” sophisticated robotic puppets that can look like anyone and do things that no regular human being can do.

And, yes, even sexual things.

Alas, the film is pure preach and never really gets into the real sexual potential of the technology, preferring to use the usual burnt out cop (Bruce Willis) up against a convoluted conspiracy. Yawn!

RECOMMENDED READ: In the Year 2125: When Your Sexual Possibilities Will Be Practically Limitless

While we may be a few years away from lifelike robotic surrogates, we already have some intriguing early prototypes running around. Videophones, Facetime, and other examples of the tech are pretty much commonplace, allowing friends, family, and business associates to be projected onto phones, homes, or conference rooms.

All that was lacking has been mobility: the ability for users to actually interact with the person on the other side of their video call.

But now, through companies like Anybots, iRobot, MantaRobot, and many others, people thousands of miles away can physically work via robots with pretty much anyone, anywhere. Commonly referred to as telepresence, it’s already being used by doctors, teachers, and many others.

As with all technology, it no doubt will only be a few more years before sex will mix with telepresence. We can only hope that when that happens we’ll deal with it better than this very average film.

5. Replicants from Blade Runner (1982)

Tyrell: “More human than human is our motto.”

Concluding our tour of science-fiction films that are quickly becoming sexual fact is a true classic of the genre. Smoky, dour, noir, bleak, and totally mesmerizing, Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner explores the impact of replicants, artificial humans so indistinguishable from the flesh-and-blood variety they can only be detected by trained specialists.

And, when they invariably go rogue, they get hunted down by blade runners.

Based on the classic science-fiction novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner asks one key question: what is human? When Deckard (Harrison Ford) is tasked to track down and “retire” a group of replicants, he faces serious moral quandaries about them as well as himself, especially when he falls in love with one.

While we are quite far away from actually creating a totally convincing artificial human, we have begun to make some incredible baby-steps, including in a moment of irony that almost seems like the beginning of another science-fiction film, Hanson Robotics created a simulacrum of Philip K. Dick himself which went missing a few years ago.

So microwave some popcorn, make yourself comfy on the couch, and fire up some of these cinematic explorations of the world of tomorrow. But keep in mind that as you do, their fanciful looks at the future of sex are closer than you think.

Image sources: IMDB

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Escapism can take many interesting and frequently arousing forms

Content Warning: Dissociation from Physical Reality

The joint nests finger-thick on the ashtray, its smoke still warming your lungs, numbing your mind. You eye your dating accounts on the cellphone, no longer matching just scrolling through all the apps, the failed conversations. A celebration of your incompetence at finding a partner, even for one night.

Cannabis starts to take effect, numbing the part of your brain generating what you used to give.

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Weed had always helped. When life got too much, the smoke carried your thoughts away into blissful detachment. But then you returned from that date—the Date—and weed could not help you. Weed gave you insomnia.

You first thought of it as a date, but they were already pitching it as the Date. A mysticism and uniqueness to it, because the girl was special. Not in any conventional way though. The Date was a service, and the girl a product of the new company, Build a Lover.

By the time the date was done, it was like a religion, and it was impossible for you not to capitalize the word in your head. The girl was divinity, because she had lived inside your mind, growing alongside you. The perfect partner, fine-tuned to your desires. Build a Lover bought your data, made the girl, and even though you knew you could never afford the subscription money, you went out with her, because they offered a free trial. Nice of them to do so, huh? Well, they did use your data after all.

But the trial was over with the Date, so you lost sleep, and the weed plunged you into a loop of intrusive thoughts. Because now you’d never see her again.

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You tried bargaining with the tech lead, the project manager, but found no leeway. It made sense that such things were expensive. They had people to train the model of your perfect partner, but after the software was ready it had to sustain itself. 

Adaptive AI to process the immensity of information that clouds the real world, which needed stacks of graphic processing units that spanned a room larger than your apartment. Rent and electricity bills beyond your pay grade.

Instead they sold you on something more affordable, and that was when it hit you. They never meant for this corporeal robo-wife to be the product. The Date was the advertisement. They meant to sell you on a virtual version, a controlled environment where her personality would interact with you without having to filter the overwhelming noise of your analog world. 

Your life savings, for this VR version of a perfect waifu. But it was okay. They had an installment plan.

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The joint, used up, drops into the ashtray. Surrounded by twelve screens, you lean back on the VR chair as electrodes from the armrest and back press against your skin. As the headset settles on your scalp, cold metal presses your temples and electric warmth hugs your brain—isolating thoughts, readying neurons for isekai download.

“Want me to massage your brain, master?” the anime girl says from the twelfth panel of your visor. Anime is simpler than 3D, less resources, lower cost. But that’s convenient, isn’t it? You prefer the anime, and more money was an excuse to buy extra girlfriends. Enough spare to get your own master class at coding romantic partners to perfection.

A massage would be more than welcome, sweetheart, you think (no need to speak, your waifus read your mind).

The rest of the panels are still loading, blinking spirals, then pixelated outlines, their contrast sharpening every moment, just as the real world fades away. Partners trained on your own data, nourished by neural networks fine-tuned to your soul.

Why communicate with humans, deal with rejection, heartbreak, disappointment, when digital surrogates fool your circuits to drug-like depths of divine delight?

Your awkward approach attempts are buried in the past. No more drinks spilled on your face, no giggles judging you for daring to punch up. You’ll never need to understand women, now that fem-algorithms have been refined to understand you. Harem-blessed, society isn’t relevant, only carnal desire.

Cannabis smoke licks out your palate, and then the sensation vanishes, your tongue neurons already synced and isekai’d. The warmth of vapors stolen with a wet kiss from your twelfth waifu.

In the VR setting of your visor, your keyboard appears at your command, replicating the world your body still resides in. You crack your knuckles, snap a nail you haven’t clipped in over four months. You hear the snap, but you don’t feel it—sex-digitized, implanted with circuits, your senses know no mortal pain.

As your fingers dance on the keyboard, programming your next wife, the pins digging your scalp tingle, sending pleasure down your spine.

It’s not just the twelfth, the others join her, but download isn’t enough. This world still clings to you, the life of struggle, disappointment. Of being unwanted by everyone. You’ve convinced yourself it is a lie, that the digital is all there is—but still it hurts. You want to let go.

In near-synchrony your waifus whisper: “Pressure will leave your shoulders, master. We’ll upload you entirely, when this massage is done.”

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Image Sources: Depositphotos

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Father and son share a fascinatingly organic/orgasmic view of the future

Science fiction cinema may have given us masterpieces like Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and the bubble gum delights of Star Wars, but it took David Cronenberg, and as of 2012, his son Brandon, to give us—albeit often unsettling—glimpses at human sexuality’s potential evolution.

Shivers (1975)  

The elder Cronenberg may have begun exploring similar ideas in experimental films like Stereo and Crimes of the Future; it took Shivers, aka They Came From Within, to establish him as a groundbreaking director with a penchant for disturbingly erotic body-horror imagery.

Set within the claustrophobic confines of an ultra-modern Montreal apartment complex, Shiver’s plot revolves around the illicit creation of a bioengineered parasite, which, once taking hold of its host, drives them into a sex-fueled frenzy.

Like many of Cronenberg’s works, Shivers relishes showing the dark side of future sexuality, noticeably when technologies like genetic engineering get in on the fun.  

Though frightening, the concept of a desire-enhancing or more beneficially regulating, self-contained organism is intriguing. Grown, not manufactured, it could be affordable, and sufficiently genetically tweaked, it would mesh perfectly with its host’s system, reducing the possibility of rejection.

eXistenZ (1999)

Reality isn’t what it once was in Cronenberg’s latter film, which deftly inserts his fondness for organic ickiness into an endlessly recursive virtual experience for its characters and the audience alike.

As the old saying goes, getting there is half the fun, and in the case of eXistenZ, the titular game exists as a classic, old-school console or, during its initial introduction, a squishy, glistening, pulsating organism not played with buttons but plugged directly into the player’s spine.

RECOMMENDED READ: The 15 Sexiest Robots in Movie History

Interestingly, Cronenberg doesn’t depict eXistenZ as neither a positive or a negative, merely the biogenic McGuffin everyone’s pursuing.  

Again, cultivating rather than assembling pleasure devices or virtual reality interfaces has a respectable number of pros in their favor, and when they die, could be composted or used to make biofuels.

Crimes Of The Future (2022)

Sharing its name with his early 1970s short, Cronenberg’s 2022 Crimes Of The Future is jam-packed with increasingly outré concepts from a deathless/painless society for whom Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen)—aided by his wife Caprice (Léa Seydoux)—performs as a surgical artist to rebels fighting a ruthless government for the right to adapt their bodies to consume plastics and toxic waste.

Off to the side of all this is Tenser’s move away from today’s physical intimacy, as he succinctly puts it, “I’m afraid I’m not very good at the old sex.”  

Crimes of the Future intentionally or inadvertently shares a commonality with anti-sextech advocates who fear pleasure devices might supplant good, old-fashioned human sexuality.

Unsure if that’s Cronenberg’s intention, I prefer viewing the film’s message as more about the underground’s rejection of outdated societal norms by opting to evolve socially, psychologically, and sexually.

Antiviral (2012)

Not so much following in his father’s footsteps as contributing his unique perspective, Brandon Cronenberg’s second full-length release spins off today’s celebrity worshipers with a dash of medical fetishism by constructing a future where obsessed fans can get unsettlingly close to their favorite A-listers—by infecting themselves with their illnesses.

It may be hard to face, but considering our already celebrity-obsessed culture, it’s not difficult to imagine Antiviral’s fantasy eventually becoming a contemporary reality, especially in light of how many people are already willing to pay top dollar for a lock of a famous person’s hair, their worn clothing, or even more intimate aspects of their lives.

Infinity Pool (2023)

Like his father’s Crimes Of The Future, Brandon’s recent Infinity Pool is replete with enthralling possibilities.  The difference is in Crimes, bodies are inescapable prisons, while in Infinity Pool, they and the people whose minds inhabit them are as unendingly reproducible as they’re utterly disposable. 

A maze of interlocking who’s who, Infinity Pool plays havoc with the audience’s expectations, killing or, in some cases, psychologically warping its protagonist, James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård), over and over, steadily unpeeling his personality like a blood-soaked onion.

Infinity Pool’s reality might appear too far-fetched, but approximating it may not be.  For instance, keeping cloned or bioengineered copies of ourselves in storage, fitting each with a high-speed neural implant, using artificial intelligence to smooth out any problems and jumping from body to body, or putting one or more on personality-mirroring autopilot might give us a more benevolent version of Infinity Pool’s world—one where we could try on bodies or selves at a moment’s notice.

Flesh is here to stay

Despite the Cronenbergs’ shared fondness for viscera, father and son remain two of the few writer/directors willing to delve into some of our darkest, most disquieting sexual nightmares or, more troubling, our fantasies.  

In cinema, as well as the rise of new and perhaps potentially challenging sexual technologies, it’s up to us, the audience and/or consumers, to fear the future or dare to dream of a better one.
Image Sources: Depositphotos, IMDB

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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.

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