Tumbling We Will Go!

Just a reminder, folks, that I have a wee little hobby of running a bunch of Tumblr sites.  Check them out if you're curious about the bizarre, the strange, or the just-plain-fun images I come across and put up on them:

Rude Mechanicals is a cyberpunky land of cyborgs and androids ... kind of a visual compliment to my Bachelor Machine, Love Without Gun Control, and (naturally) Rude Mechanicals books.

Meine Kleine Fabrik is a picture-postcard take on my weird-but-wonderful-stuff-in-the-universe blog of the same name.

Lust For Glory is a ... well, 'lustier' place that acts as a kind of slideshow for my erotica blog, Frequently Felt.

Love ya, Stephen -

"I began writing seriously when I was about thirteen. Out streamed poetry, stories and novels, the latter of which were always aborted early, usually half way through the second chapter. It took my friend Douglas Adams to encourage me to go further and he did this by pointing out that the reason I had never managed to finish a novel was that I had never properly understood how difficult, how ragingly and absurdly difficult, it is to do. “It is almost impossibly hard,” he told me. It is supposed to be. But once you truly understand how difficult it is,” he added, with signature paradoxicality, “it all becomes a lot easier.” It was many years later that Clive James quoted to me Thomas Mann’s superb crystallisation of this. “A writer,” said Mann, “is a person for whom writing is more difficult than for other people.” How liberating that definition is. If any of you out there have ever been put off writing it might well be because you found it so insanely hard and therefore, like me, gave up and abandoned your masterworks early, regretfully assuming that you weren’t cut from the right cloth, that it must come more easily to true, natural-born writers. Perhaps you can start again now, in the knowledge that since the whole experience was so grindingly horrible you might be the real thing after all. Of course finding it difficult and managing to complete are just the first stages. They are what earn you the uniform and the brass buttons, as it were. They don’t guarantee that what you complete is any good, or even readable. That is quite a different kettle of wax, a whole other ball of fish." 

- Stephen Fry

Bibrary Bookslut Likes Finger's Breadth

OMG!  The good - nay, the great - just keeps on coming: the fantastic Sally Sapphire at Bibrary Bookslut just posted this very touching review of my brand-new gay/erotic/thriller Finger's Breadth.  Thanks so much, Sally!

To be effective, the act of literary intercourse between horror and erotica should be deeply unsettling. It should leave the reader feeling excited by uncomfortable, overwhelmed by equal parts dread and anticipation.

If you’ve ever read any of his work (and shame on you, if you haven’t) you know M. Christian understands this better than most. With his latest, he has woven a tale that permits the reader but a finger’s breadth of space between fear and arousal. His deft control of the story makes us feel the blade of the assailant, but it’s his subtle manipulation of our emotions that makes us desire the cut of the victim.

The story starts out with simple, if deliciously perverse, premise. A mysterious figure is haunting the underground community of San Francisco, abducting young gay men and cutting off the tip of their little finger. That’s it. No other torture or mutilation, just that missing tip of a finger. With his ounce of flesh taken, they’re free to go.

As creepy and unsettling as the abductions are, it’s what comes after that comprises the bulk of the story. Suffice to say, things get weird, for both the abductees and the community at large, as the story develops in directions that you can’t begin to imagine. It’s a testament to M. Christian’s writing skill that we never question what happens, no matter how weird it gets. Instead, we’re encouraged to embrace the guiltiest of pleasures by indulging in the tale, until we’re so deeply involved that we can’t pull away from the final horrors ahead - and then are left delighted, and deliciously spent.

I had a chance to give this an early read (I’m actually quoted on the publisher’s website, which is very exciting!), and only a desire to take a break and collect my thoughts prevented me from reading it in one sitting. If you’re at all intrigued, then I urge you to give it a read – you won’t be disappointed.

Filthy (Boys) Reviews

As the new edition of my queer collection, Filthy has just been released by the wonderful Renaissance/Sizzler (now called Filthy Boys) here's a quick blast of some reviews the book has gotten.  Enjoy!

 

Erotica That Reads Like Literature

I have enjoyed M. Christian’s work for a long time. His solo collection Dirty Words and his two multiple-author anthologies co-edited with Simon Sheppard, Rough Stuff and Roughed Up, are among my favorite volumes of erotica.

Which brings me to Filthy: Outrageous Gay Erotica, a new collection of gay erotic stories by M. Christian. To say this is a great book is an understatement. It runs the gamut of emotions, from anger to sadness to ecstasy to envy.

Here are capsule reviews of some of my favorite stories from Filthy…

“The Greener Grasses” in one short story captures the entire paradox of trying to reconcile a leatherfetish lifestyle into the humdrum world of 9-to-5 jobs and dishes to be washed more than volumes of scholarly non-fiction ever has.

“Flyboy” is a wistful tale of a man who has two lovers, one flesh and blood and one as big as all outdoors. Guess which one gets him in the end. You might be surprised.

“Love” reads as a tender valentine to all the gay men, imaginary or otherwise, who have inspired the author over the years to create his amazing tales of erotica.

“Suddenly, Last Thursday” is a haunting, harrowing riff on Tennessee Williams’s play Suddenly, Last Summer.

And “Friday Night at the Calvary Hotel” is an amazing tale that gets my vote for one of the top ten best short stories ever.

Filthy transcends its genre of erotica and enters the realm of literature.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

- Donovan Brown

#

What makes a good short story? Felice Picano, in his forward to Filthy offers some of the more traditional takes: a deft handling of voice, of place, of character. But really, what makes a good short story - what makes a great short story - is a truly good idea.

Luckily for Christian – and luckily for us – truly good ideas are not in short supply in this collection.

A perfect example comes in "Sunset Boulevard," one of many tales that puts a queer twist on an old story. Christian, riffing brilliantly on the campness of the original movie, recasts the central fading screen siren as an aging gay porn star. And it might seem risible to allow the gloriously queeny Norman Desmond to intone, "I am big. It's porno that got small," but Christian pulls it off.

Christian isn't shy of a little shameless genre straddling with his startlingly imaginative ideas either. In "The Hope of Cinnamon" we enter a future world in which gay men have mastered the art of time travel in order to save their queer brothers from oppressive regimens of the past. But this tale is also a good example of how the short story format can be frustrating for the reader when presented with such a dazzling concept as this one. The idea is simply too big for the form. The problem presented – that the rescued men cannot cope with a life in nirvana – isn’t so much explored as thrown at us before we are hustled away for the next story.

This is where the book wears thin. The stories in this book are short, averaging ten pages of in-out wham-bam. After a while it starts to feel like Christian is torturing his readers, deserting his unsatisfied readers for fresh thrills before they have quite achieved emotional climax. Too much is left undone and unsaid. This collection could have featured just the five best ideas – including the wonderfully disturbing quasi-religious "Friday Night at The Calvary Hotel" – and served up five wonderful novellas.

In the final story – the most enjoyable of the whole collection – Christian once again attempts a daring feat and pulls it off neatly as he spins us a tale of a young gay reader so besotted with an author of outrageous gay erotica he takes a pilgrimage to his grave. Angered by his discovery en route that his hero was in fact in a relationship with a woman, he means to urinate over the author's last resting place, but ends up recalling too many of the author's purplest passages and doing something entirely different. It is no surprise when Christian reveals the name on the headstone of this soiled grave.

While Filthy is a wonderful book, and just the thing if you are in the mood for an enjoyable quickie (or twenty), it's not the place to turn if you are more in the mood for a story that can go all night.

– Mathilde Madden, Reflection's Edge

#

I read a guide to reviewing books recently. It said a reviewer should be impartial. I can see that point of view; the work should be judged on its own merit. However, it's impossible for me to pick up a book by M. Christian and not have expectations that are based on previous works I've read. So I guess it's only fair to begin this review with full disclosure: I'm a fan.

I'm torn over the idea of erotica as a distinct genre, and M. Christian's work is fuel for this internal debate. In The Hope of Cinnamon, a future society rescues gay victims from Nazi death camps and brings them forward in time to a sanctuary. Gen, one of the Helpers who works to integrate the Rescued into their new home finds out that few of the Rescued successfully survive the transition. He decides to travel back in time to experience the death camps for himself so that he will have a better understanding of why the Rescued fail to thrive in a society that fully accepts them. While this story does touch on sex and sexuality, it is a great example of speculative fiction that prompts further examination of our time and how current and future gay generations need to be aware of the history of gay culture and see it in proper historical perspective instead of viewing it, and judging, through hindsight.

As much as I hate the term coming-of-age tale, Utter West is a near-future story that shows a character coming of age, and more. Pony is the narrator's hero, the one who escaped their suburban hell and went beyond it to something wonderful and mystical - or so the narrator wants to believe. Unaware that he's destroying the beautiful myth that's grown around his disappearance, Pony comes back as an ordinary adult, prompting the narrator to break free and take the journey Pony failed to make into the beyond of the Utter West.

If noir is more your style, enjoy M. Christian's homage to Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood Boulevard, or sink into the corner pocket of the night world of pool hustlers in The Hard Way. That Sweet Smell is really the scent of corruption, but keep telling yourself it's success, because in this story, that delusion is all the narrator has to cling to.

Moby is purely tall tale, told with the flair of real yarn-spinner. Could anyone stink that much, be that cussedly mean, or be that hung? It's all in the telling - joyously and outrageously over the top.

Or maybe you're in the mood for bittersweet romance and love. Flyboy is the soaring romance we all long for, crashed down to earth by the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. And Love is a writer's story, about how much it means to us when our stories are wanted, and how hard it is to separate the pure love of acceptance from the physical.

And then there's horror. Friday Night at the Calvary Hotel is the hardest story to read in this collection for it's intense mix of sadism, masochism, religious imagery and sex. Stories like that cling to you long after you've put the book down. You decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I like that. Suddenly, Last Thursday is horror of a different stripe - lush and gothic, where you might have to read a line several times before your brain accepts what it's telling you. That slow dawning of realization is delicious and shivery.

In the movie Sunset Boulevard, Joe Gillis says, "Sometimes it's interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be." Yes, but it's gratifying to see just how good good writing can be too. It's unfortunate that erotic writing has a reputation for bad writing, but sit down with this collection and let M. Christian change that prejudice.

– Kathleen Bradean

#

“Filthy” is subtitled “Outrageous Gay Erotica”, it could also be called “the book that stole my Saturday”. It arrived in the mail and I intended to slot it into my reading queue after several other books that have been waiting patiently for my attention. I flicked over the somewhat dry preface to the first story and it was all over.

In 'The Greener Grasses' M. Christian shows us immediately that this is not a collection to be trifled with, picked up and put down. I was thrust immediately us into the point of view of a real flawed, sexual, vulnerable protagonist. The sexuality is always frank but blended with charming love stories like 'Heart in Your Hand' or '2+1' or folksy fables like 'Moby'. The writer’s skills are perhaps best shown in the apt blending of sexuality with darker threads such as in 'Bitch' where one man’s bitterness and hate escapes his control or 'Friday Night at the Calvary Hotel' with its queasy look at the blend of sadism and sexuality in religious symbolism. I found the homage stories 'Hollywood Blvd' and 'Suddenly, Last Thursday' just a little heavy handed but still engaging reading.

The stand-outs for me were simple stories, but perfect in their parts. 'Oroborous' uses a botched tattoo to contrast the pain and trouble of “fixing” what is “wrong” about us (not what we would choose) with the joys of embracing it what we are. After reading it I had one of those moments staring at the wall and letting it sink in. And there were actually tears in my eyes at the end of the tragic love story of 'Flyboy'. The speculative stories are also strong: 'Utter West' gives a new meaning to the youthful desire to get out of a dead-end town and 'The Hope of Cinnamon' shows a far future gay community that rescues persecuted gay men from the past and is shown, through their eyes, what may be missing from their apparent utopia.

All of the stories have a strong concept as well as explicit sexual content. I would quibble at calling it “erotica”. Erotic, yes, but not quite in the step-by-step manner intended for one handed reading. It’s one of those oft-quoted phrases that our biggest sex organ in our brain; I’m willing to bet that author M. Christian would agree. Almost every story in this collection is perfectly constructed for the intellect: set up, satisfaction and pay off within a few short pages. Some stories are unapologetically erotic and others nostalgically sensual, only obliquely erotic at all or proudly a little perverse—but the erotic is there to serve the story in the manner and amount the narrative requires.

If you are looking for sexually-charged fiction that also has heart and intelligence “Filthy” is the collection for you—just don’t pick it up until you have the free time to read it from cover to cover.

– Emily Veinglory

Out Now: Finger's Breadth

As teased for quite a while, I am extremely pleased and proud to announce the publication of my brand new queer/erotic/sf/thriller/horror novel, Finger's Breadth, by the great folks at Zumaya Books.  While I'll be doing a lot more about the book in a bit I just wanted to put out the word that the book is now available as both a ebook and print version.

Look at your hand: four fingers and a thumb, right?  But what if you woke one morning and rather than four fingers and a thumb you are ... short one?  How would you feel?  What would you do?  What would you become?

The city is terrified: a mysterious figure is haunting the streets of near-future San Francisco, drugging and amputating the fingertips of queer men.  But what's worse than this horror is how it transforms the men of the city.  For what's worse, a horror or that it can, so easily, turn any of us into something even more horrific?

Erotic.  Terrifying.  Fascinating.  Disturbing.  Intriguing.  Haunting.  You have never read a book like Finger's Breadth.  You will never look your fingers, or the people all around you, the same way again.

ISBN-10: 1934841463
ISBN-13: 978-1934841464
Paperback: $15.99
ebook: $6.99

Amos Lassen Likes Finger's Breadth

I am ... simply speechless: Amos Lassen is not just a fantastic reviewer and writer but he is also a dear friend - which makes his very touching review for my brand new (and just released) new novel, Finger's Breadth so touching.  You are the best, Amos!

I have long been a fan of M. Christian. His erotic writings are what I called literary erotica and he is one of the founders of that genre. His horror writings also are in a class of literary horror and when he tells you a story, you simply cannot stop reading. When he combines horror and erotica, you are in for a special treat and that is exactly what he does in his new book, “Finger’s Breadth”. The idea for this book is clever and terrifying, probably because something like this could really happen and when you have a story that could be real, you actually shudder twice as much.

The story is set in San Francisco of the near future and something very strange is going on.  Someone is haunting the city, drugging the gay men and then cutting off the tip of their little finger. But that is not all. The ensuing terror causes a transformation of the men of the city and the very idea that something like this can happen causes everyone to cower in fear. People begin to suspect each other and no one seems safe.

The story begins with a prelude that sets tone of what is to follow and from the very first line, we feel a sense of gloom as an uneasy atmosphere takes over.

Session No.: 10977642-2
Case Ref: AS-D-341945491
Date: May 7 —
Location: 1: McAllister Detention Center, RM 146
Subject Name: Kenneth Allen Wertz
Subject ID: N946671291
Interrogating Officer: Eric Knorr
Officer ID: CSS-7992309
Attorney Present: No

Officer: Okay, right, so you said you didn’t see anything?
Subject: Yeah, I didn’t see anything.
Officer: You just woke up like that, huh?
Subject: Yeah. On Muni. In the morning, I mean.
Officer: Someone cut your fucking finger off and you
didn’t see anything?
Subject: Yeah, I guess so.
Officer: Tell it to me again”

And we are off on an adventure into the unknown where things become stranger and stranger as the novel moves forward. I Feel I may have already said a great deal about the plot and I do not want to give too much away and spoil the reading experience. Suffice it to say that I was on the edge of my seat as I read. If I am to give you my opinion, let me first say that what makes this novel really unique is that it is not propelled by characters nor plot but by the story that Christian has managed to write in a way that the language and the style that pulls the reader in. For me that has always been the author’s trademark and why I was so free to use the word Literary as I described his erotica and horror stories. It is not that hard to come up with an idea that can be turned into a horror story and that is why horror has been part of the folklore of America and why these stories are so popular on camp-outs as we sit around a campfire. To successfully do this, we need a combination of characters and plot but more important than all else is a novel way to relate the story. For me that is the definition of M. Christian. This book is unlike anything I have read before and I suspect that it will stay with me for quite a while.

Out Now: Filthy Boys - Sizzling Gay Male Erotica

Remember how I mentioned that my queer collection, Filthy (now called Filthy Boys: Sizzling Gay Male Erotica), would be coming out in a brand new edition from the always-fantastic Renaissance/Sizzler?  Well, guess what - it just came out!  It will be on amazon very soon (and a print-on-demand version coming in a few months) but check out the new edition here.

"M. Christian's stories are the fairy tales whispered to one another by dark angels whose hearts and mouths are brimming with lust. He goes beyond the pale, ordinary definitions of sexuality and writes about need and desire in their purest forms. Readers daring enough to stray from the safety of the path will find in his images and words a garden of delights to tempt even the most demanding pleasure-seeker." –Michael Thomas Ford, Lambda Award winner

• "To say this is a great book is an understatement. Filthy transcends its genre of erotica and enters the realm of literature." -Donovan Brown, author My Brotha My Brotha
  
• "While Filthy is a wonderful book, and just the thing if you are in the mood for an enjoyable quickie (or twenty)." –Mathilde Madden, author Reflection's Edge
  
• "The hottest explosion since the Big Bang." -Ian Philips, author See Dick Deconstruct
  
• "If you are looking for sexually-charged fiction that also has heart and intelligence “Filthy” is the collection for you." –Emily Veinglory, author Lovers and Ghosts

Ernest Hogan On Love Without Gun Control

Did I say cool - when I was talking about being blown-away by one of my favorite writers blurbing The Bachelor Machine?  What I mean to say is extremely cool as he just sent me a blub for my non-smutty collection, Love Without Gun Control.  Thanks again, Ernest - yer the best!

A few years ago I tried to read a tasteful literary magazine full of stories where nothing much happened, and the authors and characters were proud of it. The stories in LOVE WITHOUT GUN CONTROL are not like that. M. Christian lets the reader have it with booth barrels in story after story that set a new standard for Twenty-First Century pulp fiction. From far-out science fiction to gritty, hardboiled realities these are the kind of stories that make the reader hang on for dear life on a wild ride.

- Ernest Hogan

Guest Post: I Masturbate!

The coolness just keeps on coming.  You, no doubt, remember me mentioning - and undressing for - Shilo McCabe, right?  If not then take a look at the shot below by her of my magnificently naked self.

Well, the really-great Shilo just posted an old classic of mine, "I Masturbate," on her site as the final part of her awe-inspiring project of the same name.  I'm posting a taste of it below but for the rest you need to go to her site ... and be sure and check out the rest of the great series.  Thanks, Shilo!

Here we have a final adieu to National Masturbation Month 2011. I'm pleased to offer a guest post by my friend M. Christian.  It was the title of this piece of writing that inspired me to name my month of masturbation photos "I masturbate..." 

Thanks to everyone who helped to make "I masturbate..." such a success. I can't wait for May 2012! 
-Shilo

_______________________________________

I Masturbate!

Sure, I masturbate. Yeah, I jerk off. Damned straight, I yank it, pull it, stroke it, rub it, and jerk it. Lube, soap, shampoo or split. Left hand, right hand, frotage (look it up), other’s hands, sheets, and gizmos (manual, electric, and even diesel). Like it, love it--do it a lot.

Let’s get this straight--we all do it. Sure, yeah, right: “not me” someone says. Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. We all do it. Nuns do it, dogs do it, cats do it, bees do it, Newt Gingrich and Jessie Helms do it (god, what a thought!). You say you don’t do it, you mean it when you say you don’t do it. Well, who leaves the wet spot on the bed, a topless Tinkerbell?

I masturbate. Come on, let’s say it together, enunciate those syllables: “I” --rounding chorus of self identification. Come on, belt that fucker out--“I”--mean it now, say it true--“Mast-ur-bate.”

I masturbate. He masturbates. She masturbates. They masturbate. We all masturbate. That out of the way? Breathing maybe a bit easier now? Let me tell you this, the old cliché of imagining folks in their underwear has zilch over thinking of all of you sitting there rubbing stroking, jacking, jilling yourselves into a grazed euphoria of self-love. Makes saying that I do it real easy.

[MORE]

Ernest Hogan On The Bachelor Machine

I will not say cool ... I will not say cool ... I will not say cool ... okay, screw it: this is the very definition of cool.  Normally I resist reaching out to writers I admire (bad experiences and all that) but I am such a fan of Ernest Hogan I just had to write him - and was wonderfully pleased to discover that the author of two of my all-time favorite books - High Aztech and Cortez On Jupiter - is a as nice as he is brilliant.


How brilliant?  Well, read this books and find out.  How nice?  Just check out this blurb he just sent me for my erotic science fiction collection, The Bachelor Machine:

These stories report in from the outrageous frontier of the possibilities of technology plugged into sexuality. The world may not be ready for this. I hope M. Christian isn't "eliminated" by fundamentalist terrorists, or taken prisoner by a porn cartel that will mine his twisted brain for ideas.

- Ernest Hogan

Still More Philosophy

Circlet Likes The Bachelor Machine

This is very sweet!  Okay, Circlet may have published the new version of my erotic science fiction collection, The Bachelor Machine, but that still doesn't mean this rave review of the book by Gayle C. Straun isn't a real treat!

 

Readers of such erotic “classics” as The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival, the Belle of Delaware can perhaps be forgiven for imagining every representative of the genre to be a trite bildungsroman in which the narrator awakens to sexual maturity through a successive series of literally incredible erotic encounters featuring highest rate of simultaneous orgasm known to mankind. However, there has long existed another strain within the genre, perhaps best exemplified by the great Renaissance satirist and pornographer Pietro Aretino, whose Dialogues exhibit an awareness that sex is not so separate from social class and power, while at the same time expressing a deep and abiding sympathy for those who lack both.

M. Christian comes from the latter tradition of erotic storytelling, and his collection of short stories, The Bachelor Machine, marries action both hot and steamy with what the Japanese call aware, or “beautiful sadness,” all set in future worlds where the lines between man and machine, reality and illusion, necessity and desire have become blurred, forcing people to stake out their own identities. Unlike the characters in a Philip K. Dick novel, who regularly fret over what to take as “real,” M. Christian’s creations are much more at home with this ambiguity, be it the courtesan Fields in “State,” a human who dolls herself up as a robot for men who believe they are fucking something mechanical, or the eponymous “Bachelor Machine,” an old robot whore who pays human clients to come in, just so that she can feel needed once more. The author even skirts the boundaries of the consensual—but without ever indulging in tired rape fantasy—in such stories as “Bluebelle,” “Butterflie$,” and “Everything But the Smell of Lillies,” the last most notable for featuring a hooker wired so that clients can kill her and have their way with her, while she experiences everything, only to revive later and start it all over.

Imagine the stories of Anїas Nin dosed heavily with William Gibson, and you might approximate this collection by M. Christian. Sex, futurism, and narrative mix seamlessly rather than taking turns (now a bit of story, now a bit of tech, and now the sex you’ve been waiting for) as in so many erotic tales, underlying the truth that we never stop being sexual creatures, and we never stop being people of our time and place. Add to that the reality that we simply aren’t always successful, for these are the stories of both hackers and hacks, and the machinery with which they interact erases none of their humanity: the man who sells off his memories, one by one, to buy a few minutes with a favored woman, or the technophile who has his penis replaced with a state-of-the-art mechanical model but forgets to charge it before a hot date. Oh, the sex in The Bachelor Machine is amazing, to be sure, but the characters will haunt the reader’s thoughts long after they’ve passed out from orgasmic bliss.

Northwest Leather Celebration - thanks!

Thanks to all the great folks who came out to hear my Polyamory: How To Love Many And Well class at the the Northwest Leather Celebration last weekend.  It was a real treat to do - I just hope you all had as much fun as I did!

Finger's Breadth - The Final Cover!

Ta-da! Here's the final version of my new novel from the great folks at Zumaya Books: Finger's Breadth.

Here's a bit about it:

The city is terrified: a mysterious figure is haunting the streets of near-future San Francisco, drugging and amputating the fingertips of queer men. But what's worse than this horror is how it transforms the men of the city. For what's more terrifying, a horror or that it can, so easily, turn any of us into something even more horrific?

Erotic. Terrifying. Fascinating. Disturbing. Intriguing. Haunting. You have never read a book like Finger's Breadth. You will never look your fingers, or the people all around you, the same way again.

Yet More Philosophy

Jesus Saves

The Cover Of The New Edition Of Filthy [Boys]

Now THIS is cool: check out the new cover of the re-release of my queer erotica collection Filthy [Now titled Filthy Boys], coming VERY soon from Sizzler Books.

Yet More Philosophy

Bravo!

From Pornotopia: A Look at the Golden Rivet

Here's a fun little piece I wrote a while back - and that's a part of my book of non-fiction articles and essays: Pornotopia.

Esoterica Erotica: A Look at the Golden Rivet

For as long as men have sailed the seven seas, they’d tried to keep women off their boats. It’s a sad fact, but for hundreds of years – and in the case of certain civilizations, thousands of years – water and women simply haven’t mixed.

That’s not to say that as the ships have rocked and rolled on the high seas, the crew didn’t do their own kind of rhythm magic. Women might have been banned – with extreme penalties in many cases for any attempts to break the rule – but sex and the sea have always been part of a sailor’s life.

The logic behind banning women from being sailors appears sound – for about a minute: to keep the swabbies in line, and to prevent in-fighting among those who might be getting, and might not be getting, it was thought better to keep the ships all male. In response to the obvious homosexual outlet for all that testosterone juice, many admiralties prohibited sex between crewmates – with punishments ranging from simple monetary fines to floggings.

The fact, though, was that the bigwigs with the fruit salad on their chests were hundreds or thousands of miles away, so it was usually the discretion of the Captain on whether queer sex was a good thing or a bad thing.

Some captains and ships even bent the rules considerably, and thus was born the Captain’s Wife or Daughter: a courtesan brought on board simply to service the officers of the ship. Other Captains obeyed the letter of the law, while not embracing the spirit – and thus allowing their crews to “embrace” their own smuggled-aboard women, cross-dressed as fellow swabbies.

Even pirates, who some would think would be lax when it comes to rules and regulations, were much more stern in their sharing of the sexual favours of their fellow crews. Always concerned with equality among their crews, some pirate charters went as far as requiring “stranding” on a desert or severe floggings as punishments for bringing aboard women. It’s ironic that two of the more legendary pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, were women – and who managed to escape the gallows by the singular female plea of the time: ‘We plead our bellies’ meaning they were pregnant.

Pirates, by and large, during this time treated women – particularly women captives – rather well. Part of it was wanting to stay on fairly good terms with the authorities (nothing like ravaging some women to get your ship hunted down) but also because women fetched high prices as merchandise as well as in ransom from rich fathers and husbands. A crewman guilty of harming a female captive was treated as someone who had either stolen or damaged merchandise – a very serious charge in pirate law.

While women (when they weren’t Captain, that is) were banned from ships, sailors managed to keep their sanity by keeping any number of common-law wives in a variety of ports. The system worked actually rather well, since the pirates were at the whim of the wind and available profit – and many of their wives were also the wives of other pirates, sailing on other ships. The only time there was a problem was when there was a question of seniority, such as when a husband died and his goods had to be divided among his wives – in such cases the women he was married to the longest usually won out, unless the younger one had children. Pirates, for their much-maligned reputations, were remarkably civilized.

Other pirate societies, such as the buccaneers, created a form of partnership that often included homosexual love. Matelots were a form of permanent relationship between two men that served in many ways the needs of both financial as well as emotional well-being. Many men were more protective and emotionally tied to their matelots than their own wives – going so far as to will them their lands and goods.

Early Christian missionaries – and puritans in general who sought to kill or capture pirates – often used these forms of same-sex marriage to condemn their society, though it’s telling that the fact that these men were practising homosexual love and marriage wasn’t as damaging as the rumour that was also spread that some of the gay pirates were converting to Islam – a more accepting faith (at least at the time): religious intolerance obviously being a greater motivator than simple queer sex.

In more rough-and-tumble pirate societies, such as among the famous South China Sea pirates, sex and love between men became a political force as well as a sexual one. Kidnapped as children from raided ships, the boys would often form long-lasting sexual relationships among themselves as well as their captors that later helped hold together the scattered pirate tribes.

While women were always a question, at best, or a big problem, at worst, on ship there was a long-standing tradition of sexual release in the form of the cabin boy. For many years, the position of cabin boy required duties that weren’t on the usual cook/captain/first mate’s job description. Often, however – especially for those “boys” with experience – the other requirements were pretty obvious, in other words to sexually service either the officers or the entire crew.

For those not familiar with these duties, the crew had a special tradition to “enlighten” a new cabin boy. What makes this tradition interesting is the masking they used to lure the young lad into the bowels of the ship. The story they told was of an ancient maritime tradition (presumably concurrent with keeping women off-ship), where each and every ship – when its keel was laid – was given a special, good-luck, gold rivet.

It’s taken thousands of years, but finally women are serving without a problem on ships – both civilian as well as military (well, depending on the country). But if you’re on-board and get an invitation to view the lucky golden rivet, I would still think twice – unless you’re into that kind of thing, of course.

Go Get Her, Dr. Tyson!

Hallelujah, Jon!

See Me At The Northwest Leather Celebration!

If you're going to be in San Jose for the the Northwest Leather Celebration be sure and check out the polyamory class I will be teaching on Friday, May 20th, at 3:00PM - and if you are coming be sure and bring your significant others, and others, and others, and others ...

Polyamory: How To Love Many And Well

Sure, you've heard of it – and maybe have been intrigued by it – but what is polyamory and how do you love more than one person and make it work?  How can you deal with jealousy, time-management, emotional rough patches, and more to enter into multiple sexual relationships?  In this class, participants will learn to separate the myths from the realities of polyamory, how to make tentative steps towards having more than one partner, and how to approach and deal with the problems of sharing yourself with others, and being involved with someone who, in turn, is involved with someone else.  

Included in this class will be simple emotional exercises, truelife experiences, unique techniques and innovative approaches to understanding the joys – and the risks – of beginning, or entering into, a polyamorous relationship.

Wonder How Much She Charges?

"Imagination ..."

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
- Albert Einstein

Odd Balling (4)

Ladies and gentlemen (and all the folks between), here's a taste of my brand new Odd Balling column for the great folks at YNOT. For the rest just click here.

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YNOT – Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to yet another installment of Odd Balling, your come-to location for the sexually odd and erotically weird ... or, as we like to say, where we prove scientist J. B. S. Haldane's statement: "My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

In the "out front and obvious" department, Weird Universe reported about a group of New Zealand scientists who spent years embedded in research to determine the first thing men notice about a woman is her breasts. So yes, ladies, that’s exactly what he’s staring at. (And someone actually funded this.)

It warms out hearts, and other body parts to see that a spirit of support and generosity has emerged from the tragedy of the Japanese earthquake. According to 3Yen: News on Japan, online community The Lesbian Lifestyle and sex toy e-tailer NeverStraight.com promised to donate 50 percent of all proceeds from the sale of adult products to help the relief effort. Kelly Leszczynski, The Lesbian Lifestyle's editor, was quick to point out the promotion was not intended as “a mockery of what has happened in Japan. People will always buy sex toys, and why not put a portion of the proceeds to a good cause?”

Just don’t ask the mayor of Neuville-en-Ferrain, France, to contribute. Gerard Cordon has “issues,” as evidenced by his decision to replace the town’s bust of Marianne, "traditional female embodiment of the French Republic," with something less busty. According to the Telegraph, Cordon insisted the well-endowed statue embodied more of a public distraction. Sculptor Catherine Lamacque, who installed the piece in 2007, admitted she may have overzealously rendered the terracotta figure’s bosom in an effort "to symbolize the generosity of the Republic."


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And Now, My Holiday Plans -

Dark Roasted M.Christian

Check it out: a brand new Dark Roasted Blend piece I did just went up: this time on nuclear ... well, EVERYTHING


Fans of the old, but still wonderful, Road Runner cartoons might remember Wile E. Coyote's favorite one-stop-shop for mayhem: The Acme Company.  A clever person – not one of us, alas – once said that Acme's slogan should be "We Add Rockets To Everything."

This, in a kind of round-about way, gets us to the 1950s and the near-obsession that certain engineers had back then with a certain power source.  To put it another way, their slogan should have been: "We Add Nuclear Power To Everything."

In all fairness, reactors have proven – for the most part – to be pretty reliable.  Submarines, commercial power plants, and even monstrous icebreakers have proven that nuclear power can be handy if not essential.  But back just a few decades ago there were plans, and even a few terrifying prototypes, that would have made the Coyote green with envy – and the rest of us shudder in terror.

Both the US and the Soviet Union had engineers with lofty plans to keep bombers in the air indefinitely by using nuclear power.  Most folks, with even a very basic knowledge of how reactors work, would think that was a bit (ahem) risky, but what's even scarier is how far along some of those plans got.

Take, for example, the various projects the US undertook.  In one case, arguably the most advanced, they made plans to power a Convair B-36 bomber with a reactor.  Scary?  Sure, but what's even more so is that they actually flew the plane, with an operational reactor, a total of 47 times.

While that the reactor never actually powered the plane itself, and that there were huge problems to overcome, didn’t stop the engineers from drawing up plans for a whole plethora of atomic planes:

But what was perhaps even crazier than just powered a plane with a nuclear reactor was the idea to use that power source as a weapon.  Here, for example, is a beautiful representation of the Douglas 1186 system, which was supposed to use a parasite fighter to guide the warhead to the target – and keep the poor pilot from engine's radiation.

But the craziest of the crazy was the "Flying Crowbar."  Not only was the Supersonic Low Altitude Missile (to be formal), aka SLAM (to be short), supposed to be a nuclear bomb deployment system but was also to use a nuclear ramjet drive as a weapon: roasting the ground under it to a Geiger-clicking nightmare while leaving a mushroom-cloud parade of bombs behind it.  Shuddering, by the way, would be a perfectly appropriate response.  Luckily, the Crowbar never got off the drawing board.
 
 
Leaving the air to the birds, other engineers had different nuclear dreams: In 1958 the Ford Motor Car Company, not satisfied with the success of the Edsel, put forth the idea of bringing radiation into the American home ... or, at least, the garage, with the Nucleon: a family car with an on-board reactor.

While some engineers played with the highways, a few looked to the rails.  Though neither the United States of the Soviet Union got very far with powering a locomotive with a reactor, the USSR at least looked far enough ahead to draw up some plans:
The Soviets, in a literally sky-high dream, even envisioned a new approach to flying their reactors: use a Zeppelin!  Here's a nice little propaganda piece on their ideas for an atomic airship:
 
Still other inventive types, determined to find a new use for the atom, scratched their heads and came up with quite a few interesting, if not dubious, ways of playing with nukes – but this time of the explosive variety.  Plowshare is one of the most commonly quoted of those operations intended to put a smiley face in a mushroom cloud.  A few of their suggested uses include what they called the Pan-Atomic Canal: in other words, using atomic bombs to widen the Panama Canal.  They also suggested using nukes for mining operations, though never really solved the problem of dealing with then-radioactive ore.

It's ironic that -- what with the need to urgently replace our finite and global-warming fossil fuels – that many are suggesting a new look at the power of the atom.  We can only hope that we, today, can be as imaginative about it as they used to be back in the 1950s ... and a lot more responsible.

How To Wonderfully WriteSex (10)

Check it out: my new post at the fantastic WriteSex site just went up. Here's a tease (for the rest you'll have to go to the site):

It can be very weird being an editor as well as a writer. It’s definitely a kind of schizophrenia, being on both sides of the fence at once: spending the morning rejecting other writers’ stories and then crying myself to sleep when it happens to me. Schizophrenia? Actually it’s more like a kind of sex — bad sex: mornings fucking someone, and then getting fucked myself. Kind of appropriate for smut writing and editing, no?

While I could on for pages and pages about why certain stories don’t make the cut for a project, I’d rather deal with something more … mundane for now — but something that has recently been on my mind. In other words, manuscripts and cover letters.

While I completely agree that good work will always win-out, there is a certain amount of packaging that is needed to get the work to the editor so that it arrives with a smile and not a grimace — and, speaking from experience, sometimes a frown or a grin can be the difference between acceptance or rejection.

Manuscripts are not resumes. The trick with resumes is to catch the eye, to get yours stand out above the rest. Career counselors often recommend bright colors and tricks to get the potential employer to spot a resume in a pile of potentials — but manuscripts are exactly the opposite. With a manuscript you want the work to be the only thing the editor notices — not that you printed the story on bright red paper, or that you used a teeny-tiny font. Anything that gets in the way of the editor reading what you written is a strike against you. Now no real editor will reject a story just because you didn’t know about Standard Manuscript Format (more on that later) but if reading the story is a chore — or you neglected important information with the submission — you might look to be too much trouble to deal with. Remember, there are usually dozens of other stories sitting on that editor’s desk, just waiting to be easier to deal with or read.

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Being Honest

Guest Posting: Even Better Than The Real Thing!

This is fun, fun, fun!  My sweet pal, Kit O'Connell (wrote wrote the kick-ass forward to the new edition of my science fiction erotica collection, The Bachelor Machine) and who is one of the best folks on the planet, just posted a guest thingie from myself on his site, approximately 8,000 words: a two-part essay on the future of sex called "Even Better Than The Real Thing" in two parts.

Here's a teaser.  For the rest just click here for part one and here for part two.

Sure, the technology’s kinda crude right now (bored executrix, sitting behind her desk, pager set to BUZZ between panty-hose painted thighs, waiting for a lover to call), but just let those horny ol’ geeks and dweebs down in Silicone Valley work on it for a few more years and — ZAM!
The hoary old cliche with a new twist tells of how fast things are moving: “When I was young, son, when we fucked we actually touched each other.” Right now (aside from the executrix) things are at the “asking her out” stage — we’ve got quite a while to go before first, second, third base, and SCORE! (clickity, clack on a keyboard: “” he types. “” a guy somewhere responds).

Right now, the science of what has been labeled teledildonics is still in its masturbating under the sheets stage — the subject of geek dreams, Adobe Photoshop pictorials, and a few hot zines. The electronic LSD wonderland of Virtual Reality is barely up and walking, let alone getting it on. Don’t worry though, like the camera, the telephone, the VCR, and the PC, sex will be right there when the breakthrough is made — there’s something in human nature that right after instant the light bulb lights, a new invention is born, the next immediate thought is always “Can I fuck with it?”

Getting from peg A to slot B is not that far off. Right now the big push is getting the operator’s hand into the VRverse, but you can bet other body parts won’t be far behind. For those who’ve been living in caves, and who seem to have missed the hoop and holler about VR, the idea’s simple: an operator wears a helmet equiped with teeny-tiny televisions over his eyes, a microphone so people can hear him, speakers over his ears, (and in the next few years) a jumpsuit with feelie and touchie capabilities, (and when the designers get horny) a “love machine” over his cock and balls–and then our intrepid explorer enters a computer-generated environment where he (okay, I’m being sexist — but do you really think a woman would come up with this kinda stuff?) can “interact” with other similarly-wired folks, and entertainment programs — in short “anything that moves.”

[MORE]

Out Now: Sex In San Francisco: An Anthology Of Smoking Hot Tales Inspired By The Sexiest City On Earth (Edited By) M. Christian

Ta-da!  I am very pleased and proud to announce the publication of Sex In San Francisco: An Anthology Of Smoking Hot Tales Inspired By The Sexiest City On Earth, edited by myself!  Right now the book is up on the Renaissance/Sizzler site but it will also be up on amazon very soon as both a Kindle edition as well as a paper version.  So buy a copy and put flowers in your hair ... or other places, if you are so inclined!

What it is about San Francisco that seems to promise, and even promote, sex: sex hot and heavy, sex tender and loving, sex straight and gay, sex kinky and vanilla, in fact, just about every type of sex that can be imagined?  Why is San Francisco considered such an attraction for lovers of all kinds and such a hotbed of steamy eroticism?  Why is this city, instead of so many others, called — with lusty admiration as well as scathing jealousy — the Id of America, Sodom by the Sea, Bagdad by the Bay, and Sin Francisco? Some of the best writers of erotica in the nation seek answers to that question in Sex In San Francisco. These writers show why San Francisco is so damned sexy, and through their stories they show you the erotic heart of the city and its residents.  Donna George Storey, PM White, Renatto Garcia, Adele Levin, Shanna Germain, Craig J.  Sorensen, Theda Hudson, Jude Mason, Neve Black, Mykola Dementiuk, Jeremy Edwards, and Anna Reed with Lily Penza have created wonderful erotic tales, each of which takes a unique approach to probing what makes San Francisco such a sexy place to be in and to dream about.  Each author uses her or his own amazing literary – and yes, erotic – vision to share with us a very personal interpretation of what constitutes sex in the city of the Golden Gate. These authors may be looking at the same city and viewing the same buildings and landscape, but for each of them San Francisco is, like sex, a very personal, and unique, thing

Teaser Tuesday: Finger's Breadth

The cool keeps getting cooler: check out this wonderful pre-release tease of my coming-soon new novel, Finger's Breadth (from Zumaya books) by the always-great Bibrary Bookslut:

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Simply grab your current read, open to a random page, and share a couple of “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page . . . just be careful not to include any spoilers!

My teaser this week comes from  page 14 of Finger's Breadth, a erotic tale of queery horror coming soon from M. Christian:

Normally, his kisses were gentle, caring connections, sex a ballet instead of a romping rut. That night, it had been different - frightening, powerful, lightning and growling thunder instead of sunsets and puppies. Varney became a man. Nothing but. Not a lover, not a boyfriend, not a partner. Just a pure, raw, lightning-and-growling thunder man.

So, tell me . . . are you feeling teased? :)

Circlet Likes How to Write and Sell Erotica

The good stuff just keeps on coming!  Check out this very nice review of my book How To Write And Sell Erotica by TammyJo Eckhart on the Circlet Press site:

There’s a myth I’ve heard as an author: Authors are Wealthy. Not so much, and I can’t say that I’ve ever met a wealthy author who did nothing but write erotica. You can win awards and you can have a dozens of works out there but the common expression “Keep your 9-5” applies to a genre writer. Being an author is a lot more work than you imagined.

That’s where books like M. Christian’s How to Write and Sell Erotica Tips of the Trade from a Literary Streetwalker can lend a helping hand for the beginner. There are dozens of how-to guides for new authors, so the trick is to find one that offers you honest advice that you can apply to your life.

You may have heard of Christian if you’ve read science fiction, gay, or BDSM erotica in the past two decades because his personal publication record is quite lovely to read. However, he isn’t only a fiction author: he’s edited a lot of books and writes a weekly column about writing and the publishing business.

This book grew from his weekly column with Erotica Readers and Writers Association (ERWA) which, if you aren’t already, you need to be familiar with if you want to any money. In thirty-seven previously published essays on the ERWA website, Christian covers everything from the basics of writing to the complexities of contracts and marketing. His style may put off some readers, however, because it is more conversational and his truths can be discouraging for those with unrealistic expectations.

Having seen some truly terrible erotica in my own time, I have to say that his advice is both on the mark and far from it. You see, some of this terrible writing I’ve seen has been published,  bought by low-quality publishers or self-published. With enough time and effort, almost anyone can become “published” these days. Making a living as an author is a very different matter. Creating quality stories that will be remembered is another issue entirely. Christian touches on all these topics.

In addition to Christian, there are eight other erotica authors and editors in this book answering the same set of three questions, allowing us to see how different and yet how similar their careers have been. By including nine different perspectives this guide avoids promoting the flawed idea that what works for one author will work for another.

Most manuals for writing include a listing of publishers and agents but How to Write and Sell Erotica does not.  Publishing is an on-the-edge business. Publishers and agents frequently fail or change what they will work with. There are dishonest people claiming the role of agent or publisher as well. Giving any list is saying that those listed are reliable and useful; that just might not be the case in a year or two.

In general the overall flow of the essays in this book goes from the basics to the more complex issues, though some topics, like what words to use and how to do research, are tackled a few times. The fact is that writing for a living is complicated work, hard work, and Christian never lets us forget that in this book. His joys, his frustrations, his victories and successes are all written with an engaging and blunt style. If you take this book for what it is–experiences you can learn from–and are not looking for the one true way to be an erotica writer, you’ll gain much from this collection of essays.

Future Fire Likes Love Without Gun Control

Now this is a treat: not only did the folks at Future Fire ("social political & speculative cyber-fiction") like The Bachelor Machine, my collection of erotic science fiction, but they also just posted a nice review of my non-erotic collection of fantasy/science fiction/horror, Love Without Gun Control:

I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect when Love Without Gun Control showed up to be reviewed. The cover is very retro-pulp-comic, a scene on Mars, all bright colors and simple lines, misleading as to the content. It seems more like a graphic-novel cover, or a series of 70's porn. The book itself is quite thin, only 155 pages. I was pleasantly surprised. The collection opens with the eponymous story, ‘Love Without Gun Control’, published for the first time in this collection. Ultra-violent and rather bizarre, it is somewhat reminiscent of a D. Harlan Wilson story. A sort of modern-day Western romance, the story really does defy labeling as it shows the effects of one snake-oil doctor’s ‘love potion’, applied erroneously, and the destruction that can come from thwarted desire. A fun, rollicking ride with a very unique flavor.

The second story, ‘Needle Taste’, is a unique concept with an ambiguous ending. The story itself is a totally different beast from the previous tale, but the wistful tone holds up the strange story well enough until the end, when it feels a little... abrupt. If there’s a weak one in the bunch, it’s this one, simply on a relative scale. It is in no way a bad one, it just doesn’t have quite the force of the others.

...seeking a forever-quiet man in the whole buzzing, humming, singing, cackling city.

‘Hush Hush’ is my favorite story in the collection. The language is absolutely beautiful: weird, eery and slippery. The tale is half mystery, half internal journey. Whether he solves the mystery or not is really unimportant. What he learns along the way is not. This was a lovely to read for the language as for the story.

‘The Rich Man’s Ghost’ is probably my least favorite of the stories. It lacks the smoothness of voice, the weird beauty of most of the other pieces. The story is a little less Weird, too, and maybe that colors my opinion.

‘Wanderlust’ is one of the stories that I’m not really sure, at first, how I feel about it. On the one hand, the reader is kept in the dark until the very end of the story. I simply didn’t have a clue what was going on. On the other hand, the writing is very rich, so it isn’t necessarily a bad thing to enjoy the ride. A man who inspires absolute ecstasy from everyone he meets comes across a bit thin at first, but their reactions if he stays around for longer than a few minutes are... interesting.

‘Orphan’ is chilling and haunting. A young man running from something, to something, carrying a horrible secret. There were a couple of places that could have used a clarity edit or that read a little contrived, but overall, definitely a memorable piece worth reading again.

Really, though, I’d be hard-pressed to say that any story in this collection is best skipped over or read in a hurry. There’s just enough variation in the stories to keep them unique, and enough cohesion to develop a voice that just draws me in more deeply, the farther I read. (The first story is an odd difference to the rest of them, but no less enjoyable.) The cover-art remains a sticking point, as it has no apparent connection to the content, and prose like this needs something lovely to wrap it up, and what it has is not something I would be wild about displaying on a shelf.

Read this one slowly, because each story is best savored and mulled over. And I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of M. Christian’s stories.

Beautiful

Me: Erotica Readers & Writers Association Guest Author!

You may not know it but I am really, seriously blushing: the always-wonderful Erotica Readers & Writers Association (for whom I wrote my "Confessions Of A Literary Streetwalker" column for many years) just made me a guest author!  In addition to my bio three of my favorite stories are up there as well: "Hack Work" from The Bachelor Machine, "Billie" from Rude Mechanicals, and "Tinkling Of Tiny Silver Bells" from Licks & Promises.  Check it out here.

Portrait Of The Author

Now this incredibly special: here's a picture of little ol' me by the amazing Shilo McCabe as part of her Sex Positive Photo Project.  

He's Got Nine Lives -

Dark Roasted M.Christian

Check it out: a brand new Dark Roasted Blend piece I did just went up: this time about the screw-drive machines

Ever since Mr. Bronze Age had the inspired thought that led to the wheel humans have been trying to think of new ways to get from point A to point B.  Several thousand years after Mr. Bronze Age's inspired invention, in the 1770s to be rather inexact, British inventor Richard Lovell Edgeworth, created the ancestor of what would eventually become the continuous track method of locomotion.  Don't recognize the term?  You'll certainly know it when you see it in operation on many tractors or, where it's head-smackingly obvious, on every tank that's been on every battlefield since the British first used it in World War One.

But in 1868 the American inventor Jacob Morath had a truly inspired idea: a screw-propelled vehicle.  Don’t recognize that term either?  That's not surprising because, even though many people today will celebrate its virtues, it's not exactly a common sight.

The basic idea of a screw-propelled vehicle is simple enough: instead of wheels or tracks, you build a vehicle with a pair of, as Wikipedia puts it "auger-like cylinders fitted with a helical flange."  To make that a bit easier to understand, think of a machine that literally crawls along the ground on a pair of giant screws.  To turn you use the same method a tank does: one screw either gets locked in place while the other one doesn't or, to make a 360 turn, turn one screw one way and the other ... well, the other way.

In 1907, James and Ira Peavey, were quite literally driven to create a practical screw-propelled machine to help their lumbering in Maine.  The machine proved very useful since the screw-propulsion could move whatever you wanted moved through snow and mud and all kinds of nasty conditions.  You also didn't need to worry about anything getting caught in the tracks, like with a caterpillar, and since they had much fewer moving parts they were easier to maintain.

Quite a few screw machines were built afterwards, though they remained less than popular.  But when World War Two loomed, the idea of a screw-propelled war machine intrigued the eccentric genius Geoffrey Pyke -- who you no doubt remember as the inventor of the iceberg aircraft carrier.  Alas, Pyke's concept of a very small, very fast, attack machine got (ahem) shot down and his idea was eventually whittled down to the very-rarely known Weasel.  Unfortunately, the Weasel was whittled down even more and the screw propulsion was dropped in favor of standard caterpillar tracks.

Another benefit screws have over caterpillars is the possibility of being amphibious.  There's no reason, for instance, that the screws couldn't be hollow and so could also act as floats.  During the Vietnam war, for example, Chrysler experimented with a screw-propelled machine.  Unfortunately, their take on the technology didn't exactly wow the US military and the project was dropped.

The Soviets, in the meantime, had a machine specifically designed to go where no man ever wanted to go -- in their case to retrieve cosmonauts from remote landing sites: the poetically named ZIL-2906.

One of the most amazing uses of screw propulsion has to be Joseph Jean de Bakker's.  In the 1960s the Dutch inventor created the Amphirol, a machine designed to take anyone pretty much anywhere. What made Joseph Jean de Bakker machine better than other versions of screwing yourself across the landscape was its performance.  Not only could his Amphirol go across marshes and over other sticky situations but it was also amphibious.  That wasn't the end of its wow factor, though, because the Amphirol could do all that and also crawl sideways.  Try doing that with four wheels or with caterpillar tracks.

While still rare, the idea of screw-propulsion is still out there: the concept appearing in all kinds of civilian and military proposals.  While watching one in action, though, William Cowper's quote comes immediately to mind: it "moves in a mysterious way."

"The Show" Becomes Reality

It's always wonderful - and kinda weird - when fiction becomes fact.  A while ago I wrote a little story about the hacking of the Times Square Jumbotron, called "The Show" (that's also in The Bachelor Machine), and, guess what, someone has done exactly that:



[Thanks to Cecilia Tan for the head's up]

Update On Anthologies

Just thought I'd zap you all an update on the various anthologies I'm currently editing for Renaissance/Sizzler (including Kink In San Francisco, My Love Of All That Is Bizarre: The Erotic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Love that Never Dies: Undead Erotica, and Yo Ho Ho: Pirate Erotica). 

Alas, I've been slammed by a few other deadlines so I'm running (ahem) a tad behind so I probably won't be going through and selecting stories for at least another month more or so.  Just an FYI, I will be starting with Kink In San Francisco and probably ending with The Love that Never Dies. 

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at any time.