Sextopia

"Books are such a civilized medium, don't you think? But the next thing you know, your imagination goes wild..." So says editor Cecilia Tan in her introduction to Sextopia, where she has collected eleven sharp, sexy stories on the intersection of the sexual and the societal. In a utopia, a perfect world, what kind of sex would we have? how often? with whom? and why? Veteran world-builders like Catherine Asaro and Suzy McKee Charnas join cutting-edge erotica writers like M. Christian and Renee M. Charles in crafting hot, insightful tales that are as erotic as they are thought-provoking.

Twelve science fiction writers create situations "where erotic needs and society's rules conflict or interact" in Sextopia: Stories of Sex and Society, edited by Cecilia Tan (Black Feathers). In Eric Del Carlo's imagined future, "carnality has been bred out," but the occasional riot born of suppressed needs is quelled by sex soldiers; Suzy McKee Charnas's heroine sculpts a wooden man from a tree, and is gratified when he saves her life and bestows another favor or two.

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The 11 hot stories by gifted writers of futuristic erotica that editor Tan has collected all ask us to expand our visions and understandings of sex in situations in which sexual acts impinge on society. From using sexual energy to fuel a spaceship in Jennifer Stevenson's "Something for Everyone" to examining the tremendous cost of sexual repression and a fascinating solution to its concomitant societal havoc in Eric Del Carlo's "To Love and Riot" to the tender treatment of the sexuality of a woman suffering scleroderma in A. R. Morlan's "Stone, Still," the stories in Sextopia ask for nothing less than complete engagement on the part of the reader. Explicit, brash, alien, often strangely beautiful, these insightful and sexy stories definitely make one think. Paula Luedtke
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