Image by Carroll MacDonald from Pixabay
By
Lisabet Sarai
Most
people who know me, both in my author persona and in meat-space, will
agree that I’m an optimist.
Except,
it seems, when I’m writing science fiction.
As
a reader, I’ve been a scifi fan more or less forever. (Witness my
recent post on the ERWA blog.) More
drawn to “soft” than “hard” scifi,
I’m awed by the ability of the best scifi authors to fashion
totally convincing alternate realities and
to explore their social implications.
Unfortunately,
my
love
of and admiration
for the genre has made me hesitant to write speculative
fiction myself. I’m consumed with self-doubt about my own ability
to create truly original scifi scenarios. Thus, I have only a few
speculative fiction titles in my catalogue.
Every
single one unfolds in some sort of dystopia.
Furthermore,
as you might predict, almost all my dark futures involve some
distortion of positive sexuality.
Quarantine,
my
most ambitious scifi effort to date, takes place in a near-future US
where the population,
the social
fabric and the nation’s infrastructure have been devastated
by a virulent plague. Echoing the AIDS epidemic, the disease
supposedly arose in and was spread by the gay community. In the wake
of wide-spread rioting and horrific violence, a shadowy cabal known
as the Guardians of American Greatness has taken over the government.
All men whose genome includes the “H-gene”, which supposedly
predisposes them to homosexuality, have been imprisoned -
“quarantined” - in remote internment camps. The novel follows
Dylan, a brilliant and desperate young man who’s been quarantined
since he was teen, as he seduces one of the few human guards in order
to engineer his escape from desolate Camp Malheur.
It’s
not much of a stretch, I guess, to imagine a rabidly homophobic
America that glorifies Eisenhower-era “traditional” families and
treats same-sex attraction as
a literal crime. In
writing the book, I hoped I could make this dystopia vivid enough
that readers would forgive the lack of originality, not to mention
the more or less obvious political stance of the author. Quarantine
is a romance; Dylan and Rafe, the ex-gang-member-turned-guard, have
to overcome not only the real-world obstacles facing them
as
fugitives but also some serious trust issues. Eventually
they
realize
they love one another. Still, the
book
does not have an unequivocal happy ending. Rafe and Dylan are
together for
the moment,
but still
threatened by the authorities, as well as physically
and emotionally damaged. Meanwhile, a revolution is brewing which
could easily tear them apart.
Dystopias
tend to persist even after the story ends.
Another
example can be found in my short story The
Antidote.
Indeed, this dystopia shares many features with the world in
Quarantine,
though I wrote this story first. It’s set sixty
years after the Plague,
a
sexually-transmitted disease that triggered
mass deaths, riots and massacres. The
government, superficially more benign than that the thugs in
Quarantine,
requires that all citizens submit to a
mysterious libido-suppression technology, in
order
to prevent a resurgence of the deadly virus. Most
people are satisfied with monthly government-supported,
hormone-enhanced procreative sex.
But
Lena
is
different. Though she loves her husband Jeff, she yearns to
experience the thrill of forbidden lust, to know what it feels like
to couple with a stranger. There
are rumors of an antidote to the government’s technology. Lena’s
willing to risk everything for a taste.
Superficially,
Lena’s world is peaceful, prosperous and orderly. But can one truly
be human without knowing sexual desire? I guess my personal opinion
is pretty clear.
The
Last Amanuensis
(currently out of print, but hopefully to be re-released soon) once
again is set in a world overseen by an intrusive, authoritarian
government. In this case, though, it’s not sex that’s forbidden,
but literature and art. The Preceptors envision a purely rational
society, controlled and harmonized by logic, mathematics and science.
They
arrest and eradicate people who challenge
their ideology. Adele,
the amanuensis of the title, is hired to record a secret trove of
brilliant poems written by her employer and help to keep them hidden.
Trespass,
published in the altruistic erotica collection Coming
Together By Hand,
presents
a different type of dystopia, one in which a small, super-rich elite
lives
in beautiful, soaring cities,
supported by a destitute, struggling under-class. Again, almost a
natural extension of today’s realities... The tale chronicles a
tragic romance between a woman of the Tower People and a young man
from the Sub-urbs. It also explores how notions of obscenity and
transgression can vary from one society to another.
My
dystopias reveal a good deal about me, I guess. It seems I’m
worried most about losing freedom: freedom to love whomever one
desires, freedom to experience lust even without love. Deep down, I’m
worried about the eradication of the erotic. Love, sex and the joy
they can kindle are precious. In today’s world, however, let alone
tomorrow’s, I see them as fragile.
I’ll
end with a bit of flash fiction I wrote a long time ago, on the same
basic, dystopic theme.
Yes, you can imagine that I’m the one speaking.
Yes, you can imagine that I’m the one speaking.
Before
the Plague
Of
course you can buy me a drink. I'd be honored to have the company of
an attractive young man like you.
Sorry,
I can't help it. I know that I look like a lusciously ripe
thirty-five. I've always had fabulous tits, and shapely legs, too.
And the hair is all mine, even if the color is augmented. I've got to
be honest, though. Don't be fooled by all the wiles of anti-aging
technology. I'm old enough to be your grandmother. No, probably your
great-grandmother.
Don't
be shy, though. Didn't you ever fantasize about an older woman? You
don't have to admit it, I know you have. Every young man wonders what
it would be like: the willingness, the experience, the gratitude.
So,
here I am. The older woman. The woman who remembers. Yes, I remember,
I swear, remember what life was like, what sex was like, before the
plague.
You
were born to the plague. So were your mother and father. For you,
making love has always been tainted by the threat of death. What a
tragedy – an abomination! Can you even begin to imagine a time when
two people who were drawn to each other could have sex without fear,
without consequences, other than the fact that the emotional
connection might or might not strike true?
It's
nearly inconceivable to you, I know, the notion of spontaneous sex.
No vaccines, no tests, no questions asked. No barriers – at least
no physical ones. You might enjoy yourself, you might not. That was
the only risk.
I
lived in that age. The golden age, it seems now. You could revel in
your own body, in someone else's body. Anyone you fancied. Maybe a
stranger. Maybe your best friend's husband – or even your best
friend herself! If desire called, you answered, as long as that was
what felt right.
Every
day was ripe with erotic possibilities. We moved through our world
(well, perhaps I should speak only for myself) in a continual state
of borderline arousal, ready to recognize and enjoy the next sensual
adventure.
You're
trying to be polite, but I can see your nose wrinkle with disgust at
my "promiscuity". To you it sounds unthinkable.
Irresponsible. Try to understand. Sex was safe – without drugs or
viral inhibitors or any other "precautions". Oh, you could
be hurt. You could fall in love with someone who didn't care for you,
or with a stranger you'd never see again. But you were always free to
try.
The
Pill was the liberator that gave us this age of deliciously decadent
exploration. My mother might have been as horny as I was (and let me
tell you, I was horny. All right, I admit that with the rejuvenation
treatments and the tailored hormones, I still am.) But she couldn't
let herself go, because she might have gotten pregnant.
Pregnancy!
Another life! Now there's a consequence, fully as weighty as
potential death! Again, hard for you to comprehend the risk of
accidental impregnation. Your parents probably paid a pretty penny
for fertility boosters and gene customization, to produce a boy as
cute as you.
Now
don't get offended. Here, it's my turn to buy a round. All I'm trying
to say is that even though we're sitting together in this bar, we
come from different worlds. My early life is nearly as alien to you
as the world of that Rigelian in the corner nursing his beer.
You
want to hear more, though, don't you? Should I tell you about the
afternoon that I rode my bicycle along the California beach, my
nipples poking through my top, advertising my constant excitement? A
man picked me up and took me up to his penthouse overlooking Venice.
(That was a quirky little beach town near Lost Angeles. Before the
Big One. Hippies and millionaires and body builders. There's really
nothing like it now.)
He
got me high (yes, I know you don't approve) and then screwed me for
the entire afternoon. I came four or five times, and so did he. He
was insatiable, the horniest guy I ever met. I can still visualize
the curly black hair on his chest, the angry purple of his cock. I
felt twinges in my deliciously sore cunt for days afterward.
As
it turned out, I actually didn't like him much, once we started
talking. He turned out to be intolerant and conceited. That
afternoon, though, in that king-sized bed above the ocean, he was my
stag, my centaur, rough and hard and unrelentingly physical.
You're
blushing, you know. I understand. When the plague came, suddenly all
pleasure became suspect. Forbidden. Denied. Improper. The media still
sell using sex, but the images are impersonal, sterile. Flesh without
warmth, sex without pleasure, and by subconscious implication,
without risk.
I'm
annoying you. But I'm turning you on, too. I can tell. Don't laugh.
Like I said, I have a lot of experience.
Not
all my adventures were of the casual variety. I made love to my
husband the first night we went out together, and we stayed together
for thirty years. He took me to a Burmese restaurant and told me
wild, picaresque tales of his travels. My attraction to the exotic
merged inextricably with my attraction to him. Later, near midnight,
he lifted my skirt (I rarely wore underwear in those days) and fucked
me on a street corner, bent over the hood of his car. I followed him
literally to the ends of the earth.
Where
is he now? What can I say? He's gone. Taken by the plague. He
couldn't adjust, couldn't accept the constraints. The restrictions.
He said that he'd rather die than worry if every fuck would kill him.
He
got what he wanted, ultimately.
No,
of course I'm not crying. That's the latest cosmetic enhancement –
makes my eyes sparkle.
You're
right, I'm a romantic, but don't you think the world today needs a
romantic or two? Look, my conapt is just a few levels up. Wouldn't
you like to come up and join me for a nightcap?
That
swelling in your britches is answer enough. No, that's OK, let me get
the tab. Come on now, don't be such a prude. You know that you want
to.
Of
course I have a supply of condoms, viricide, gloves and dental dams.
I'm a woman of my times. But I hope that I can make you forget all
that. I want you to relax, to trust me, to let me give you a glimpse,
a taste, of what pleasure was like before the plague.
Because,
so help me, if someone doesn't know, and remember, we're doomed. Or
might as well be.
