Just For The Hell Of It -

- and because it kind-of, sort-of ties to the re-release of The Bachelor Machine, my science fiction erotica collection, I have just started a little Tumblr site called Rude Mechanicals, full of images of sex and robots and sexy robots and robots having sex and stuff like that ... it ALSO kind-of, sort-of ties to my very-fun collection of erotic stories, Rude Mechanicals. 

Kit O'Connell Likes The Bachelor Machine

And The Bachelor Machine publicity continues!  This one, though, is very special: a review by my great pal, Kit O'Connell, on the SF Review Site, about the first edition of The Bachelor Machine,.  Kit also wrote a wonderful, and touching, forward to the new edition.

 

Justine is a high-priced hooker that is wired for a perverse but unique kind of thrill. Thanks to extensive implants and modifications (such as rerouting of arteries and internal oxygen tanks), she can have her throat slit by a client who can then fulfill necrophilic fantasies on a body that can wake up again, save them from criminal charges, and collect a hefty fee. In M. Christian's story "Everything But the Smell of Lilies," her pimp asks her to stage a distraction from a crime and act as a real victim, placing her in the hands of a paramedic with a taste for actual corpses. Suddenly, the difference between even a realistic simulation and the genuine article is brought into sharp focus. M. Christian relishes these kinds of subtle distinctions and moral conflicts, and they appear again and again in The Bachelor Machine, this widely published erotica author's first science fiction anthology.

In the last century, technology brought countless changes to human sexuality from the refinement of the vibrator to the invention of Viagra. Culturally, the ongoing revolution in the rights of women and gays in and out of the bedroom and the rise of the AIDS virus makes sex seem like at once a more wonderful and dangerous experience than ever before. It is surprising then that more science fiction writers do not speculate on the implications of tomorrow's technological and social innovations, but it is clear from The Bachelor Machine that Christian is not just well-traveled in this strange country but a native of the territory.

The author is not content to merely use the trappings of the genre to set up a cheap erotic thrill. Each story is relatively short, but the sex always relies on the technology and both exist to further the plot and development of character. In Christian's hands the kinkiest acts can be the sweetest, and the most vanilla of couplings can suddenly seem twisted.

"Eulogy" is set in a future where death is almost unheard of, and a consensual act of oral sex becomes repugnant when we learn that both partners are aware that the recipient of the act carries a rare and truly fatal sexually-transmitted disease.

The use of technology is equally deft. M. Christian clearly loves imagining new uses for implants, cybernetic augmentation, and wearable computing. In the haunting "Winged Memory," a prostitute wears 'whoreware,' which includes a bracelet that charges cash cards and eyewear that cycles from green to red when a client's time is up. Concepts like sexual orientation are turned on their ear in stories such as "Fully Accessorized, Baby," where two women make love with fully functional prosthetic penises and a cybernetic arm made of teak. Some partners lack gender entirely, as in the entirely cybernetic soldier and his equally machine partner who appear in "Skin-Effect."

The writing is at once skillfully sensual -- with sex that never becomes repetitive or boring -- and quick, direct, and razor-sharp enough to remind one of cyberpunk's finest moments. I never felt as though I was being lectured about the setting; instead we discover it directly through the eyes of each story's protagonist. Even the quickest and raunchiest of the stories resonate with deeper themes and subtle nuances that urge continued reflection and repeat readings. "Technophile" deserves to go down in history for bearing one of science fiction's immortal opening lines: "I almost lost my virginity at fifteen, but his batteries ran low;" it also displays both Christian's tender side and his sense of humor. This story concerns a young man who begins his first sexual explorations with a lover whose genitals are incompatible with the wiring in his home.

It is hard to pick out weaknesses in such a strong debut collection. A few stories suffer slightly from their brevity and would probably have been more effective as longer works. I also felt the collection was lacking in contextual information, such as a list of when and where stories first appeared in print; some are previously published and some appear here for the first time but there is no way to tell which is which. I'd also love it if the stories included some author's notes about the inspiration or ideas behind them, and the inclusion of the fascinating dialogue between Christian and Circlet Press' Cecilia Tan (an extra provided only to reviewers) would have further enhanced the volume.

The Bachelor Machine succeeds on every level as both erotica and speculative fiction; even the weakest entries entertain, shock, arouse, or amuse. If he continues writing in this vein, the author is sure to make waves within science fiction. With talent and vision to spare, M. Christian belongs on your reading list, too.

Locus Online Likes The Bachelor Machine

As part of my perpetual publicity push for the re-release of my science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine (out now from Circlet Books), here's a wonderful review of the first edition by Cynthia Ward from the eminent Locus Online:

In the 1980s, I read an article about some noted visionaries of the bold future of virtual reality. The visionaries uniformly denied that virtual sex would be a factor in this brave new technology. Apparently the visionaries hadn't noticed that several existing technologies were significantly subsidized by sex, among them the phone companies (by 900 numbers), Big Pharma (by The Pill), and the new videotape industry (by X-rated sales and rentals). Here in the Twenty-First Century, though we're still waiting for VR, phone companies enjoy the additional subsidy of surfers seeking X-rated websites, penile implants and Viagra keep multinational medical companies big in the stock market, and video stores add X-rated DVDs.

SF authors are bolder, or maybe just less blind, than the VR visionaries; they routinely incorporate varieties of cybersex in their fiction. But SF authors rarely center plot and theme on sex, and the professional and semiprofessional SF magazines rarely publish speculative sex stories. Yet the enormous sexual changes of the last few years, both trivial (porn spam) and profound (legalized gay/lesbian marriage in Canada), demand more SF exploration of the subject. Fortunately, on the small-press margins of SF, at the border shared with the erotica genre, a few writers are speculating intelligently and imaginatively about the future of sex. Among the best-known and best of the erotic-SF writers is M. Christian.

The stories in his new collection, The Bachelor Machine, pass the litmus tests of both the SF and erotica genres. Take out the tech and there's no story; take out the sex and there's no story. This description may lead those unfamiliar with SF erotica to suspect that every story is about getting off with the aid of futuristic technologies, and that's true as far as it goes. But that's not going nearly far enough.

The stories in The Bachelor Machine are not about sex, though they're stuffed with sexual acts; the stories are about what sex means. M. Christian is writing about the psychology of being human, and he often does so by exploring sexual possibilities and realities that are rarely discussed, even in private conversation. He not only thinks forbidden thoughts, he extrapolates them in the finest SF fashion.

The aptly named "Technophile" pushes technofetishism to the ultimate as it explicates an idea most authors (especially male authors) would never imagine, let alone write about. To put it bluntly, "Technophile" eroticizes castration. A character has his penis cut off and replaced with the top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art "Long Thrust." Another character wants to lose his virginity to the technological phallus, which he sees as hotter and better than the old-fashion flesh kind. But the cutting-edge implant needs a recharge and remains limp throughout the encounter, a bitter irony.

In the decaying post-industrial future of "Winged Memory", Dusk does something most people couldn't imagine, and would find horrifying if they did: he sells (and loses) his memory of losing his virginity. He does this to buy thirty minutes with a prostitute "walking the street, eyes available red." To have her again, Dusk keeps selling memories, until he doesn't know who he is, or who this woman is that he inexplicably wants. 

The stories "Bluebelle" and "Skin-Effect" break taboo by making explicit the sexual undercurrents of the savagery and killing in nearly every Hollywood cop and military action flick.

In "Guernica", several individuals meet secretly in a basement to enjoy sex acts outlawed by a repressive Twenty-First-Century government. Their practices, costumes, and toys deliberately, ironically, terrifyingly recreate the uniforms, actions, and tools of the cops who would arrest and punish — and kill — them.

In "Butterflies$", a hacker immersed in the full-sensory, Disney-perfect Glade of the Datasea finds herself assaulted — literally — by a flock of beautiful butterfly-sprites. I generally hate stories about rape/violation, yet Christian's skill, imagery, and insight kept me reading to the end... and I never felt violated by the story. It's an impressive achievement.

In "Hackwork", Rosselyn Moss works for ExpressTaxi as a body that cyber-riders hire to carry their consciousness around New Orleans. They dictate her actions and, inevitably, drive her body into sexual encounters. One night, she is distressed to find herself whipping a beautiful young stranger — and even more distressed to discover the stranger loves it.

Like Rosselyn, the narrator of "Switch" is a rent girl. She isn't a taxi, but she may have an even more troubling job, for she never remembers who her clients were, or what they did to her. M. Christian travels deep into taboo territory by demonstrating that, for some, being so thoroughly controlled, so completely owned as to remember nothing, is the ultimate turn-on.

In "Everything but the Smell of Lilies", Justine Moor is a whore with a deeply creepy specialty. She's been turned into "a hardwired dead girl, a chilling and stiffening hooker", dying over and over for money. If this bleeding-edge cyberpunk extrapolation isn't disturbing enough, Justine finds herself lying, a motionless but fully-conscious corpse, in an ambulance staffed by a necrophiliac. (In case it's not already abundantly clear, some stories in The Bachelor Machine are not intended to arouse.)

Many of M. Christian's grittily urban stories are cyberpunk; "Heartbreaker" pushes the form to a logical extreme. When an undercover cop sets up the bust of an outlaw biohacker, the two women don't just have sex, they withdraw very special interface cables from inside themselves and connect them: "Linked, each hardwired into the other's genitals, mixed and matched, they surged and merged."

In "Thin Dog", fans jack their minds into a full-sensory experience of what it's like to be superstar reactor-rock band Thin Dog. Members Johna, Paul, Georgina, and Jingo (ahem) play instruments that are nanotech implants woven through their bodies; playing includes on-"stage" couplings and quadruplings.

Some stories not only share 1980s-cyberpunk's fascination with Japanese culture, but show the influence of "anime" (Japanese animation). In many ways, the woman and situation in "State" are ideal for anime. The prostitute Fields lives in Japan and earns her living by pretending to be an almost mythically superior Japanese-made sex android. Her masquerade must always achieve perfection — from biochemically lowered body temperature, to "incredibly durable bonding polymer" applied daily to every millimeter of flesh, to behavior in orgasm — because her clients must never suspect she's human. 

Not every story is cyberpunk. "The New Motor" is an amusing steampunk entertainment set in Paul Di Filippo territory. Nineteenth-Century spiritualist John Murray Spear has a vision of "the Association of Electricizers... spirits with a mechanical turn of mind," and begins proselytizing for the creation of "the Physical Savior of the Race... the New Motor!" This charismatic messiah for "a new Age of Man Through Machine" leads his followers to transcendentalist New England, where they settle in the conservative town of Lynn, Massachusetts. Seducing and neglecting a particularly fervent follower proves seer Spear is dangerously blind to certain human truths.

The collection has some flaws. Some futures don't seem entirely plausible (a minor problem, and one hardly confined to the erotic-SF subgenre). A couple of stories are vague in their SFnal elements. I never quite figured out what "Bluebelle" was (a micro Death Star? a flying fembot? a round mecha?). It takes too long to learn what the futuristic technology is and does in "Eulogy". The endings of "Eulogy" and "Winged Memory" left me wondering just what was happening. And frustratingly, the book provides no copyright data, providing no information about if or when the stories were previously published. 

M. Christian's prose is strong and supple and sometimes lyrical. If you don't like naughty language or graphic descriptions of sex, you'd better steer clear of his work. But if you like smart, taboo-breaking SF, then read The Bachelor Machine.

Suicide Girls Talk To Me

It may be an oldie but it's still a very goodie ... and it's also another bit of Bachelor Machine publicity: an interview with yers truly by no less than the Suicide Girls Web site!

The Bachelor Machine - The Cover!

As part of my spew of desperate self-aggrandisement for the release of The Bachelor Machine (new edition), let me give a huge, and very well-deserved, THANKS to my pal and a magnificent artist, Wynn Ryder, who did the wonderful cover.  As a treat, here's also a look at an early version of the new cover as well:

Clean Sheets Loves The Bachelor Machine

In celebration of the release of my brand-new edition of my science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine, from Circlet Press, here's a rave review of the original book by William Dean, from Clean Sheets:

 

When mega-names in the science fiction world like Mike Resnick and Paul Di Filippo praise your work, you know you've gone supernova. When someone like Cecilia Tan writes the introduction for your latest collection, you know the included tales are white hot, sensual, and as erotic as it gets. Such are the credentials, among others, of M. Christian's just published The Bachelor Machine.

After an uncertain time, their moans and cries and incoherent bursts of near-speech, near-philosophical-balderdash, synched perfectly then climbed, a pair of syncopated screams, toward a deity that they hoped to perhaps outdo with their engineered divinity, their mechanical savior.

The machines, the bio-engineered, the alien, and the passionate humans in this collection of stories are, indeed, on a trip to tomorrow where the lusting may not always be easy, but the resulting orgasms are transcendent. I haven't read such syncopated prose since Filippo's The Steampunk Trilogy nor such riffing sensual descriptions since Samuel R. Delaney's now classic Dahlgren. M. Christian here writes, as Cecilia Tan says, like jazz, improvising on themes and taking the mind on a light-speed journey into the human erotic psyche and beyond.
Too often, science fiction can drag with polemic pseudo-dogmas or the hackneyed plots of space westerns with a lone hero standing tall against phantasmal enemies. You'll find nothing like that in The Bachelor Machine. Instead, your erotic particles will be deconstructed, sped up incredibly, and collided with a vision of sex and sensuality that is Tantric in scope.

She was beautiful. Stretched out on her huge bed, a midnight expanse that all but filled her bedroom, she looked up at me with huge earthen eyes -- lit by quivering desire, a pulse-pounding fever. Her mouth was on my right nipple, painting it with the gleam of her wet lips, making it harden almost to the point of pain. I felt the ghostly nipping of her white, white teeth. Then she really sucked, and I felt my legs turn to rubber and my cunt get heavy, wet, and hot.
In my hand, the crop was light, all but intangible.

Like all fine quality erotica, The Bachelor Machine goes past outdated concepts of gender and identity and sends its exploratory probes into the core of sexuality and desire, deep beneath the surface we normally skim across in our day-to-day imaginings. This is the territory of off-world living, cosmic, and magical. While the high-tech bits are fascinating in their own right, it is in their union with the erotic impulse where the reader finds his or her ordinary orbit shifted. Odd, even bizarre, circumstances evolve into encounters that challenge the characters' notions of love and want, self and partner, genitals and psyche.

The sender was a flaming hot number in the cybersea, a dominatrix icon that played games with the boys' heads, and played them ultimately well, and safe. She'd earned, not taken, her ID: bytebitch. She wasn't a girlie milking her tits for all the drooling boys. She was a hard dealer -- no-nonsense and straight. They didn't like that, expecting sugar and spice, not razors and sure, clear percentages.

Jump into the slipstream of The Bachelor Machine and M. Christian will take you for a joyride -- down into the places where nanoseconds seem to last an eternity and the orgasms are as big as Jupiter. Strap yourself on his rocket ship of soaring prose and fantastic plot, where your co-pilots have any gender, all gender and whose mission is to leave you breathless with desire and safely exhausted with satiation. Let The Bachelor Machine speed you on your way...

I think, I dream, I wish -- but it's not even a memory, because I'm not allowed any. I stretch out on my simple bed, in my simple flat, and spin my wishes of what they might be like, their faces, their rough hands, their cruel implements, their...cocks, in my mouth, in my hands, in my so-wet cunt. I think, I dream, I wish...

Out Now: THE BACHELOR MACHINE By M.Christian

THE BACHELOR MACHINE
Science Fiction Erotica

A Brand New Edition
Out Now From M.Christian!

M.Christian and Circlet Press are proud to announce the publication of a brand new edition of M.Christian's best-selling and ground-breaking collection of science fiction erotica: The Bachelor Machine!

Now available in ebook for the first time, 18 short stories of crackling erotic futures by the master of erotic voice, M. Christian. Men, women, hackers, derelicts, enforcers, hustlers, and whores in every combination inhabit the streets and beds and back alleys of Christian's imagination. This is erotic science fiction at its best.

Included in this new edition, in addition to Cecilia Tan's rave introduction to M.Christian's work from the original book, is a special foreword by Kit O'Connell, a chat between Cecilia Tan and M.Christian on mixing science fiction and erotica, and much more!

I’m going to tell you a secret. There are only two people in the world I envy. One is the late Roger Zelazny, whose talent for an almost jazz improvisational way of writing I could never match.The other is M. Christian, for writing exactly what I’d write if only I could get off my ass. Which is to say, raunchy hallucinatory sexfuture dreams that never fail to arouse me and kick me in the gut at the same time ...
- Cecilia Tan, from her original introduction

In the years since I first read The Bachelor Machine, I've shared these thought-provoking tales with many friends. The stories have never failed to provoke both reaction and discussion. Long after arousal is gone, there are stories here that haunt me. I'm glad that now you can share that too ...
- Kit O'Connell, from his foreword to the new edition

The stories in his new collection, The Bachelor Machine, pass the litmus tests of both the SF and erotica genres. Take out the tech and there’s no story; take out the sex and there’s no story. This description may lead those unfamiliar with SF erotica to suspect that every story is about getting off with the aid of futuristic technologies, and that’s true as far as it goes. But that’s not going nearly far enough. The stories in The Bachelor Machine are not about sex, though they’re stuffed with sexual acts; the stories are about what sex means. M.Christian is writing about the psychology of being human, and he often does so by exploring sexual possibilities and realities that are rarely discussed, even in private conversation. He not only thinks forbidden thoughts, he extrapolates them in the finest SF fashion ...
- Cynthia Ward, Locus On-line

As a special treat, here's an interview with M.Christian from the Suicide Girl's Web site about The Bachelor Machine!

And The Bachelor Machine has its own Wikipedia page!

Here's what others are saying about M.Christian and The Bachelor Machine:

M.Christian speaks with a totally unique and truly fascinating voice. There are a lot of writers out there who'd better protect their markets!
- Mike Resnick, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction author

M.Christian's stories squat at the intersection of Primal Urges Avenue and Hi-Tech Parkway like a feral-eyed, half-naked Karen Black leering and stabbing her fractal machete into the tarmac. Portraying a world where erotic life has spilled from the bedroom into the street, and been shattered into a million sharp shards, these tales undercut and mutate the old verities concerning memory, desire and loyalty. Truly an author for our post-everything 21st century.
- Paul Di Filippo, author of The Steampunk Trilogy, and reviewer for Issac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

Fantasist, futurist, eroticist, satirist, humorist, dentist drilling deep into the nerves of the here and now ... M. Christian wears a lot of hats in this multifaceted collection, and they're all a splendid fit.
- Brian Hodge, author of Mad Dogs and Lies & Ugliness

M. Christian is the chameleon of modern erotica. One day punk, another romantic; one day straight, another totally perverse and polyamorous. But always sexy and gripping.
- Maxim Jakubowksi, editor of the Mammoth Book of Erotica series

M. Christian is a chimera, an amazing combination of tour guide and magician. Whether he's writing science fiction, horror, or erotica, he can take you to places you've never imagined, show you sights no-one else will get to see, introduce you to some fascinating people, and guarantee that the trip will be memorable from start to finish. Buy a ticket and fasten your seat belt: you're in for a wild ride!
- Stephen Dedman, author of The Art of Arrow Cutting, and Shadows Bite

M. Christian always writes like a dream whether he's creating fantastic visions or ghastly nightmares. With this collection, you get both!
- Paula Guran, DarkEcho

Jump into the slipstream of The Bachelor Machine and M.Christian will take you for a joyride - down into the places where nanoseconds seem to last an eternity and the orgasms are as big as Jupiter. Strap yourself on his rocket ship of soaring prose and fantastic plot, where your co-pilots have any gender, all gender and whose mission is to leave you breathless with desire and safely exhausted with satiation. Let The Bachelor Machine speed you on your way ...
- William Dean, Clean Sheets

About M.Christian:

M.Christian is - among many things - an acknowledged master of erotica with more than 300 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and many, many other anthologies, magazines, and Web sites. He is the editor of 25 anthologies including the Best S/M Erotica series, The Burning Pen, Guilty Pleasures, The Mammoth Book of Future Cops and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi) and Confessions, Garden of Perverse, and Amazons (with Sage Vivant) as well as many others. He is the author of the collections Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, Licks & Promises, Filthy, Love Without Gun Control, Rude Mechanicals, and Coming Together Presents M.Christian; and the novels Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Me2, Brushes, and Painted Doll.

The Bachelor Machine
Circlet Press
ASIN: B003Y8XUK2
ebook/Kindle Edition
$7.99

Please contact M.Christian at zobop@aol.com for a review copy

Bachelor Machine: The NEW Edition!

This is GREAT news! I am extra-pleased and extra-proud to announce the release of a brand-new edition of my celebrated science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine, by the legendary Cecilia Tan's Circlet Press. While I put together a formal press release check out the book on the Circlet site as well as on amazon.

The Wonderful Kit O'Connell on The Bachelor Machine

Yes, indeedy, I do have some amazing friend and, believe me, I am very grateful for all of them. And one of them, Kit O'Connell, just posted this wonderful teaser for the brand new re-issue of my science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine, which was just put out my another amazing friend, Cecilia Tan, at Circlet Books.

Kit is extra-special because he hasn't just been a huge supporter of my work but he not only wrote a fantastically rave review for the first edition of The Bachelor Machine but has also penned a brand new forward to the new edition.

Keep your peepers peeled for more info on this new edition, which I plan to be raving out very, very soon ....

I’m a longtime fan of author and editor M. Christian, perhaps most especially his short story collection The Bachelor Machine. I first read and reviewed it back in 2004 when it was in print from Green Candy Press. Not only is the book back in print as an e-book from Circlet Press, it now features my brand new foreward:

M. Christian is a writer who doesn’t let the reader off easy. I don’t mean that his books aren’t easy to read (he has a fine way with words and a unique, recognizable voice). The thing about his stories is that even at their filthiest, they also make you think.

You can take a peek at the rest of my introduction, which will hopefully convince you to buy the book. Your money will be going to support not just a hungry author but an almost 20-year old small press dedicated solely to the publication of erotic genre fiction.

At Your Local Library?

My sweet pal, Jason Rubis, just wrote me to say that my erotic science fiction collection, The Bachelor Machine, which is coming out very soon in a new edition by the great folks at Circlet press has been spotted in - of all places - the public library in Reston, Virgina. Makes ya wonder, don't it, what those librarians were thinking when they selected it. Still, it is very cool. I can only hope it's stacked between S for Sex and SF for Science Fiction ....

Billierosie Likes The Bachelor Machine

Maybe I should start to use of some kind of acronym ... like IHSAF ... but that would diminish the fact that I really do Have Some Amazing Friends, people who I treasure for their kindness, support and, well, just because they are true friends.

Case in point, my dearest pal, Billierosie, just posted this review for my science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine, on her great blog. The book, btw, is coming out in a brand nw edition very, very cool, from Circlet. Stay tuned!

It's a joy to re-read these stunning stories, but M. Christian has a lot to answer for! His Bachelor Machine zaps the reader with a selection of wildly erotic short stories, set to raise the blood pressure and increase heart failure statistics.

This is futuristic pornography. The sleaze of porn is there, combined with the mysterious worlds of galaxies never before dreamed of. M.Christian’s imagination is really, beyond belief.

The gloves are off, taboos shattered in this daring collection of futuristic fantasy erotica. If your taste in fantasy is hobbits, noble deeds and happy endings these stories are probably not for you. If you're up for a challenge, if you can run with Metropolis meets nine and a half weeks, meets dark, vintage erotica, then the Bachelor Machine will give you the fix you need. M.Christian's stories are superbly written and well crafted. Can the sensation of spinning rotation be erotic? When it comes from M.Christian’s keyboard; yes! As I read, I am constantly pushed into the giddy, whirling position of inter-galactic voyeur, leaving me shattered and spinning, helplessly, with a glorious, life threatening attack of vertigo.

Pornotopia: Do You Know What Your Children Will Be?

The following is just one of a bunch of pieces I’ve been working on for a project tentatively titled Pornotopia: The Ins and Outs and Ins and Outs of Sex and Erotica. Enjoy!

Not that long ago - not long at all, a few decades at best - you would have caused quite a stir. It wouldn't have been because of anything as baroque as your facial piercings or that your hair is toxic-waste green. Nah, if you were a woman somehow transported back those few decades you would have been the source of more than a few outraged stares and even some hysterical outbursts. That'll teach you, after all, for wearing pants.

So who knows what you might face if you were on that same spot in a few more decades in the future? Stoned to death for your fashion sense? Leered at for showing your nose and ears? Or, more than likely, frowned at your being such a prude ... wearing clothes in public? How rude!

Things are changing ... fast. There's nothing new in that, but what is brand-spanking is how fast things are changing. It's easy to forget that - living as we are on the edge of that social and technological wave - that those faces staring at your pants were only your grandparents, only your parents.

It's a universal constant that while technology might not be used for fun - for sex - first, it certainly will be shortly thereafter. We are a sexy species - smart, but still sexy. Thinking with our minds first, our genitals second.

Polishing up my crystal ball, breathing on it's prescient surface, I love to try and gaze up those years - take a peak, so to speak, at what we or our children might do for fun.

One thing we have over ancestors is our bodies ... or rather what we can do with them. Plastic surgery has gone from a badge of shame to a sexual plaything - even today having the small enlarged, the big shrunken, the missing replaced, and the unwanted lopped off is handled like strolling through the supermarket: today, I think, I'll have the extra-large breasts, please. It's not hard to imagine a decade or two hence where some of our issues regarding gender and appearance fall by the wayside. Will breasts become the 'in-thing' for the upwardly mobile professional ... of either sex? Will penises become the next power tie? For the first time in human history we can just about make ourselves into whatever we, or our partners, fancy. We're only limited by minor hitches in technology ... and our will. But as history has taught us, yesterday's taboos are today's fashion statements. Who knows what tomorrow's sexual body will look like?

We have also started to plumb the depths of chemical attraction. Now we have Viagra, but tomorrow we might have a pill for every shade of excitement. Want to feel sexy, experience orgasms beyond the keen of mortal man? Pop one, lie back and enjoy it. What happens to sexual responsibility when something over the counter can turn you from Mother Theresa to Annie Sprinkle? Will we have hormone vacations? A chemical drip as we try and squeeze as many comes into a weekend - only to dry out for work on Monday?

But what of the opposite? Sex is hardwired into our brains but so many seem to scared of those animal depths. A pill and all those fantasies, all those inappropriate thoughts, all those disturbing impulses are gone - washed away. Greater productivity, no distractions ... will the last two people on Earth be two "to-busy-to-reproduce" workaholics? Will we, as a species, be doomed to extinction by not wanting to face our sexual selves? Before you laugh and keep reading think about the other people in the world, those who are terrified of joy - lots of them, aren't there?

Our bodies are plastic - optional in all kinds of ways - but what of our minds? Now we can make motors twitch, controlled by the neurons in the minds of mice. Tomorrow? Cortical jacks and cyberspace wet dreams, virtual realities that could be made even more reality that ... well, reality. Look out your window for a second. Go ahead, I'll wait ... dirty streets, washed-out sky, bad resolution all around. Poor sound. If you could live in a movie - wouldn't you? Will reality eventually be shunned by our cybernetic children for a shared electronic Valhalla - a shining, divine illusion better than anything in the 'real' world?

Before even going that far, we've already had a taste of what we might become. It's common to be something/someone else in a chatroom, role playing for laughs ... or, because safe being a screen, we can be what we've always wanted. Will some of our (those that decide to breed) 2.5 kids live suit and tie by day, high-heels and garters by night ? The best of both worlds - or any number of worlds, for that matter.

Plastic surgery has it's limitations, but genetics has almost none. Look at the animal kingdom, and think about little ol' Dolly and it's clone. Maybe the future will be the Island of Dr. Moreau: where beast men prowl through dance clubs decorated like the veldt, hunting zebra to eat or fuck, their choice. Maybe our children will send us postcards from the Amazon, the whole family hanging from an ancient tree by their tails. "Wish you were here."

Genetics can also close up that gender loop: be a man, woman, a bit of both for as long as you'd like. What will happen to the world when anyone can be anything - will gender become a popularity contest? Male this month, female the next. Will one gender become “normal” and another not - secret clubs where penises or pussies will be the secret handshake for admittance? “Tell me, sir, are you now - or have you ever been - a female?”

Bodies aside, what is sex except for a feeling - and what is feeling but just electrical and chemical impulses? We don't need our bodies for reproduction anymore - test tubes and Dolly prove that. So what do we need our cunts and cocks for - decoration? A temporary hat stand or pencil cup? Why not link our sexual responses to something much more productive ... or less messy. An orgasm from a raise? A come from a handshake? What will pornography be like when bare hands are considered risqué or Forbes is likened to a visit to a bordello? Will our children stand there, naked and unashamed except for their gloves, laughing at our stories of pregnancy and Presidential scandal - only to turn beat red when we talk about our jobs or distractedly clean our fingernails?

But do we even need our bodies anymore? A decade, two, three a few little innovations and our consciousness leave these meat bags forever. Will our children be the size of cities, vast complexes lazily making their way to the nearby stars - having sex with each other via radio waves or along a spectrum we aren’t even aware of yet. Or maybe our children’s bodies will be nothing but scuttling little boxes while their minds live in immense cybernetic fantasies in a piece of silicon the size of a dime.

After all, what are our minds but electrical impulses? Data to be stored, edited, manipulated, copied ... erased? Will our kids be able to change themselves all the way down to their base existences? Try a different personality a day, with world-spanning fads in behavior - this month a world of Charley Mansons, maybe the next Nina Hartleys. “Who do you want to be tonight, honey? The shepherd or the sheep?” Will procreation be like installing an upgrade? Bodies don’t matter, only the software does: take a bit of one program (mom) add some of another (dad) and the result would be a new bit of self-aware software (kid). Instead of playing around behind the barn will our children first experiment by playing Norton Utilities with another program?

The future is unwritten - and thus unknowable. But there is one thing we do know, can know: the only thing certain is change. We might have shocked our parents, alarmed them with our audaciousness, but our own children - those that will follow us - will have a lot more toys to play with.

Bachelor Machine Taste -

As a tantalizing appetizer, here's the new cover for the Circlet re-release of my science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine, by the always-incredible Wynn Ryder ....

Another Teaser -

Here's another teaser - this time for the upcoming brand new edition of my science fiction erotic collection, The Bachelor Machine, from the wonderful Cecilia Tan at Circlet Press. The cover is by the always-magnificent Wynn Ryder.

(Blush)

The wonderful Cyberpunk Review just put up a very cool mention of The Bachelor Machine. Thanks!

Now as most of you know, I don’t do any advertising on Cyberpunk Review, which means it’s a massive time sink that doesn’t generate a dime (this is exactly how I want it to be!). Collecting advertising revenue on a site devoted to cyberpunk concepts just seems wrong somehow. That said, I have absolutely NO qualms about accepting gifts! Cyberpunk movies, books, figures (the Borg Queen, if you have it), games - I’d be more than happy to accept (send an email to sfam”at”cyberpunkreview.com if feel the urge!). While I have gotten a number of movies sent for me to review, this is my first cyberpunk book ....

Successful erotic fantasy author, M. Christian, sent me a wonderful message saying how much he liked Cyberpunk Review, and offered to send me his book of “smutty cyberpunk short stories,” called The Bachelor Machine. I just got it in the mail today, so I can’t give a review of it yet. But often when I find a new author I’m interested in, I like to take the book and open it to a random page and start reading. Here’s a sample for you from the first place I opened it to - page 132, halfway down ....

I think I’m gonna like The Bachelor Machine! Thanks, Chris! Better yet, M. Christian mentions he has another cyberpunk erotica book due to come out in a year from now. I’ll be looking forward to it.

I'm blushing like a schoolgirl! By the way, the novel is The Painted Doll. For info on that check out this Amazon UK page. Now I just have to finish writing it ....

For a very cool review of the Bachelor Machine check out Locus. Then there's always the Wikipedia page.

Oldie -

- but a goodie. My Suicide Girls interview about The Bachelor Machine.