Re: Good literate erotic fantasy/SF?


"Joe Bernstein" <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e1oijq$24r$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
....
Much of Tiptree's work deals with sexual behaviour
with significant elements changed. I can think of

"I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill's Side"
"Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death"
"The Screwfly Solution"

Granted, but of these, only the middle one has characters having sex
(by, well, conventional definitions, anyway) and those characters
are aliens.

IAAFMHOTCHS has humans having some kind of relations with aliens - which are
probably sexual, from the human's pov, though certainly ambiguous. TSS has
the sexual urge being changed into violence - so there is an end to all
human sexual relations by the end of the story.

You left out an example of Tiptree doing both; from <Meet Me at
Infinity>, not previously published, "Trey of Hearts". Also
notable for this (if otherwise unsatisfactory) is "The Earth Doth
Like a Snake Renew".

It's something that permeates most of Tiptree, to some extent.

Philip José Farmer has some stories along the same line.

So as long as we're on short stories, I also want to mention a
rather extraordinarily erotic one I read last night, Ray
Vukcevich's "There Is Danger":

"There is danger in regarding her as a goddess, danger in
speculating about the lazy smile she directs at me over the
Dover sole, the lemony finger bowls, the steaming rice, and
bright green spears of asparagus, her gray eyes dancing with
golden candlelight, danger in the provocative tilt of her head,
her long chestnut hair flowing over her bare shoulder.
"Selena reaches over the table and traces her fingertips
softly over my hand. My hair bursts into flames. I know she
notices, but she chooses not to comment. Our waiter runs over
and pours a pitcher of ice water over my head.
"My ears will be red."

Five pages long, it is, and like most of the rest of the stories in
Vukcevich's <Meet Me in the Moon Room>, fantastical, though in
this case not even minimally science fictional. (Usually his
most explicitly science fictional stories are mocking s.f.
tropes, as in "White Guys in Space", anyway.)

It's an example of how fantasy (and sometimes SF) can be used to say things
that can't be shown in more literal forms.


....

J/


.

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