Erotica
at its best invites readers to open their minds, to explore the rich quantum
multi-verse of the human condition, correlating our most basic instincts with
our most complex emotions, finding the wormhole-like connections between the
subtlest physical stimuli and the deepest wellsprings of thought. Science
fiction, too, at its finest, tells a richly human story from a uniquely
informed point of view. Whether we call it sf, sci-fi, futurism, or speculative fiction,
the genre is ultimately “about” illuminating uniquely human truths, exploring
the limits of human potential, ethics, and the nature of imagination
itself.
The
science in sci-fi must be good science—the sounder the better—though it does
not necessarily have to be “hard science”; the fictional dimension allows for
speculation and even visionary flights of fancy. If we can imagine it, it’s
ultimately possible after all. Yet no amount of fancy “tech” can ever
substitute for the story itself, the narrative, the plot, though it be old as
legend itself, wrapped in whatever dazzling new guise the author may choose,
must always, in the end, illuminate, enrich and enliven our present human
condition. (At a certain point in my
young adulthood, I came to see Star Trek
less as an idealized vision of the future, than as a kind of sanitized cautionary
tale about the dark side of technology. The show (especially from The Next Generation onward) seemed to
offer weekly visions of humans frustrated and victimized by the very
technologies designed to serve them. Especially in the case of Star Trek and its various spinoffs,
contemporary futurism tells us more about the time in which it was envisioned
than it ever does about the unfolding of the future. Sci-fi is more often than
not a metaphor for the present, an elaborate projection of its creator’s most immediate fears and
prejudices. In retrospect, we think more about the sexist Mad Men-era attitudes of Captain Kirk than about the quaint retro
portrayals of Twenty-third century computers and communicators, all outstripped
and rendered obsolete by reality within a few short decades.)
There’s
nothing new about sci-fi-inflected erotica or the exploration of erotic themes
in mainstream sf. One need only reach for a copy of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love or, his glorious valedictory novel, To Sail Beyond the Sunset to discover an
engaging, literary speculative fiction that positively teems with sex. What is
particularly refreshing about Heinlein is his unapologetically sex-positive
attitude, though sometimes it seems, his portrayals of communal free-love, open
marriage, polyamorie, pan-sexuality, and guiltless incest were included more
for their shock value at the time than for their contribution to serious
intellectual discourse or the expansion of human consciousness, a good sharp
poke at the reactionary fringe, rather than a “how-to” manual for the hippie
generation. That these books did help expand the consciousness of an age,
provide inspiration and impetus for broader visions of love and community, was
certainly all to the good, though undoubtedly not the author’s primary
objective.
The
seven stories in this stimulating, sometimes disquieting collection of erotic
speculative fiction portray diverse futures for humanity, some Bladerunner-ishly bleak and gritty,
others stark and sterile as the gleaming civilization portrayed in Huxley’s Brave New World, though all of them
conceive realms in which technology has either enhanced or fundamentally
altered the physical and psychological boundaries of the sexual experience. Transhumanism,
as editor Gabrielle Harbowy explains in her introduction, is the “belief or
theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental
limitations, especially by means of science and technology. . .
Our minds and bodies are machines,
and like machines they wear down. Things break and need replacing. Or new
innovations can inspire upgrades that significantly enhance capacity or
potential. But what good is living longer, stronger and harder if we’re not
playing longer, stronger and harder, too? . . . (these stories) explore what we
might become when the ability to augment our bodies is equally a means to
augment our pleasure-seeking experience.
In
each story, the reader is invited to imagine and explore the fascinating erotic
potential of these technological enhancements. Telepathy and shared sensations
become a simple matter of neural interface, as in J. Pape’s Sweet Memories, and A Trap Self-Sprung by Nalu Kalani, offering a macabre twist on the
conventional D/s narrative, with a bit of tentacle titillation thrown in for good
measure. Sex and virtual reality (and yet more tentacles!) drive Nobilis Reed’s
Cheese, though the writing is a bit
too tech-heavy to sustain erotic interest. Sasha Payne’s pulsing, punkish A Sweeter Science is reminiscent of some
of the great post-apocalyptic epics like Bladerunner
and Akira—especially the former in
its portrayal of forbidden human-robot love. Docking Maneuvers by Cynthia Hamilton may be the most purely
entertaining story of the bunch, relating a steamy f/f encounter with some
extremely imaginative writing about sex toys of the future.
Peter
Tupper’s Upgrade is a beautiful,
melancholy, elegiac but ultimately uplifting tale of one man’s final memories
of physical sensation before transitioning to a new form, leaving behind and
transcending the body in order to become a being of pure intellect. But not
abandoning human curiosity. “When there
is no possibility of loss,” Tupper tells us, “action becomes trivial. Even if
we can’t die, We can feel fear, and feel even more ashamed because of that
fear. We need to try new things. We need to find something that scares Us.”
Here,
readers are at last invited to ponder some of the ethical dilemmas posed by
Transhumanist (H+) philosophy. What does it mean to sense, but not to feel? Has
rapid technological advance ultimately doomed humanity in outpacing the natural
course of our evolution? Can even the most sophisticated enhancements ever
truly displace the sublime, simple pleasure of human touch?
“Yes.” She reached across the table
and laid her hand across mine. I inhaled and willed my hand not to jerk away.
Her fingers curled around the back of my hand. “That will be lost when we’re
giant interstellar squid Buddha demigods or whatever. I don’t know if I want to
say goodbye to that.”
That has cost her, I realized.
Being so forward was a huge effort for her, just as it would have been for me.
Apparently neither of us were early adapters. Never really comfortable with our
current job, relationship, family. Endlessly thinking about alternatives, but
rarely if ever acting on them.
Harbowy
has perhaps saved the best for last with Peggy Barnett’s marvelous, lyrical,
horrifying Teneo, Tenere, Tenue. Pygmalion
meets grunge in this vision of a world
in which have-nots are forced to scrounge and scavenge while the privileged
classes cast off their corpses, preserving their heads to await a brighter,
even more heavily enhanced future. Here, a young, lonely artist forages
medical-waste dumps, seeking body parts for a new, daringly macabre sculpture,
the face like the image of the Madonna in an ancient icon, the body that of a
many-armed goddess with the discarded hands of dead women.
Hands are the most human part of
us, the part that reaches and gives and takes. They are the parts that made us
what we are, homo sapiens, the dominant species: the opposable thumb, the
ability to hold a paintbrush and make marks on the side of a cave, to strike
flint, to lay fire, to gather wheat and pound flower, to sew warmer clothing
and lash together thresh roofs, to build spears and point out wounded animals,
to skin and flay them. Hands built tools which built brain capacity which built
speech, which built communication, which built laws, which built civilizations,
which created kings and emperors, the poor and the rich, which created the
disenfranchised, the discontent, the disagreeable, which created revolution and
war, and weapons to tear down walls, and regimes, and lives. Hands strike
strings, drums; hands craft horns and flutes; hands notch pans and dance along
keys. Hands can wrap a bristle, grind ink, plane a handle, smooth out paper,
cut a nib, write a poem. Hands can weave and cut and sew. Hands create and
creation becomes culture, becomes meaning, becomes mutual understanding and
compassion. Hands have made us. And in the end, hands unmake us.
Science
writer Ronald Bailey has called H+ “the movement that epitomizes the most
daring, creative, imaginative and idealistic aspirations of humanity.” He might
well have been describing the stories in Jacked
In as well. Recommended.