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Alien Sex: 19 Tales by the Masters of Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy (Roc Science Fiction)

Alien Sex: 19 Tales by the Masters of Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy (Roc Science Fiction)

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Only a couple of good stories...
Review: ... the rest was fairly disappointing and not well written.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Some strong stories, some weak
Review: As advertised, 19 tales on the theme of sex involving humans and aliens.

Sex is an important part of our lives. It is not so far fetched to believe that the same might be the case for at least some alien species. But, this area is not one that has featured widely in SF writings. Around half of the stories here are published for the first time in this collection.

This is not a collection of erotic writing, indeed it is more disturbing and sometimes funny than arousing.

Horror fiction has a much stronger tradition of covering sexual matters and some of the stories here wander along the boundary of the two genres. Particularly "The First Time" by K.W.Jeter. This gruesome story is not an easy read but it is also one of the strongest in the collection.

"All My Darling Daughters" by Connie Willis and Leigh Kennedy's "Her Furry Face" also dwell on aspects of the human condition that you wouldn't want to discuss with your mother. Nonetheless, they are good stories that use the "alien" setting to good effect.

The collection is not confined to such serious, or even disturbing material. There are some genuinely funny stories here too. Especially the classic "How's the Nightlife on Cissalda" by Harlan Ellison and "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" by Larry Niven.

Many of the stories deal with the theme of aliens as a sexual threat to humans. From lighthearted stories such as Pat Cadigan's "Roadside Rescue" to the macabre "Dancing Chickens" by Edward Bryant.

I'd rate about three quarters of the stories in here as being above agerage or better. A couple were rather weak and the book would have been better had they been left out but, overall, this is a good collection.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Sex is pretty alien, right? This book proves it.
Review: Ellen Datlow, long-time fiction editor of Omni, had quite a brainstorm when she edited this book full of alien sex stories in 1990. While 9 stories are reprinted, 10 are new to this book. All are worth reading, and a few fall into the good to very good range. None are classics, though, if the word even applies to material published since 1960. Of the reprints, the best material is Connie Willis's "All My Darling Daughters" (1985), which was too dangerous (in the Ellisonian sense) to appear in the genre magazines before being published in her first story collection, Firewatch. In it women discover that their boyfriends are keeping marsupial-like animals because the animal's reaction to sex is much like that of a woman being raped. It's a disturbing, effective story. Of the new material, I liked Richard Christian Matheson's "Arousal" a lot. It's a very brief tale of a woman who makes the mistake of wanting constant sexual arousal and gets it. A short tour de force. The remaining material, while interesting at times, does not quite come off (pun intended). Datlow's notion of horror veers towards the creepily disgusting, which doesn't bother me but doesn't appeal that much to me either. You might like that style better, and if so you should immediately turn to K. W. Jeter's "The First Time," with enough bloody disgustingness for several stories--a record of sorts, I suppose. I am not disrecommending the book, though. It's worth reading and having. Note: another writer with an alien take on sex is Lucy Taylor, whose book Unnatural Acts & Other Stories is more consistent than this one overall.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: very very cool
Review: I think that this book was very neat and I really liked to way the authors wrote it . my favourite one is #3 its a great story and I think that anyone who reads this book will like it . I recomend this book to any one that likes aliens or that is interested in them . Once again I really liked this book and I will look forward to readong it again. VERY COOL !!!!!!!!!!!!!


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