Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Kat

From the Geek Corner:

The all-inclusive genre of speculative fiction (the technical term for science fiction and fantasy used only by the professionals and the hopelessly pretentious) is the Paris Hilton Vagina of the literary world. Nothing gets turned away by SF: it’s got elements of queer lit, adventure, romance, erotica, anything else you could possibly imagine. SF by its very definition breaks the rules of categorization, and this outlaw attitude within the genre allows for more experimentation than most other breeds of literature – sexual or otherwise.

Since most SF (other than the media darlings of the genre: Eragon, Harry Potter, and the like) is still fairly underground, writers have the opportunity to really delve into and explore more taboo topics without the fear of having publishing companies breathing down their necks. SF novels tend to serve any of these three purposes: they can be reflections of the sexual mores of our own society, they can experiment with sex as weird as they like, and they can be introductions to the kinkier side of sex for people who may not have had any other experience with it.

The Merro Tree, by Katie Waitman, is a perfect example, though sadly out of print. The main character, a humanoid alien, has a long-term relationship with another male alien, who is the equivalent of a large, sentient snake. The premise of this is of course to mirror our own society – although homosexual sex is not seen as necessarily bad, inter-species sex is illegal and immoral. The book has no explicit sex between the humanoid and the snake – the mechanics are mind-boggling – but there are enough soft-core examples to make it relevant, both with the snake and with a female jelly-alien. The comparison here isn’t with social acceptance of sex with amoebas and boa constrictors in our society, but rather with sexual acceptance in general. If you’re in love, Waitman says, or are bored, or just really want to have it off with a jelly-alien, you should be able to do so.

There are also books whose sex scenes are not meant to serve some high-handed academic purpose, but are in there just because the author felt like it. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is one of these. In the second chapter of the book, the ancient queen of Sheba, here portrayed as a modern-day prostitute, swallows her john with her vagina.

He opens his eyes. … This is what he sees:

He is inside her to the chest, and as he stares at this in disbelief and wonder she rests both hands upon his shoulders and puts gentle pressure on his body. He slipslides further into her.

“How are you doing this to me?” he asks, or he thinks he asks, but perhaps it is only in his head.

“You’re doing it, honey,” she whispers. He feels the lips of her vulva tight around his upper chest and back, constricting and enveloping him. Neil Gaiman, American Gods, p. 30 American paperback

What is the significance of this? Well, for many people, it’s the first departure from vanilla sex in their young lives.
Yes –reading about someone being swallowed by a vagina can get you hot. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone has pristine Hollywood missionary position sex. It’s a big step for a preteen to make. The first fantasy book I purchased independently of my parents, at the age of ten, was a book called The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, which took on both tasks – the mirroring of society (in this case the problem of street kids and gangs) and including weird sex for the hell of it, of which there was a lot. In fact, this book was one of the first sexually explicit novels that I read, and my first exposure to fetishes and kink.

As more kids get into SF through Harry Potter, through Eragon, through Diana Wynne Jones and Ender’s Game, they’ll eventually stumble across the more obscure, boundary-pushing literature– engendering, perhaps, a greater tolerance for alternate sexualities, and, if nothing else, providing titillating masturbatory fantasies for geeky kids too young to fuck.

"Sextraterrestrial" by Andy Maloney, "Adventure!" by Kat B