Implicit in the soft science column tasking presented to me by our Beloved Editor is the caveat that, in order to avoid offending any of the Esteemed Readers [that's you lot], I should eschew topics that are too controversial. Therefore, I have decided to devote this bimonth's Tuppence to the soft science fiction applications of sex.
Last column, you may recall, was devoted to promoting the creative advantages of the Soft [science] position regarding the velocity of light as an impenetrable barrier, vis-a-vis the Hard [science] position--the Softs versus the Hards, if you will. This present column will continue that promotion, lauding the Softs while excoriating the Hards. I concede that, at first glance, and given the topic, the position of the Softs here would appear to be, er, untenable. But things are not always what they seem--as anyone who has tried to conserve water by showering with a friend has discovered, now and then.
Probably the finest Hard science fiction essay on sex was written in 1971 by Larry Niven, titled Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex. The essay treated of sex between an alien [Kal-El of Krypton, a planet now defunct] and a human, one Lois Lane, in a very factual, even understated tone. Without going into detail, suffice it to say Niven pointed out that Superman would possess SuperSperm, which would be ejected via SuperHydraulic pressure, and would blow Miss Lane's gastrointestinal system out the top of her head. [One also supposes the roof over Clark Kent's room in Smallville leaked like a sieve].
But Clark/Kal-El is human in form. One can easily imagine him and Lois, uh, doing it. Transgeneric sex [across genders] or transphyloic [new word--remember, you saw it here first] sex is something else entirely. Given that Larry Niven's essay represents a Hard SF approach to sex, how Soft can it get? How outre can it get?
Matters of sex sometimes depend, like the six blind men describing the elephant, on perspective. Some time ago a very dear friend of mine decked a young man who'd had the temerity to declare to her his opinion that she was the sexiest girl alive [and she may well have been]. After making a delicate inquiry from a safe distance, I learned why. Nuala said, and I quote, "He implied that somewhere there was a dead girl who was sexier than I am."
Check your perspectives. How outre do you want it to get?
John Varley, in his Gaea trilogy, a delicate blend of Hard and Soft positions, imagined [and then described] a species of Gaean centaur with reproductive capabilities at both ends. Human males and females could couple with them at the front end, or they could couple among themselves at the other end [the centaurs, that is], but in order for the centaurs to reproduce, a human agent had to transfer manually the fertilized egg from one centaurine uterus to another. In the story, Gaea meted out this function as a punishment to Cirocco Jones for her effontry...the transfer would feel about the same as manually reversing a calf in a cow's womb so that it can be born head-first [don't ask; you don't want to know]. The sole purpose of the transgeneric couplings was pleasure, of course, seasoned occasionally with the magic of spiritual union, reproduction being impossible, given the incompatible DNA.
How outre can you imagine?
In most cases, our imagination, our vision, is limited and delineated by our culture. This is hardly the place for an in-depth analysis of Masters & Johnson studies or the pop-up Kama Sutra, and there are hundreds of discrete cultures and subcultures among the human populations of this planet, with hundreds of sets of rules, but the undercurrent of all sexual activity among these cultures is reproduction. Ultimately the species' purpose of sex is the perpetuation of the species--a Hard position, if you will.
Distractions from this purpose can lead to catastrophe for the species in question. Recently a report on the demise of the dinosaurs suggested that food shortages [probably post-meteorite] demanded a greater emphasis on food-gathering, and reduced fertility, which suppositions unfortunately inspired the following:
The very last female T. rex
Consumed James B. Baker and Tex
Now extinction was certain.
It chose eatin', not flirtin',
'Cause some writers are better than sex.
The motif of reproduction is the [Hard] filter through which, in general, we view our sexual realities and our fictions [to say nothing of our religious practices]. At one time this filter was necessary...but now there are going on seven billion of us, and we outnumber every other vertebrate species and many invertebrates, most of which, in fact, we now consume. How do we circumvent this filter?
One place we circumvent it is in Soft science fiction. Shorn of its reproductive purpose, sex is, not to put too fine a point on it, fun--with possibilities more suited to the Soft position. [Heinlein suggested it should also be friendly, else one would be better off with mechanical toys]. In the realm of science fiction, we Softs may properly subdivide the topic of sex into the categories of Fun & Profit, and Reproduction. Let's give Reproduction its casual mention.
In SF, essential reproductive acts may be performed between critters familiar to us, or between critters alien to us, or between one of each. It is of course helpful to reproductive ends if the critters doing the reproducing are of the same species...but not always necessary. Genetic engineering in Jurassic Park, those of you who read the book may recall, allowed the infusion of amphibian DNA to replace missing ['scuse me for this] links, thereby developing a full dinosaur genome with, unfortunately, certain amphibian tendencies which enabled an entirely female population to reproduce among themselves. In too many SF works to list here, interspecies offspring abound, whether by gene splicing, code alterations, or simple magic. In fact, unless a Hard story has a particularly outre twist, or is especially well-crafted, it will find publication difficult.
Which leaves us with the profoundly Soft category of Fun & Profit...which essay, due to its length, will be taken up in December's Tuppence.
[See our Beloved Editor cringe. Cringe, Beloved Editor, cringe!]
* * *
Because, by and large, our Beloved Editor has bestowed upon me something of a free rein regarding topics, I wanted to devote a bit of space to a [Soft] development of no small significance to me...and, perhaps, to the Esteemed Readers. Without further preamble--
A recent [20 August] footline in the Internet announced the otherwise unpublicized marriage of Sinead O'Connor, Irish lyricist extraordinaire, singer, and occasional actor. I didn't check to see who the groom was. I knew it wasn't me. Lucky me. But I did feel that bleak black sense of loss and regret one would feel when one's best girl exercises other options. I'm going to miss her terribly. So will you lot.
Because if you write, if you compose, if you draw, if you practice your craft, your art...if you feel, if you bleed...you will recognize in her a kindred spirit, another voice in the wilderness, crying out. What happened to Sinead O'Connor may well happen to you...if you feel, if you bleed.
What happened to Sinead? So she got married--big deal.
But her getting married is a metaphor for her fate. Sinead lost her voice. Worse, she grew afraid of her voice, of her vision. She made a public apology, that she realized she had given people cause not to listen to her. So she sublimated her voice. She passed from striving to reveal her vision to wanting to be liked...to be loved. She reached a ruinous if fathomable compromise. She opted for a semblance of normalcy, even going so far as to record an album of old standards, including "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered." She has a rich, marvelously expressive voice that can do justice to the old standards...but that voice was ideally suited to express the anguish and anger of betrayal in "Troy," the raw sexuality of "I Want Your Hands On Me," and the empty horror of the abyss between generations in "Drink Before The War." Her renditions of the likes of "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" and "Scarlet Ribbons" should have been a detour, not a headlong flight.
Artists, dear Sinead, are not normal. There would be many times more of us, if we were. We have never been normal. We will never be normal. We do not wish--in our heart of hearts, our soul of souls, our spirit of spirits--to be normal. We have high rates of depression. We have high rates of insanity. We have high rates of alcoholism. We have high rates of suicide. Because we see, all too clearly. Because we feel. And we bleed. And we portray, in the medium of our choice. And we hope someone will see the vision and alter the conditions which elicited from us that vision. And it does not happen.
We excise pieces of ourselves...our ears, our noses, our fingers...our hearts...to vent our frustration. Because, all too often, we cannot make others see with our eyes, feel with our hearts, enmesh with our vision.
And so, all too often, we mellow. We say, in effect, that we didn't mean it, after all. The pain we feel, the suffering we see, the conditions we long to correct, remain in effect, but we give up. Nothing will change. Why bother?
And there is no argument I might make to counter this evolution. I suspect the mellowing is due to a malady common to our craft--artistic entropy. We wind down. Sinead O'Connor bakes jumbles. Melissa Etheridge gets out of your face. Bob Dylan is marginally coherent these days. Joan Baez is in Best-Of status. Arlo Guthrie is no longer even a chip off the old block of wood. And they shot John Lennon.
Like any species, however, we of our chosen crafts are self-perpetuating. One voice is silenced [or silences itself], and another arises to take its place. Especially if such voices--like artists in medieval times--find patrons. James B. Baker is one such patron, and has given ProMartian Publishing to fresh voices. There are other patrons out there as well. And no end to the supply of voices.
But it is still sad when one of those voices mellows, and fades, taking with it a cry that will no longer be heard...if it ever was. Sinead never grasped the answer to the question: Why bother?
Because that is what we do, dear Sinead. Because that is who we are.
We're going to miss you.