Sneak Peek: Skin Effect by M. Christian

At Last! M.Christian's highly anticipated sequel to his legendary erotic science fiction collection The Bachelor Machine!

With The Bachelor Machine, M.Christian set the bar for erotic science fiction stories. Now he has returned to the genre with a brand new collection that will amaze as well as arouse: Skin Effect — tales that push the envelopes of both science fiction as well as erotica in innovative and stimulating ways. Here are stories voyaging to the near as well as the far future, exploring the ultimate limits of sex and arousal.

With an introduction by the Chicano science fiction legend Ernest Hogan (author of High Aztech and Cortez On Jupiter), the stories in Skin Effect — some never before seen— are beyond BDSM, beyond fetish, beyond kink ... and even beyond the limits of science fiction!

Includes a special, and very thoughtful Afterword by the author: IT'S "NOT" THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT—AND I FEEL FINE.

"M.Christian is a hybrid artist and knockout stylist on the order of Jonathan Lethem. Hard-boiled, sharp-edged, funny and fierce, his tales brim with unbridled imagination and pitch-perfect satire." —Jim Gladstone

"M.Christian is a writer who takes you for a long walk down a dark wet street at midnight. You can't get much more edgy and still be legal. His fiction never disappoints." —Nancy Kilpatrick, The Power of the Blood series and In the Shadow of the Gargoyle

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Excerpt from “PRÊT-À-PORTER”

It was too late, though – there was no backing down – she was in Hell.

The drink was called a Risen Sinner and, compared to the Sweet Whisper she'd had when chipped lions and generically manipulated elephants had wandered the same space only a few days before, it was almost savory and more than a bit loud. But, she had to admit as she sipped gently at the bubbling concoction of carefully manipulated molecules that, odd as it was, the new drink felt a bit more real and honest than the too-sweet and too-whispering beverage she'd had before.

Pakuna also had to admit that, despite the eccentrics of the smartfabric, she felt more ... comfortable with her almost-skin-tight mock latex, demonic costume than she had as a false safari guide. Why she did, she didn't know, but as she stool at the edge of one of the innumerable smoking pits that dotted the burnt and blasted Dante-eque landscape of the infernal club she found herself twirling her tail and giving the fellow clubbers a devilish grin.

"Now you," said a fellow in a costume that appeared to represent a fallen angel – crisp and singed feathers, crumbled and sooty gown – and all, "look like someone worth selling their soul for." Then, after a playfully dramatic slap to his forehead, causing his hologramatic halo to wobble ever-so, added, "Was that an infernal come on?"

Pakuna grinned at him, sipping her drink with one hand while continuing to play with her spike-tipped tail, and said, "I don’t know ... sounded rather heavenly to me."

He bowed, the gesture more-than-a-little comedic (by accident or intent she didn't know) and introduced himself as Tang. In town, he explained a moment later, as part of a trade delegation from Free China.

She returned the bow, feeling far less comedic and – she had to admit – with a heat that seemed to travel from the soles of her falsely-cloven feet to the tips of her curved horns, and gave him her own name ... leaving out her occupation, as data miner seemed far too down-to-devilish-earth for Mr. Tang.

They chatted – about this, and that, and other things, laugher coming when it should, smiles and heat when it was needed. For the first time, Pakuna felt safe and secure behind the mnemonic armor of her smartfabric costume: the persona that had formed around her, or that she had formed around herself.

Then, when she couldn't exactly say, the conversation turned left when it should have turned right and the security that had been there only a moment before left her in a blush of self-doubt and insecurity.

"Are you," Mr. Tang said, "all right?" The way he said it added much more weight than the simple words he'd spoken. The fallen angel sounded as if he was looking down at a devil girl who had, only a second before, been ready to haul his sinning ass down to a steaming ring of hell but who had suddenly become simply a shy girl in need of rescuing.

With her words came another change – so quick and so natural that Pakuna didn't know exactly what was happening. The redness of her cheeks, she felt; the lowering of her eyes, she was aware of; the stammering of her words, she noticed; but there was more to it than that.

She was a fetish diva, an infernal latex and hellish PVC sprite but with her blush, the dip of her eyes, the stammering speech she also sensed ... something else. It didn't really have words, a form of language, but it was still a communication she recognized ... from when the club was a veldt and the theme was hunters and hunted.

She was transforming. Or rather, she was being transformed. Subtly at first, a pinch there, a pull here, a contour smoothed, a PVC texture altered – but as she'd stumbled in self-doubt the pinch became more than that, the contour became more and more sensual and even sexual, the PVC textures transformed into far less sweet and whispering and much, much more like a Risen Sinner.

About M. Christian

Calling M.Christian versatile is a tremendous understatement. Extensively published in science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers, and even non-fiction, it is in erotica that M.Christian has become an acknowledged master, with more than 400 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and in fact too many anthologies, magazines, and sites to name.  In erotica, M.Christian is known and respected not just for his passion on the page but also his staggering imagination and chameleonic ability to successfully and convincingly write for any and all orientations.

But M.Christian has other tricks up his literary sleeve: in addition to writing, he is a prolific and respected anthologist, having edited 25 anthologies to date including the Best S/M Erotica series; Pirate Booty; My Love For All That Is Bizarre: Sherlock Holmes Erotica; The Burning Pen; The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi); Confessions, Garden of Perverse, and Amazons (with Sage Vivant), and many more.

M.Christian's short fiction has been collected into many bestselling books in a wide variety of genres, including the Lambda Award finalist Dirty Words and other queer collections like Filthy Boys, BodyWork, and his best-of-his-best gay erotica book, Stroke the Fire.  He also has collections of non-fiction (Welcome to Weirdsville, Pornotopia, and How To Write And Sell Erotica); science fiction, fantasy and horror (Love Without Gun Control); and erotic science fiction including Rude Mechanicals, Technorotica, Better Than The Real Thing, and the acclaimed Bachelor Machine. 

As a novelist, M.Christian has shown his monumental versatility with books such as the queer vamp novels Running Dry and The Very Bloody Marys; the erotic romance Brushes; the science fiction erotic novel Painted Doll; and the rather controversial gay horror/thrillers Fingers Breadth and Me2. 

M.Christian is also the Associate Publisher for Renaissance eBooks, where he strives to be the publisher he'd want to have as a writer, and to help bring quality books (erotica, noir, science fiction, and more) and authors out into the world. His site is www.mchristian.com

Review Tuesday: Skin Effect by M. Christian

Skin Effect: More Erotic Science Fiction and Fantasy Erotica

By M. Christian

Sizzler Editions, 2015

Normally, when I write a review, I treat the book as a stand-alone entity, without considering prequels, sequels or other books in a series. In reviewing Skin Effect, however, it’s almost impossible not to make some reference to The Bachelor Machine, M. Christian’s first collection of science fiction erotica, which I reviewed back in 2009. For one thing, there’s the subtitle, “More Erotic Science Fiction and Fantasy Erotica”, pointedly implying the existence of the previous volume. Then there’s the author’s Afterword, which explicitly compares the perspectives in the first book to those in this one. Even the title is a reference to the earlier book, the name of one of the stories therein (which is not included here). In any case, I couldn’t really read this collection without being reminded of the earlier volume. The stories are equally inventive, but extremely different in tone. To me, they suggested a more mature, subtle and balanced vision of the future.

The world of The Bachelor Machine is largely dystopic, a dark environment of crumbling infrastructure, poisoned nature, desperate individuals, oppressive and dehumanizing technology. The stories in Skin Effect reflect a greater degree of hope as well as the expected impact of more recent technological developments—constant data streams gathered by wearable sensors; software agents that relieve us of the need to learn or remember; the omnipresent social media-sphere, where every thought, action and emotion is immediately visible to one’s audience and one’s worth as a human being might be measured by the number of spectators one can muster. Like those in the earlier book, however, these tales ask difficult but intriguing questions about reality and human existence. What does it mean to talk about one’s life history, when memories can be implanted or erased at will? What happens to sex when changing gender is almost as easy as changing clothes and every possible sexual variation is available via simulation? Is there something special or unique about direct experience, unmediated by technology? Is that sort of genuine, first-hand, totally disconnected experience even possible anymore?

One of my favorite stories in the collection is the simple and elegant “Prêt-à-Porter”. A rather shy, serious young woman purchases a – garment – made of the ultimate intelligent fabric, fabric that transforms itself into whatever sort of clothing or costume its wearer desires—and which shapes its owner’s desires in the process.

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It was ... warm, like a another person's skin. She knew it would be, but the comfort of it was still calming – making the release of that second breath slow and easy. It moved up her body like a splash from a shallow pool, the warmness of it making her relax even more.

As it flowed, it stayed black – but just as she noticed that, it changed: rolling through a rainbow of hues, shades, and saturations. As it flowed, it stayed glistening like colorful latex – but as she noticed that, as well, it changed: tumbling through an array of textures, contours, weaves, and shapes.

She couldn't help it: she laughed. It was like a puppy, fresh out of the box and eager to play. It didn't take her mind long to imagine the artificial, intelligent, endlessly chameleonic material as wagging a form of artificial, intelligent, endlessly chameleonic, tail.

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“LMS”, the last story in the volume, is another high point. Set in a nearer term future than most of the tales (a future in which humans still design web sites!), this tale features an insecure, depressed protagonist who is pried out of his fugue of self-loathing by an encounter with a transsexual who sincerely admires his work. This is a sexy but surprisingly sweet love story, set in a world where your Facebook numbers can determine your personal fate.

“A Kiss Goodnight” presents the next stage in evolution, as an aging pioneer in the study of artificial intelligence is seduced by the “ghost in the machine”, the sentient, self-aware outcome of his own research. The language in this tale is utterly gorgeous, whether the author is describing the taste of a peach (a real peach, grown on an actual tree—something exceedingly rare) or the nature of the professor’s elusive partner.

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Shimmering shoals of software; ripples of digital entities flashing in and out of existence – some on a scale of centuries, others faster than anything alive could ever blink, the on and offs of their own basic (in its own way primitive) DNA coding drifting, merging ... vast snowflakes of algorithms wheeling and spinning against an infinite spectrum of quantum uncertainty ... breaking, splintering, only to merge into new complexities, new potentialities. It was a flashing, flickering, fairy kingdom of brilliant streaks, pops, swirls, cascades of illuminated data coming and going, evolving and learning, growing and refining ... flowering unique forms for unique tasks while deep, immense structures, eternally pondering monoliths of infinite potentials and possibilities, thought their long computational thoughts ... knowing every permutation and branch of possibility and, within it all, a cool and perfect understanding of their original architects, the first programmers, far more than they could ever know themselves.

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Despite this awe-inspiring vision of distributed intelligence, the physical coupling between the professor and his digital partner is compelling, even world-shattering, flesh and blood sex a kind of fundamental language that in some sense transcends species.

This is the message of “The Potter’s Wheel” as well, a fascinating tale in which a woman who supports herself by selling her experiences via social media is chosen to meet the Potter of Gujyo-hachiman, a Living Treasure renowned for his exquisite porcelain. Living off the ‘Net at his monastic retreat in rural Japan, more or less purely in the physical world, the Potter helps Peers reconnect with fleshly, unmediated desire.

Although a few are listed as previously published, all of the stories in Skin Effect were new to me, with the exception of “The Bell House Invitation”, which I’d called out as one of the sexiest stories in The Bachelor Machine. I was delighted to have the chance to savor this unique ménage once again. Indeed, the story might be more consistent with the worldview spun by this volume than in its original home.

All in all, Skin Effect is a solid collection of speculative erotica. I have to be honest and admit that I found it less erotic, overall, than The Bachelor Machine. However, that may say as much about me (years older than I was when I read the first book, and far more jaded) than it does about the book. I think it’s fair to suggest that the sex in these stories is sweeter and more sincere, less about thrills and more about connections. That’s fine, as far as I’m concerned. I want more than heat in my reading; I want original ideas and graceful language. In this regard, there’s no question that M. Christian delivers.