Win an audio copy of Hard Drive by M. Christian! #audioerotica #ScienceFiction #Giveaway

 

Just popping in to share a new giveaway from my esteemed friend and colleague M. Christian.

He’s giving away an audio copy of his amazing sci fi collection, Hard Drive – probably the best science fiction erotica I’ve ever read. (And I’m not just saying that because he’s my pal!)

The audio book is published by Wordwooze, the same people who have brought my work to audio, so I can vouch for the exceptional quality.

Here’s the blurb.

The ultimate erotic wetware and hardware cyberpunk adventure!

A collection of stories spiced with sexual implants, android lust, chrome-plated cyborgs, smart plastic toys, cybernetic wet dreams, and neurotrophic aphrodisiacs…

With The Bachelor Machine, M.Christian set the gold standard for erotic science fiction: stories that pushed the absolute limits of both outrageous sex and fantastic technology.

His follow-up collection, Skin Effect, raised it even further: a book that Publisher’s Weekly praised as ‘Future technology’s ability to alter the very nature of our humanity-and the ways those changes interact with sex-shapes this solid collection of futuristic stories
from erotica author M.Christian.’

Now M.Christian has personally selected his favorite stories from The Bachelor Machine, Skin Effect, and his other erotica collections to create the ultimate celebration of sexually-explicit cyberpunk science fiction: Hard Drive.

With a special introduction by science fiction legend Arthur Byron Cover, Hard Drive is an audiobook that will take you to the outer reaches of BDSM, gay, lesbian, and straight sexuality in the near and far future: worlds of brilliant imagination, relentless passion, and

supernova heat!”

For information on how to enter, just go here:

https://www.sexpert.com/books/erotica-giveaway-with-m-christian/

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

Buy now!

Amazon

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

Sunday Snog #192: The Antidote

My snog excerpt today is from my most recent release, The Antidote, a bit of speculative erotica with a lot of heat and a bit of a message. Hope you enjoy it!

When you’re done reading my kiss snippet, head back to Victoria’s for more sexy Sunday Snogs.

What if the government stole your libido? What would you do to get it back?

Sixty years after the Plague, most people accept the Council’s mysterious libido-suppression technology as necessary to prevent a resurgence of the deadly virus. Lena’s different. Though she loves her husband Jeff, she yearns to experience the thrill of forbidden lust. Denied from birth, Lena is willing to risk everything—her marriage, her freedom, even her life—for one taste of unbridled desire.

****

“You bastard!”

“Lena, please...”

I sat up in our bed, pushing away the hand that tried to stroke my hair.

“What about me? What about the rest of us? What about Bolt? And that poor woman who was with me? What about her? What will happen to her?”

“That’s not my responsibility.”

“The hell it’s not! You pretend to be Mr. Morality-and-Social-Conscience, all cozy with the Council, but do you care what you’re doing? What you’re supporting? All you want is to get your rocks off.”

“That’s what you wanted.”

“Yes, but I have no power to change anything. You’ve got connections, or so you say. Maybe it’s time for a change. The plague is long gone. Maybe it’s time the Council let us make our own decisions again, about who we fuck, and how.”

“Maybe you’re right. But the Council won’t willingly give up the policy of lust-suppression. It makes us all so easy to control.”

He caressed my cheek, then allowed his hand to drop to my breast. Dimly, I felt something stir in my crotch. “Seriously, hon, there’s nothing that I can do.”

“You can get hold of the antidote, right? For free?”

“Well, for favors. But yes, I can get it. Several of my project sites are at the drug factories.”

“Let’s start giving it away.”

“Giving away the antidote? To whom?”

“Anyone who wants it.” I thought about Merle. She’d take some. She’d pass it on.

“The Council...the Inspectors...”

“They can’t arrest us all. They need us.” I leaned forward and kissed him, trying to summon a hint of the passion I’d experienced earlier. Something flickered through me, a pale shadow of the lust I knew I was capable of. It was a tiny spark, but real. I thrust my tongue deep into his mouth, concentrating on that spark. Trying to fan it into flame.

Jeff returned my enthusiasm. The rich scent of his sweat tickled my nostrils, overwhelming his after shave. I broke the kiss, searching his face. “Did you take it again? The antidote?”

“I managed to persuade the Inspectors not to inject me with the suppressors.”

“Do you have any?” I wanted to feel it again—the rush of desire overwhelming every other emotion.

New Release! Transgressive Science Fiction Erotica

I’ve just self-published a new story entitled The Antidote. This is not erotic romance, though it has a HFN ending. But if you enjoy steaming hot, transgressive sex, along with a serious message, you might want to check it out.

What if the government stole your libido? What would you do to get it back?

Sixty years after the Plague, few remember the mass deaths, the riots and the massacres triggered by the sexually-transmitted disease. Still, most people accept the Council’s mysterious libido-suppression technology as necessary to prevent a resurgence of the deadly virus. Monthly procreative sex, government-supported and hormone-enhanced, is enough to satisfy them.

Lena’s 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. Rumors speak of an antidote that liberates the libido from the Council’s thrall. Denied from birth, Lena is willing to risk everything—her marriage, her freedom, even her life—for one taste of unbridled desire.

Buy Links

Amazon US - http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013ZS2678

Amazon UK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B013ZS2678

Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/569511

Coming soon to Kobo, iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

Here’s an exclusive excerpt, not available anywhere else. Warning: it’s definitely rated X.

“Like it? Do you like my cock? Do you, baby?” He punctuated each question with a fierce thrust.

I couldn’t answer. I could only moan as he rammed me, again and again. I heard moans from the audience, too, evidence that the show was turning them on. Another climax gathered on the horizon of my consciousness.

A picture of Jeff swam into my mind. Handsome, kind, responsible Jeff, the model husband. The model citizen. He’d never approve. He’d be shocked, maybe disgusted. I pushed away the guilt that threatened to dampen my pleasure. How could I have been satisfied with him? He worked closely with the Council, helping them implement their policies for the good of society. Whereas I was an outlaw, a horny cunt who got off being watched while strangers fucked her.

Bolt suddenly pulled his rod out of me. I clenched around his vanishing bulk. “I’m going to come all over you. To show everyone what a filthy slut you are.”

The audience roared. His spunk showered down on me, a bitter, sticky rain. He smacked his cock against my butt, scattering the last drops of semen over my back. At the same time, he reached forward between my legs and squeezed my clit.

My body dissolved in a sea of mindless pleasure. I’d never known anything like this, not in the most ecstatic, intimate coupling with my husband. A thousand sensations flooded through me, washing away every thought. I was nothing but a whirling, trembling mass of flesh, tossed on currents of dark delight.

Dystopic sci fi with a searing edge...Get your copy today.

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.

---

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.

---

“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.

---

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.

---

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.

Review Tuesday: The Bachelor Machine

The Bachelor Machine

By M. Christian

[Note: This review was originally written in 2009. I'm reposting it because there's a new edition of this wonderful book. ~ Lisabet]

Sex is all in the mind. This is what a medtech tells the young soldier whose lower half has been blasted away in "Skin-Effect", one of the nineteen stories in M.Christian's new collection of erotic science fiction, The Bachelor Machine. In the worlds of these tales, where bodies are augmented, re-engineered or just plain replaced, and mental experience includes fully immersive virtual realities and globally-networked vicarious orgies, the definition of "mind" and "body" becomes as slippery as arousal itself.

True to his reputation, M. Christian delivers an abundance of sweet, steamy, well-lubricated sex in these stories, plenty of succulent pussies, achingly hard cocks and explosive orgasms. In nearly every case, though, the true stimulus is not physical but rather an idea, a fantasy or a situation. In "State", for instance, a wonderfully ironic reversal of cyberpunk conventions, the protagonist, Fields, is turned on by the challenge of impersonating a sex robot: a blue-skinned, manga-eyed, perfectly proportioned Mitsui Class B Automaton. When a client asks for the house "specialty", for Field's it is not just a trick. It's a performance; it's Art. Christian skillfully leads the reader to wonder whether Fields would enjoy sex as a human nearly as much.

In the stunning "Everything but the Smell of Lilies", the author dares to speculate on the arousing aspects of necrophiliac fantasy – from the perspective of the corpse. The narrator of "Technophile" gets off imagining penetration by his lover's magnificently engineering artificial penis -- which in reality is non-functional due to low batteries. "Hackwork" is an original treatment of a BDSM threesome where the dom exercises his will over the submissive via telepresence, using the body and senses of a confused but vicariously aroused human "taxi" as an intermediary. In "Bluebelle", a futuristic cop melds with his smart, death-dealing aerial assault ship, imagining her as a big-bosomed blonde bombshell who rewards hims sexually for successful arrests. And the slyly playful "Butterflies$" offersa vivid account of virtual ravishment by a horde of Tinkerbelle's nasty cousins, from which the narrator awakens with joints aching, clit deliciously sore, and bank account empty.

The stories in The Bachelor Machine are emotionally ambiguous, like the future itself. Relatively few offer an unqualified happy ending. The two stories "Winged Memory" and "Eulogy" struck me as particularly poignant. In the former, a young drifter sells his memories, one by one, in order to spend time with the whore he loves. "Eulogy" chronicles the physical and emotional complexities of a romantic triangle after one of its members has died. M. Christian's self consciously ironic voice rings especially clearly in this story:

"Julie was never a big girl. She had this ... well, narrow presence. Lithe, like a sudden whisper in the middle of a conversation. There, I couldn't have been that upset. 'Sudden whisper in the middle of a conversation', that was more like the real Jeff Hook. Worldnet journalist, unsuccessful on-line novelist, and dweller in a scummy part of town."

Christian has a fondness for extended descriptions that spill out onto the page, phrase after phrase, studded with technojargon: microfilaments and nanotech receptors, biolights and polyplastics. This technique works better in some cases than in others. "The Bachelor Machine", the final tale in the collection, is one of his notable successes. His images of a worn-out, discarded sex robot, smelling of "mildew and fried circuits", her movements hesitant and out-of-synch due to misfiring motors and flakey circuits, rings heartbreakingly true, evoking both horror and pity. Pity, for a machine!

Then every now and then, the author will come out with a brief image that is almost a poem:

"It is drizzling, like static." (Everything but the Smell of Lilies)

My one complaint about The Bachelor Machine is that too many of the stories are set in the basically the same dystopic cyperpunk future: a world of ravaged cityscapes and rusting factories, poisoned air and capsule apartments, where everyone is desperate and everything is for sale, where advanced technology (usually from Japan, often illicit) can augment or erase your humanity. This is by now familiar territory, explored by William Gibson, Pat Cadigan and many others. A possible future, yes, but surely not the only future.

Perhaps this is M.Christian's personal vision. In The Bachelor Machine, though, it is a bit overwhelming. For that reason, I found the story "Sight", which focuses on the aesthetics of an alien species, very refreshing. "Sight" provides a different and more positive futurescape. (I also enjoyed its lustily romantic resolution.)

M. Christian is audacious. He is not afraid to speculate (what would it be like for two cyborgs to fuck?) or to push boundaries (is it child pornography if the subject is a mature woman with a synthetic body, engineered to look like a prepubescent girl?). His stories suggest that the sex drive is universal, independent of gender, race, species, or even the existence of a body. Where there is intelligence, there is the potential for arousal. Or, to quote the (patently female) cyborg in "Skin-Effect":

"Remember now... It's not the socket -- it's the software."

Cover Reveal for Upcoming Release!

Greetings!

I just signed a contract with Fireborn Publishing for a new release, a scifi short story entitled The Last Amanuensis. Normally, Fireborn uses stock covers for short fiction, but I convinced them to let me create my own cover. I thought you might like to see the result.

Not as good as Willsin's covers, but I'm getting better at this...!

Here's the blurb. The book will release in May.

Poetry is like blood – you can’t hold it back.

The Emperor has decreed that Reason will rule in his lands. Art and literature are banned in favor of military technology. The fearsome Preceptors prowl the capitol, arresting anyone who dares, even secretly, to engage in forbidden activities.

A former teacher and frustrated writer, Adele is grateful for her job as secretary to the enigmatic Professor. During the day, she transcribes his learned treatises on a vast range of topics. Then he calls her to his room one night, to give her a more difficult and intimate assignment, one that risks both their lives.

Review - Technorotica by M. Christian

Technorotica by M. Christian

Barbary Coast Editions, Renaissance E Books, 2012

One of the most enjoyable aspects of being an author is that you get to invent new worlds. Sometimes those worlds strongly resemble our so-called reality; sometimes they deviate wildly. Even the most bizarre fictional world, though, needs to feel real. The reader needs to see, smell, taste, and touch the alien environment in which she finds herself. Against all logic and common sense knowledge, she needs to believe.

Pulling this off is tough, especially in genres like paranormal and science fiction, where the story by definition is set somewhere other than the world as we know it. M. Christian is a master of this trick, as he demonstrates in Technorotica, his new collection of stories concerning the erotic connections between humans and machines.

I'll admit up front that I've long been a fan of M.Christian's work (I even edited one of his books, ComingTogether Presents M. Christian) and that I'm deeply in awe of his imagination. Despite what might be considered a positive bias, I still feel totally comfortable and justified in asserting: this is a fantastic book, in both the literal and figurative sense.

The stories in this collection could loosely be called science fiction erotica, but they vary a great deal in focus and tone. Several of them (“Hot Definition”, “Speaking Parts”, “Hack Work” and the excerpt from Christian's novel Painted Doll) are set in a shadowy, perilous, cyber-punk world where everything is for sale and everyone lives on the edge, staying alive through crime or luck or sometimes both. Prosthetics, holographic doppelgangers, constant electronic surveillance, mind-jacking and body snatching – fans of Gibson, Sterling and Cadigan will feel right at home. However, this author isn't primarily concerned with gadgets and technology (never mind the title of the book) but with feelings: fear, hunger, desperation, desire and love. These stories explore how humans reach out for one another, as the mechanical invades and erodes the meaning of humanity.

“Blow Up” and “I am Jo's Vibrator” are lighter in tone. The former lets us into the mind of a man with a peculiar fetish. The latter, as suggested by the title, is narrated by a sex toy. Both will make you smile (or at least, that was my reaction) though “Blow Up”, the first tale in the book, has a subtle darkness that's a preview of the more serious stories to come.

I've read the tale “State” in several other M. Christian collections. It remains one of my favorite erotic stories of all time. A human woman/sex worker impersonates a blue-skinned, state-of-the-art Japanese sex robot. The neat logical flip here satisfies the intellect. The woman's arousal at becoming the ultimate sex object provides satisfaction in other dimensions.

“The Bell House Invitation” is a fabulous new take on ménage, or more accurately, polyamory. Four individuals – two men, two women – live together and share a group mind. Together they seduce another woman with the aim of convincing her to join their communal consciousness. The sex scene in this tale succeeds in exploring all the participants' experience simultaneously, pulling the reader into the mix. It's lusciously explicit without losing the sense of wonder that derives from a level of communion most of us only dream about.

In contrast, “Billie” includes no overt sex at all yet still manages to convey an intense feeling of desire. This vignette of a butch woman speeding along the Pacific Coast Highway on her vintage 1977 Harley Davidson details a synergy between human and machine so strong it becomes erotic.

“A Light Minute” focuses on communication over a distance, as a reclusive woman terrified of the world outside opens herself to the lover she knows only via electronic missives.

Finally, “KSRN” is a dream-like reverie about speed and sex, chrome and compassion. If I'd been the author, I would have put this story last in the book. It leaves you feeling haunted and yet somehow complete.

Overall, my reaction to this book was “Wow”. But then, I'm seriously turned on by originality. If you share this trait with me – get yourself a copy of Technorotica. 

(And by the way - the book includes a great preface and afterword, too!)