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Post by dem bones on Jul 16, 2022 9:37:45 GMT
Michel Parry & Milton Subotsky (eds.) – Sex in the 21st Century (Panther, 1979) Michel Parry and Milton Subotsky - The Shape of Things to Come?
Robert Silverberg – Push No More
Irving Feldman – The Near Perfection of the USSS
John Novotny – A Trick or Two
Robert Sheckley – Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?
Robert Silverberg – In the Group
Charles Beaumont – The Crooked Man
Isaac Asimov – What Is This Thing Called Love? (Playboy and the Slime God)
Fritz Leiber – Game for Motel Room
Alain Doremieux – The Vana
R. J. McGregor – The Perfect Gentleman
Robert Sheckley – Love, Incorporated
Miriam Allen deFord – A Way Out
Pan-Galactic Swingers Dept:
Steven Utley – Personal ColumnBlurb: The Shape of Sex to Come ...
Paranormal powers, or sexual conquest – the choice is that simple ...
No more problems between the sexes – because now there's only one
Group sex at five hundred miles – with a computer link up ...
Kidnapped by aliens for research purposes – and released again because Earth practices are disgusting ....
Sex has been around for quite a while – but it's never been like it is in the 21st Century!
SPECIAL OFFER TO READERS: a night to remember with a mutant Venusian – see Personal Column Day of the renegade sex-aid, love lies limp, too many lonely hearts in the cosmos, and a new clampdown on the love that dare not speak its name ... Robert Sheckley – Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?: ( Playboy, August 1969). Melisande Durr, vaguely happily married to Frank, has yet to experience orgasm when the postman delivers mystery parcel. Rom, a state of the art, multi-tasking, super-intelligent vacuum cleaner is also a superior masseur. Let's just say he gives good "tension cancellation." Charles Beaumont – The Crooked Man: ( Playboy, August 1955). It is THE FUTURE. Heterosexuality has been outlawed by Senator Knudsen, it's sick, perverted practitioners hunted down and cured by the authorities (unless Queer-bashers get to them first). The net closes in on Jesse Martin and Mina Kirkpatrick. Robert Sheckley – Love, Incorporated: ( Playboy, Sept. 1956). Alfred Simon arrives on Earth from his home planet, Kazanga IV, desperate to experience this crazy human thing called love. A wrong turn leads him to a shooting gallery where you can fire live bullets at taunting gals ("Step right up and knock one off!"). The extra-terrestrial is appalled - why would anyone want to do something horrible as that? - but the proprietor assures him, "you'll be back." At last Alfred arrives at the offices of Love Inc., the highly respected company who have successfully commoditized unconditional love, "the exact self-same feelings that poets and writers have raved about for thousands of years." And it's true. There's no catch. Steven Utley – Personal Column: Exclusive to the book, a FREE contacts page for Pan-Galactic Swingers. John Novotny - A Trick or Two: ( MF&SF, July 1957). Jesse Haimes is forever slobbering over Laura, whose having none of it. Best pal Tom assures him that each of has one supernatural talent; discover his own, and Jesse will have Laura's clothes off — his secretary, Carol's, too — before you can say Abracadabra. To be continued .... Sheckley's Love, Incorperated and The Crooked Man both outstanding. The personal column is a joy.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 18, 2022 11:15:41 GMT
Robert Silverberg - Push No More: (Thomas N. Scortia, [ed.], Strange Bedfellows, 1972). We meet Harry Blaufeld as an awkward, spotty fifteen-year-old, angsty, confused and terrified he'll never lose his virginity. The poor guy is way past boss-eyed with desire to get his hands on whatever those things are Cindy has stuffed up her sweater, but she's having none of it .... until Harry snaps, inadvertently demonstrates his power to "push" objects with his mind by sending her backward across the room and dumping her on her arse. Harry's been reading up on his strange talent. Seems his sexual frustration has unleashed a poltergeist under his control. Cindy is so smitten, she allows him to take her to the cinema, even guides his hands where they've so wanted to go since he first clapped eyes on 'em. It's bingo night! Alas, fulfilment comes at the cruellest price. Robert Silverberg - In the Group: ( Unfamiliar Territory, 1973). "One-on-one was good enough for the human race for thousands of years."
"It was a prison. It was a trap. We're out of the trap at last. You won't get me back in it."It is the future (actually, it is now; Silverberg's vision of 21st century virtual group sex has proved eerily prophetic). Friends banded into groups daily plugged into their computers to enjoy a mental circle jerk as two from their number go at it hammer and tongs onscreen. Murray wants out of his group. He's committed the unpardonable sin of falling in love with co-performer, Kay, and wants her to himself. Kay, in turn, has feelings for Murray — or did, before he confessed his sick perversion. Despised as the vilest sexual deviant, Murray is banished in disgrace. Michel & Milton are most surely a dream team, but, not being that keen on SF, I wasn't particularly looking forward to reading their lousy collection of stupid stories about people having it off with little green men from Nebula IV, or some such bollocks. Seven stories down and it's reminding me of Chetwynd-Hayes' Tales of Terror From Outer Space, in that it's giving me a much more enjoyable reading experience than I'd dared hope for.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 19, 2022 13:57:42 GMT
Isaac Asimov – What Is This Thing Called Love?: ( Amazing Stories, March 1961, as Playboy and the Slime God). Strangers Marge Skidmore and Charlie Greenwood are abducted aboard a flying saucer by B. E. M.'s of the "spindly creatures, dripping mucous" variant while they await the train home. Using a 'science fiction' space travel story as his manual, Investigator Botax instructs the couple to "cooperate" (trans: reproduce) before an outraged Captain Garm. "After thinking of the foul habits you've been describing, I don't think I'll ever bud again." Botax unfairly castigated as a one sick and twisted slime beast.
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Post by dem bones on Jul 21, 2022 7:02:17 GMT
R. J. McGregor – The Perfect Gentleman: ( Startling Stories, Sept 1952). Ellen was almost too scared to try creating her ideal man. Stranded on an unpeopled planet millions of miles from Earth, Ellen, an almost virgin at 27, finally opens the Castaway Companion emergency pack, containing the Galaxy Inc.'s grow-your-perfect partner kit. All that's required of the customer is that they plant the seed, visualize their ideal companion, and follow the instructions. This might prove a little difficult, as Ellen has never seen a man naked ... THIS PRODUCT, IF HONESTLY CREATED, SHOULD CONTAIN NORMAL SEX FUNCTIONS, INCLUDING BIOLOGICAL REPRODUCTIVE POWERS, WHICH GALAXY, INC, CONSIDERS ESSENTIAL FOR EMERGENCY COLONIZATION PURPOSES .... Ellen calls him 'George.' He's .... not the man he might have been. Irving Feldman - The Near Perfection of the USSS: ( Retort, Autumn 1951). The United Social Serve State takes the war versus the twin evils of juvenile delinquency and sexual perversion into the classroom. Today we join the eminent psychologist, Sand Froid, and Miss Melinda Washington, prior to their public demonstration of coitus before an audience of 8-10 year olds. "As you already know, this is only the intermediate course in sex education. Next term we shall offer the advanced class for which all who pass now will be eligible. The various perversions will be discussed (those of you who took Elementary will know that some of these are sodomy, bestiality, homosexuality, corpse-defiling and many others). I will again be the lecturer." Not sure I got the point of this one, to be honest, but it's not dull.
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Post by andydecker on Jul 21, 2022 11:02:05 GMT
Irving Feldman - The Near Perfection of the USSS: ( Retort, Autumn 1951). The United Social Serve State takes the war versus the twin evils of juvenile delinquency and sexual perversion into the classroom. Today we join the eminent psychologist, Sand Froid, and Miss Melinda Washington, prior to their public demonstration of coitus before an audience of 8-10 year olds. "As you already know, this is only the intermediate course in sex education. Next term we shall offer the advanced class for which all who pass now will be eligible. The various perversions will be discussed (those of you who took Elementary will know that some of these are sodomy, bestiality, homosexuality, corpse-defiling and many others). I will again be the lecturer." Not sure I got the point of this one, to be honest, but it's not dull. I seem to remember a sketch by Monty Python which had the same concept. John Cleese as a teacher of a boy's class? |
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Post by samdawson on Jul 21, 2022 12:42:42 GMT
I seem to remember a sketch by Monty Python which had the same concept. John Cleese as a teacher of a boy's class? From their film The Meaning of Life. Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRD0-7NSXd8 |
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Post by Dr Strange on Jul 21, 2022 13:55:42 GMT
I seem to remember a sketch by Monty Python which had the same concept. John Cleese as a teacher of a boy's class? From their film The Meaning of Life. Available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRD0-7NSXd8That reminded me of this (from Not Only... But Also, Series 2, 1966) - |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 3, 2022 6:13:09 GMT
Fritz Leiber – Game for Motel Room: (MF&SF, March 1963). "You play this nonsense game pretty seriously. Like you've read nothing but science fiction all your life." How can sexy Sonja convince sceptical bedmate Burton that, not only is she is an extra-terrestrial from an infinitely advanced civilization, but her husband will go to wildly disproportionate lengths to punish her serial infidelity?
Miriam Allen deFord – A Way Out: (Stephen Goldin [ed.], The Alien Condition, 1973). Marpelm, a Kyrian delegate, is sent to Earth on diplomatic business by some bastard with whom he is engaged in eternal feud. Kyrian detests the place, it's dominant life form in particular. Most of all, he hates that he can't acquire a sex-mate - even the professionals known as "call girls" won't have his tentacle anywhere up them: you'd think these revolting, deformed imbeciles would jump at the chance of getting it on with a handsome "one-eyed octopus freak".
Marpelm can't take it any longer. He needs to get home, but how? "He must commit some deed that the planet considered a crime — preferably a crime involving moral turpitude — and be expelled and deported."
So the Kyrian makes up his brilliant mind to abduct the President General, Sharon Chester VI, who, truth be told, is almost a looker by earth's lowly standards.
Alain Doremieux – The Vana: (Damon Knight [ed.], Thirteen French Science-Fiction Stories, 1965). It is the near future. The world having become catastrophically overpopulated, male-female cohabitation is forbidden to those under the age of thirty. In desperation, Slovic, a 25-year-old beatnik, invests in a Vana, a sterile extra-terrestrial imported from a faraway, all-female planet. The Vana physically resemble earth women and, better still, they were "made for love." Slovic couldn't care that his friends and neighbours soon ostracize the lovers. It's all going so well with Sylvie until one night he catches a bad news broadcast. Even so, he reflects, it's far better to die young having known love and enjoyed a brilliant sex life while in one's prime.
What do you know, I can now claim to have read a sci-fi anthology. Guess it helped that the stories are plucked from the pulps for the most part and easy on the brain — and even *choke* fun.
Given Michel's track record — the many sexually explicit stories showcased in The Devil's Kisses and Mayflower Black Magic series' — the selection shows extraordinary self-restraint. Perhaps Milton Subotsky provided a calming influence.
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Post by andydecker on Aug 3, 2022 9:49:07 GMT
Given Michel's track record — the many sexually explicit stories showcased in The Devil's Kisses and Mayflower Black Magic series' — the selection shows extraordinary self-restraint. Perhaps Milton Subotsky provided a calming influence. It is rather that you won't find much sexually explicit in pre-70s sf. Aside from the covers readers used to be a conservative bunch. Alain Doremieux is kind of a surprise though. He wrote pretty much at the time, translated and edited the French version of F&FS. Like a lot of his collegues he is a bit of an acquired taste. |
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