Mating Season

I enjoy watching the various "Planet Earth" series narrated by David Attenborough on the BBC America channel; I've seen bits of some of the episodes multiple times. A vital aspect of life on Earth, especially animal life, is, of course, producing the next generation. Mating and the care of offspring occupy a lot of footage on those programs. A constant viewer soon notices that most animals other than primates have fixed breeding seasons at particular set times. Once a year, for however long the process takes, all members of a given species enter the mating period. They all focus their total attention and energy on finding partners and producing offspring. For the rest of the year, they return to whatever constitutes "normal life" for their species, perhaps now with young to care for. It's striking to watch films of thousands of penguins or seals, for instance, crowding onto beaches for their annual mating rites. Some of them, such as penguins, practice lifelong monogamy, yet they engage in sexual activity only during that brief period.

Suppose a sapient species had a similar pattern, everybody in their society becoming fertile at once, all of them compelled to mate within a period of a few weeks or miss their chances to become parents? Wouldn't the entire society essentially shut down for that period, sort of like an extended Mardi Gras but with no sober police force or other authorities to keep the madness under control? The hermaphroditic humanoids in Ursula Le Guin's LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS go into "heat" for a few days every month, but they don't all enter that condition at the same time. How would an entire alien culture subject to an annual, universal breeding season handle it? Maybe people become infertile after a certain age, and the elders in their society have the responsibility to keep civilization running smoothly until citizens of reproductive age get back to normal. Would civilization as we know it have taken longer to evolve on that planet, with the yearly mating frenzy as a distraction?

In the opposite situation, some species have only one breeder or breeding couple in a group (e. g., bees, naked mole rats, wolves). An alien society with that reproductive pattern would presumably display none of the preoccupation with sexuality that drives so much of human law, custom, and emotional life.

Wildlife documentaries offer a wealth of information about exotic (to us) biological traits that could inspire alien species.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Weird Insect Sex

I recently read a fun, clever SF romance called STRANGE LOVE, by Ann Aguirre. On Zylar’s world, overpopulation has led to stringent restrictions on mating and reproduction. Adults seeking mates have to participate in the Choosing, a rigorous series of trials. Having failed in four Choosings, Zylar has one more chance, or he’ll be sentenced to life as a drone, neutered and relegated to menial tasks. As the novel begins, he travels to a distant planet to meet the potential mate with whom he has been corresponding. It’s not unusual for members of his species to mate with aliens, since actual conception of offspring occurs through high-tech gene manipulation. However, a solar flare storm has damaged his ship’s AI, as a result of which he unwittingly ends up on Earth. He finds the female he mistakes for his prospective mate in the middle of an apparently devastated landscape, actually the aftermath of a battlefield reenactment weekend. He scoops up Beryl Bowman and her dog, Snaps. Even though Zylar is basically a humanoid insect, he and Beryl fall in love, and eventually they enjoy erotic intimacy despite the differences between their biology. His species has a decidedly bizarre reproductive physiology, which Aguirre based on a genus of cave-dwelling Brazilian insects.

In those four species of the tiny Neotrogla, females penetrate males with a penis-like organ called a gynosome. "Once the female has penetrated the male, her gynosome inflates, releasing a set of spines that can be used to keep the male from escaping. The sex lasts forty to seventy hours." This is a rare case in nature where the female has the ability to coerce the male into sex, the reverse of the usual power balance. In addition to collecting sperm from the male, the female receives nutritious "seminal gifts" to nourish her for the benefit of her eggs. Biologists theorize that this system evolved because of the scarcity of food in the insects' dry, barren environment. Here are a couple of articles about the weird sex lives of Neotrogla:

Scientists Discover the Gynosome

The Females Wear the Penises

In most animal species, sexual selection makes females the more choosy sex, while males will mate with any available and willing female. Those cave-dwelling insects reverse the typical pattern, with males being more picky and females competing for them. This page discusses animal sex-role reversal in general:

Wild Sex

So for SF authors who want to devise unique methods of alien reproduction, Earth biology includes potential models far odder than the well-known pregnant male seahorse—including females with "penises" and males with "vaginas." And I definitely recommend Aguirre's STRANGE LOVE; it's ingenious, suspenseful, often humorous, and sometimes sensual.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Pregnant Males

Do you follow THE ORVILLE? This TV series begins as an affectionate parody of STAR TREK (even the uniforms look similar) but—as far as I can tell from reading about it and watching the first few episodes—gradually becomes more serious. One alien officer, who lives on board with his mate, belongs to an all-male species. In the second episode, he lays an egg, which hatches in the third episode. I'm not sure why he refuses to take a break from brooding the egg; doesn't his mate help? And what about an artificial incubator? Anyway, the baby turns out to be female, a rare abnormality in this species, for which the standard remedy is an immediate sex-change operation. The serious ramifications of this problem mesh incongruously with the premise of an all-male, oviparous species, which the writers apparently introduced in accordance with what the TV Tropes site calls "the Rule of Funny." In fact, an all-male species that reproduces by itself couldn't exist. The sex that produces ova is, by definition, female. To lay eggs, people of the species portrayed in THE ORVILLE would have to be either female (reproducing by parthenogenesis) or hermaphroditic. Members of an all-male species would have to breed with females of some closely related species (as some all-female types of fish can be fertilized by males of different but not too dissimilar species).

The vintage sitcom MORK AND MINDY gets away with the pregnant alien male motif by presenting it in a funny context with no attempt at a biological rationale. Mork not only becomes pregnant, he gives birth to a "baby" who looks like an old man and, conforming to the life cycle of Mork's species, ages backward.

Octavia Butler described her classic work "Bloodchild" as her "pregnant man story." Technically, the human men don't get pregnant, though. They serve as hosts for the eggs of the centipede-like aliens who've allowed the Terran colonists to settle on their planet. When the larvae hatch, the mother removes them from the host's body before they start to eat their way out—usually.

The TV program ALIEN NATION offers a serious portrayal of how a seahorse-like humanoid male pregnancy could work. The Newcomer aliens have three sexes, including a variant type of male who penetrates the female to catalyze her fertility in some unspecified process before the father inseminates her in the "usual" way. The embryo begins to develop in the female's uterus. Part-way through the pregnancy, the fetus is transferred (in a pool of water) from the female to the male, where it grows in a pouch on the man's abdomen. The baby comes out when the pouch splits open in the course of labor.

Here's a page of speculation about how a single-sex species (female) could work in terms of Earth biology:

Single-Sex Species

In Joanna Russ's classic story "When It Changed," members of the all-female population reproduce by combining ova from two different women.

In isogamy, displayed by some life-forms such as algae and fungi, all gametes have the same size and morphology and so can be considered of the "same sex," which can't technically be labeled either male or female:

Isogamy

Some Earth organisms switch reproductive methods in alternate generations between sexual and asexual reproduction (e.g., budding).

The heroine of Megan Lindholm's CLOVEN HOOVES falls in love with a satyr she thinks of as Pan. This highly unusual novel starts out as, apparently, fantasy, in which at first we can't even be sure the paranormal encounters are happening outside the heroine's mind. Eventually, however, the story becomes SF, when the satyr reveals that he belongs to an all-male species whose members reproduce by implanting clones of themselves into human women through sexual intercourse. Thus, when the heroine gives birth to her satyr baby son, he isn't biologically related to her at all.

The occasional birth of females among the alien race on THE ORVILLE suggests a possibility for the evolution of their alleged all-male species. Maybe they once reproduced alternately sexually (through ordinary mating between male and female) and asexually (by cloning). Maybe some genetic disorder caused the conception of females to cease except in rare cases. Asexual reproduction became the only remaining viable means of perpetuating the species and came to be considered the only normal way. So when the male character in that series lays an egg, he's producing a clone of himself.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

What the Romance Field Is Up Against by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

What the Romance Field Is Up Against

 by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Here is an item you should read, once over quickly, looking at vocabulary.

https://www.cnet.com/news/science-fiction-sex-on-screen-movies-tv-replicants-alien-robots/

It has a male byline, but I don't know if the editor or headline writer was male.

The click-bait headline is: (and you need to study headline writing)

Raunchy replicants and amorous aliens: How real is sci-fi sex?
As part of our report exploring the future of sex, we get hot and sweaty with science fiction from "Blade Runner" to "Her." Not all of it is so far-fetched.

The tone of the writing seems flippant, and it seems the writer hates the topic he was assigned and can only sneer at the concept.

It contains two blatant falsehoods you should note:

1) science fiction as a field is represented by film or TV.
2) the measure of "reality" in fiction is how likely or possible the sex act may be.

Ponder this attitude.

This writer has encapsulated the precise reason Romance in general and fantasy/SF/Paranormal Romance in particular is worthy of scorn.

Under the intense hostility to the field of science fiction, I detect a distinct note of fear -- maybe terror -- of Relationship.

Note the absence of my favorite citations for SFR film, The Day The Earth Stood Still and Starman -- neither of which have any sex in them but are really hot Romance.  

The writer of this article -- or maybe just the editor who demanded the article and edited the piece that was turned in to suit the perceived readership -- seem to hold sexuality per se in utter contempt.

Most of these films contain hints of SFR, but none are mentioned here.  They might have been edited out - but C/net is a huge and widely read publisher, aiming at the Tech industry and all who use the tech gadgets taking over our lives.

Also in August 2017, we had a dust-up at Google when an employee published a piece about why women are not more abundant on Google's tech staff.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/10/3-reasons-the-google-anti-diversity-memo-is-wrong-about-women-in-leadership-according-to-data.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-the-google-controversy-misses-the-business-case-for-diversity-1502625603

If you remember this kerfuffle, you don't have to go back and read up on it.  It is enough to ponder what a huge problem we have left in front of us.

Note specifically that this article on sex in science fiction focuses on SEX -- and does not deride, or castigate truly romantic science fiction that sort of skips over the sex part.

In STARMAN, for example, yes they have sex and yes a kid is born because of it, -- but that's not the point of the first film.  It is carried on through the TV series, and I love it and wish for more.

Also igored is ENEMY MINE, where a child results without what we ordinarily think of as "sex."

If you don't want your novel/film-to-be to get targeted by this kind of way-off-the-point scorching rebuke, leave the actual sex scene as go-to-black.

If, on the other hand, you want to bait these people, make them punch you in the gut, so you can point to them and sneer at their ignorance, pepper your work with sex scenes.  Choose your enemies wisely.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Writing "Wild" Sex

Three books about animal mating and reproduction recommended as sources of inspiration for writers who invent alien species:

WILD SEX: WAY BEYOND THE BIRDS AND THE BEES (1991), by naturalist Susan Windybank. Each chapter covers a different theme, such as "Group Sex," "Mating Calls," "Promiscuity," "Strange Sex Organs," etc. Except in the chapter devoted solely to birds, the author leaps from species to species in almost a stream-of-consciousness style and spends anywhere from a paragraph to a page or two on each. The reader can discover all sorts of intriguing body structures and behaviors for further exploration elsewhere. The book has a glossary, an index, and a short bibliography. WILD SEX is a fun read if you don't mind the pervasive, often too-cutesy anthropomorphizing of its animal subjects.

At the opposite extreme stands BIOLOGICAL EXUBERANCE: ANIMAL HOMOSEXUALITY AND NATURAL DIVERSITY (1999), by biologist and cognitive scientist Bruce Bagemihl, the most technical of the three. Directed at both academic and non-academic readers, this monumental text (over 700 pages counting footnotes, index, and credits) explores alternative mating activities among a wide range of animals, focusing mainly on birds and mammals. These fascinating analyses of animal behavior are backed up by statistics and careful explanations of the limits of zoological observation. The first half of the book gives an overview of the field, with many specific examples. Bagemihl tackles problems such as defining homosexuality, transvestism, and transsexuality among animals and the hazards of equating these phenomena with human behavior. The second half, "A Wondrous Bestiary," organized by categories (e.g., primates, marine mammals, hoofed mammals, etc.) under the two classes of birds and mammals, devotes about three pages to each creature. Individual bibliographic lists appear at the ends of these reference items. If you want to construct a rigorous scientific and statistical background for the sexual biology of your aliens, consult this work.

DR. TATIANA'S SEX ADVICE TO ALL CREATION (2002), by evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson (which I may have mentioned in the past). The most entertaining of the batch, this book is structured as "advice to the lovelorn" replies to letters from various animals and even a few non-animals such as slime molds (which may have about 500 sexes—not that all 500 have to unite to reproduce, but the organism can have that many distinct kinds of gametes). It's divided into three parts, "Let Slip the Whores of War," "The Evolution of Depravity," and "Are Men Necessary?" Dr. Tatiana explores the sex lives of all kinds of creatures from microbes to arthropods to mammals and most classes in between. The answers to the letters are long and detailed, using each creature's question as a springboard to discuss a variety of organisms that use similar strategies. She even explores the most deviant sexual pattern, strict monogamy, and the question of why purely asexual reproduction is so rare. Footnotes and an extensive bibliography provide supporting material to verify the seemingly bizarre facts. In my opinion, this would be the most useful research source for non-specialists seeking a wide—and wild—overview of reproductive biology in all its variations.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Sex in the Sea

If you're in search of ideas for truly alien sex, pick up SEX IN THE SEA, by marine biologist Marah J. Hardt. She begins with the quest for a potential mate, not always easy to find in the vastness of the oceans, and continues through courtship, mating, fertilization, and birth or hatching. Some sea creatures travel formidable distances back to their birthplaces to reproduce, while at the opposite extreme others (oysters, coral, etc.) spend their adult lives stuck in one spot and somehow have to get their gametes together without moving from that spot. Some animals change sex when they mature, while a few species can even flip their genders back and forth multiple times over their lives. There are species with two or three distinct types of males, one of which looks like a female in order to sneak past dominant macho-style males and mate with real females. Some male animals have penises longer than their bodies. There's even one that has sperm cells longer than its own body! Female right whales can have intercourse with two males at once, one on each side. A certain segmented, sand-dwelling worm has multiple penises or vaginas, one for each segment. Hardt says they mate like a zipper closing. Squids and octopuses use a specially adapted arm to place a sperm packet inside the female. There are creatures that detach their penises like darts. Hermaphroditic flatworms don't copulate in the "normal" way but stab each other with their organs to inject sperm anywhere in the mate's body. The males of some species of fish attach themselves to the bodies of their much larger mates and atrophy into mere sperm-dispensing appendages. One species takes this process even further, with a female hosting numerous tiny males inside her body. In one kind of shark that bears live young, stronger fetuses murder their weaker siblings in the womb.

Imagine what marriage would be like on a world where the dominant species reproduced like angler fish, with the husband a parasitic attachment to his wife. Consider the dramatic possibilities of sibling rivalry among intelligent beings who know their potential brothers and sisters were eaten in the womb. Sexual politics in a species that reproduced externally, like most fish and amphibians, would be quite different from the status quo in our culture, where the burden of carrying the young inside the body falls on the female. One of Fredric Brown's humorous short-short stories features a man who falls in love with a mermaid and agrees to be transformed into a merman so they can marry. After the change, he's horrified to learn that merfolk mate like fish, by spawning into the water instead of copulating.

Suppose a human hero fell in love with a member of a gender-fluid alien race, able to change sex back and forth depending on environmental cues such as the sex of his/her mate (like some fish). Marion Zimmmer Bradley creates such a race, the chieri, in her Darkover series, and one of the human characters in THE WORLD WRECKERS faces that very challenge.

Every chapter of SEX IN THE SEA offers similar thought-provoking oddities. Written in a breezy, slangy style, this book is both fun and informative.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Haven't Had Sex in 80 Million Years (and other Non-Fiction Book Reviews for Fiction Inspiration)

I doubt that one could write a block-buster alien romance about someone or something that hadn't had sex in 80 million years.

But, wait a minute. One could. It would be a Rip Van Winkle tale with a wrinkle... or a wrinkled pickle.

I'm reading an older Discover Magazine article about self-cloning female whiptale lizards, and also about some aphids that have sex only if there is a useful sexually transmitted infection that they wish to share. http://discovermagazine.com/web/nosex

At the moment, I cannot imagine a sexually transmitted disease that might be useful... but, I'm thinking about it. Evolution moves in mysterious ways. All the more reason, I suppose, not to forcibly innoculate twelve-year old girls against the possibility of contracting genital warts from a boy one day.

Would an 80-million-year-old Rip wake up with an itch and a very useful infection to transmit? Ewwww. Horrors.

I see that some scientists are now suggesting that sleep is not a shut-down state, but more like a series of rolling blackouts in the brain. I like this idea. Perhaps, more evolved beings might be able to chose the route of their own rolling blackouts, so that not all senses would be "asleep" at the same time.

There are mountain ranges buried under the ice of Antarctica. Maybe Atlantis is buried under ice, not under the sea. Cool. One could translate Voyage To The Center Of The Earth. Instead of having clouds in the sky, one would have a sky made of the bottom of the icepack. Light would be a problem, but I'm not clear what the light source was for the dinosaur world in the center of the Earth, either.

Three books reviewed in Discover caught my attention for their worldbuilding potential if the contents were combined and translated into fiction. One is Rat Island by William Stolzenburg reviewed by Patrick Morton, about the problems created by explorers (in this case of our own planet) because their ships carried stowaway rats which decimated indigenous populations of seabirds on islands the explorers visited.

I could imagine humans taking the role of the rats. Possibly escaped abducted humans.

Another fascinating review is that by Sarah Stanley of Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl, about the consequences of a sexually skewed population. Too many Asian male children grow up to one-child families that abort female fetuses because they are able to choose the sex of the only child they are permitted to have. But, when all these males are mature and wish to procreate, there aren't enough women to go around.

This sort of scenario is not new to alien-abduction-of-human-mates Romances, but I assume that mainstream Romances tend to focus on privileged and wealthy (lonely) males who treat their bought brides very well, rather than on the potential for monetizing mates. Instead of a futuristic adaptation of "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers", we'd see "One Bride For Seven 'Brothers'".

Reviewer Natasha Fryer's take on Epigenics: The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance by Richard C. Francis touched on the unintended consequences of messing with testosterone (as in steroid use by professional athletes) and cellular changes that might be passed down to future generations. Mutants, perhaps?

One wonders (this one wonders) what might become of the unplanned descendants of E.D. remedy users. Do they mess with testosterone?

Discover Magazine subscribers (I believe) may still benefit from a special offer if they give gift subscriptions. IMHO, Discover Magazine is an excellent publication.

Alien Sexuality Part One - The Root Of All Conflict

You may want to review my September 21, 2010 post, "Do Your Lovers Live The HEA?"

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-your-lovers-live-hea.html

One would think that "Happily Ever After" isn't a locus for stories. Living "happily" isn't exciting. The "story" happens where a conflict erupts and is subsequently resolved at some cost, some price, a trade-off. All conflict resolution is painful by nature, and "happy" can't co-exist with "painful."

That's true in Romance genre, I suspect. There can be dramatic Events during the "Happily Ever After" part of a couple's life, Events which then become backstory for the children of that couple who go on to live their own "story" and resolve conflicts based on what they learned by watching their parents "live happily ever after."

But in Science Fiction, and especially Science Fiction Romance, SFR or Paranormal Romance, PNR, you can depict a "happy" and "peaceful" "ever-after" portion of a Relationship that nevertheless is fraught with conflicts and their resolutions that generate "story-galore."

How can this be done? It's done with Alien Sexuality.

We, the readers, already know most all there is to know about human sexuality, so a "happily ever after" stretch of a lifetime isn't filled with surprises, shock, dismay, challenges, and above all CHANGE.

But add Alien Sexuality and the "happily" part of "ever after" can be peppered with "learning experiences" that can change, redirect, and mature a Relationship via conflict and resolution -- without ruining the "happily" at all.

A writer can explore Alien Sexuality in a Human/Non-human Relationship in such a way as to illuminate aspects of human sexuality that most readers could never think of on their own. You can surprise, dismay, amuse, and teach readers with stories they'll talk about for years.

Some of the first Science Fiction stories I read hinted at such situations, but didn't address them directly. I saw so many stories that needed telling that I was determined to write them myself and get them into print. I am delighted to say that I succeeded, but that's because I had great teachers.

One of my writing projects exploring some of these threads is the Sime~Gen Universe, which is currently being reprinted on paper and as all formats of e-book by the Borgo imprint of Wildside Press.  That's "in progress" and so far only House of Zeor has appeared and only as a paper reprint.  As they appear, you'll find them listed here and then you can find them at fictionwise.com and other online bookstores. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg on Amazon


Long before I started writing Science Fiction professionally, long before I wrote the Bantam paperback Star Trek Lives! where I talk about Spock Shock and Vulcan sexuality, I read up on how the writers I admired the most "came up with those crazy ideas."

I was a serious fan of "crazy ideas" and walked my world wrapped in a Sense of Wonder that I wanted to share with everyone (even those not interested).

I found out, by comments from other writers, reviewers and fans, that Poul Anderson set the standard for creating "aliens" that other writers then strove to emulate. Anderson inspired an entire swath of the SF genre peopled with characters who lived in fascinating conflicts which could not ethically or morally be resolved by application of the principles that apply to humans.

What's the reason human ethics and morals can not be applied by these aliens to resolve their own conflicts? Surely, humanity in all its various cultures has produced enough systems of ethics and morals that a solution to any problem can be found within one or another human cultural structure?

But no. Human solutions only work for humans. How can that be?

Sexuality. Alien sexuality, that is. Purely and truly alien sexuality.

Human sexuality is the same in all cultures throughout time, but we have developed myriads of ways of coping with the social dynamic it produces. One theory has it that all human culture is really just a mechanism for taming sexuality so that groups can live in cooperation. Even with only one biological necessity to tame, we've invented hundreds of ways of dealing with it.

But what if you changed the biology?

Gene Roddenberry learned the power of that fictional conundrum about Ethics, Morals, and Biology from the swath of the Science Fiction field which had been originated by Poul Anderson.

Roddenberry created Spock by combining two characters, the female first officer "Number One" who had no emotions, and the non-human Science Officer Mr. Spock who was emotional enough but looked at the universe from a non-human perspective.

You can see Spock's emotional character in the pilot The Cage. In all other episodes, he's a different character.

Roddenberry knew that the non-human perspective was the key signature of science fiction, and stubbornly refused to delete the Spock character when the networks objected that it wasn't commercial enough.

The network executives also nixed Number One - in the 1960's, one simply could not have a woman giving orders to men in a combat situation. So you couldn't have a female First Officer, or Captain (they decreed).

So Roddenberry pulled off his famous compromise and combined the two characters. At the time he sold the show, I don't think anyone in charge had the least idea how "alien sexuality" would captivate a generation of people, mostly female, formerly uninterested in science fiction or the "action" genre in general.

The Spock character evolved as science fiction authors contributed scripts to the show (also an unheard-of practice). Most of the established science fiction authors who wrote for Star Trek were from Poul Anderson's school of alien sexuality.

Theodore Sturgeon, noted for his strange sexual aliens, came up with the Vulcan mating drive, pon farr, and with Sturgeon's script Amok Time, Star Trek's popularity exploded, much to the dismay of the network executives at the time.

Anderson's secret sexual weapon - SCIENCE.

Yep. Poul Anderson studied how the various creatures on this Earth "did it" -- and projected what that species would have been like if it had developed intelligence and become the dominant species on Earth.

How would that change Earth and Earth's history (and pre-history)?

When Anderson had a grasp of how that species would create a civilization, then he'd create another world "out there" somewhere among the stars, as Gene Roddenberry created Vulcan. Gene Roddenberry postulated the half-breed alien, a staple of science fiction for generations before the 1960's, because that creates a character with a ripe internal and external conflict and an ambiguous point of view.

As I read novels, I would research references and learn pre-history and history. I became golly-gee-whiz-goshwow excited by variations on the established themes in science fiction novels and stories. At that time, these ideas had not been touched by writers in other fields, while science fiction's treatment of them was superficial at best. I just saw so many new stories that needed telling, and had to tell some of them.

Of course, to write about them in a way that would interest people who were not interested, you needed a grounding in classical human literature akin to the grounding the target readership had. Turns out, SF readers are very literate. More than very, actually. Roddenberry capitalized on that, too, by incorporating many Shakespearean elements in Star Trek's scripts.

Knowing that popular science fiction writers were experts in history, science, religion and literature, I set about acquiring both a grounding in classical literature and a scientific education (my degree is in Chemistry with minors in Physics and Math, but I'm self-educated in literature, though I've taken courses in archeology, linguistics, mythology, etc.).

I designed my education that way because all the best science fiction writers I knew were Chemists, and they talked about the classics but made their living in science. I so wanted to emulate that seamless blend of science, history, literature, and the wildest imagination in my own novels.

And apparently I have, at least according to the response of one fan who turned up on twitter and set me off thinking about exactly "how" a writer creates the sexuality of their aliens.

Here's part of an exchange between us on twitter. He's @booksbelow and I'm @jlichtenberg. The first name that appears is the originator of the comment, and the second name is the person who is being answered.

----------------

booksbelow: @JLichtenberg A few books/stories from youth I spent years looking for-yours were one. Another was Simulacron 3, breakthrough concept stuff.

jlichtenberg: @booksbelow It's that "breakthrough concept" stuff like Simulacron3 that I'm not seeing a lot of these days

booksbelow: @JLichtenberg I find myself rereading SF from the 60's and 70's a lot. SF writing has improved a lot, but lost some of sense of wonder.

jlichtenberg: @booksbelow Maybe it's not the writers or book that lost Sense Of Wonder, but the audience? Broader audience, lower common denominator?

booksbelow: @JLichtenberg I don't think can blame audience, there's always audience for innovative well written fiction. I Think New Wave derailed sf.

jlichtenberg: @booksbelow I agree "New Wave" swept the SF field into a new track -- see this month's LOCUS. Seems #STEAMPUNK is sweeping field aside again
-----------------

The September issue of Locus Magazine (the newspaper of the science fiction field) http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/2010/Issue09_Toc.html features Steampunk and its influence on the SF field ever since the 1980's.

According to the various articles and interviews in this Locus Magazine feature, Steampunk has morphed and changed, even the definitions of the words have changed.

Cyberpunk was the first coinage of an SF genre using the meme "punk" and in that usage, it meant a person who was far out of the mainstream of the culture. A punk, a dropout, a recalcitrant objector to the norms of adult culture.

Today, the meme punk seems to have morphed into a usage that is more akin to "mashup" -- or a combination of one thing with another, a hybridization. And you see "punk" added to almost any other word to indicate some kind of alternative. Steampunk is usually in an alternate-universe-historical setting, most usually Elizabethan steam-powered technology and the culture based on that. But now it's morphing into other historical periods and locations.

Punk. A crossbreed. Like Spock.

As Gene Roddenberry said many times, the dramatic purpose of Spock as a character was to provide that external point of view on humanity's foibles that only an "alien" can provide. A "punk" is an external viewer.

There are young writers on twitter who proudly proclaim that they write Steampunk -- and emphasize that to them the term implies a romance element in the plot, a strong romance!

So Steampunk is becoming the home of a kind of SF-Fantasy-Romance mashup or hybrid-genre.

Usually, Steampunk doesn't involve aliens from outer space or galactic wars (watch how fast that will change), but it does involve the individual's mastery of the technology of the time to the extent of being able to invent things, jury-rig and prototype new ways to do things with "steam powered" technology that will solve the plot problem and often leap-frog over development and achieve what only our modern technology can achieve.

In other words, it's Robert A. Heinlein's typical hero building a space ship in his garage alone or maybe with a couple of friends to help.

Steampunk explores variations on society and history that allow the writer to create characters who understand the technology of their day, and their understanding is not beyond the comprehension of the reader.

Steampunk seems to be evolving into a literature of individualism, and that may actually give rise to a "conceptual breakthrough" such as @booksbelow was talking about.

In the 1970's, right after and during Star Trek's blasting onto the scene with Alien Sexuality (explored mostly in fanzines, not on TV) we had the conceptual revolution that said that women are not perpetual children in adult bodies. That revolution gave rise to the kick-ass heroine and the female Starship Captain.

Today, I often hear TV news anchors make offhand references to "Beam Me Up, Scotty" -- as if Star Trek had invented the matter transmitter that was so familiar to all science fiction readers who watched the original Star Trek. "Steampunk" often rewrites history freehand just like that. The authors may know our mainstream history, but I often wonder if the readers do.

Poul Anderson subscribed to the widespread notion that human civilization is primarily shaped, outlined or bounded by human sexuality, and propagated that notion among science fiction writers.

Today many never question whether all human psychology and thus culture is rooted in our sexual requirements.

In the 1970's, other feminist writers such as Joanna Russ, explored how women would run a world or get along in a world without men (or where men were no more self-aware or intelligent than animals). Roddenberry tried that in other series pilots, but it didn't fly.

History, anthropology, sociology and all of Literature reflect how we have analyzed ourselves through the lens of human sexuality.

If every element of a society or civilization is rooted in sexual dynamics (or at the very least reproductive drives), then if you make even the tiniest change in that basic dynamic drive, you change everything, even ethics and morals -- especially morals.

Since we "must" reproduce, anything that tends to prevent, limit or redirect that drive is a source of dramatic conflict that can be exploited by a writer to tell a story.

Apparently (to date as far as I know) all sexual reproduction on Earth seems to follow the same pattern. Make a change in that pattern - and don't just take an animal from Earth and create a dominant species out of it, but create a totally new kind of animal, and you may create the next "Spock" character -- the icon or archetype that will ignite the creative thinking of a new generation.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com (for current novel availability)
http://www.simegen.com/jl/ (for complete biography & bibliography)
http://slantedconcept.com (for screenwriting projects)

Alien Culture & Alien Sexuality Themes

THEMES For BUILDING ALIEN CULTURES and ALIEN SEXUALITY

a.) War, Alien Invasion: The most common theme is aliens seeking to conquer Earth or destroy Earth. Prime examples of this type of story are SF movies and TV series like H. G. Wells War of the Worlds, Independence Day with Will Smith as a fighter pilot taking Earth technology against the evil aliens, and V-the TV mini-series.

b.) Evil Aliens: Another common theme involves human heroes and heroines fighting evil bloodthirsty alien creatures, either on Earth or in space. Classic examples of this theme are The Thing, the Alien horror series with Signoury Weaver, The Blob and of course, the movie Signs staring Mel Gibson.

c. Earth as a refuge: Aliens seeking Earth as a refuge for their people, the TV series Alien Nation was an excellent example of this theme. Zenna Henderson also uses this theme in her short story series entitled, The People, No Different Flesh.

d.) Miscommunication: Aliens come to Earth for peaceful reasons. Humans are afraid and believe the aliens are evil and mobilize their armed forces to fight back against the evil aliens. A very early black and white SF movie made in 1952, The Day the Earth Stood Still is a classic example where the alien flying saucer lands on the White House lawn and the president calls up tanks, airplanes and the military to defend humanity against the alien invasion.

Another good example of miscommunication is the novella Subcommittee by Zenna Henderson.

Here's the first paragraph of that story. First came the sleek black ships, falling out of the sky in patterned disorder, sowing fear as they settled like seeds on the broad landing field. After them, like bright butterflies, came the vivid-colored slow ships that hovered and hesitated and came to rest among the deadly dark ones.

In this story aliens came to Earth for a refuge. Battles take place in space and many lives are lost on both sides. This story starts where humans and aliens are trying to negotiate peace but they're not getting anywhere because neither side wants to reveal their weaknesses. What finally brings peace is when a human and alien child meet and their human and alien mothers learn to become friends and the human mother brings the crucial piece of information to the negotiation table as to WHY the aliens came to Earth.

LEGAL THEMES:
a. Space law: There are a number of Space Treaties and laws already in existence on Earth. http://www.spacelaw.com.au/

www.spacelawstation.com/

b. Alien criminals, alien cops and bounty hunters: This is a subset of the basic alien invasion theme played out on a more personal level, usually with one or two humans figuring out the problem and fighting back. Prime examples of this theme are the Predator movies and the movie I pointed out at the beginning of my class, I Come In Peace, where the alien criminal comes to Earth killing humans while draining endorphins from their bodies to sell as drugs while another alien cop/bounty hunter arrives chasing him and humans get involved to help the alien cop/bounty hunter kill the alien criminal.

The theme of alien criminals and bounty hunters/cops chasing these criminals is a popular theme for Erotic Alien Romance type stories. I used another subset of this theme with my Erotic SF story, The Huntress, where Rulagh is an alien exo-biologist sent to Earth on an animal control mission by the Interstellar Humane Society. The Men in Black movies used this concept also but they did it as parody/comedy rather than a straight SF action-adventure type story.

RELIGION:

Every culture has religious beliefs and beliefs about life after death. As I mentioned in my previous lecture, in my story The Huntress, they not only believed in reincarnation, these aliens had documented reincarnation as scientific fact. There are many examples in human culture and history that you can adapt and use when you create alien religions and even alien cults that are on the outskirts of the main alien culture. Do not make the mistake of having aliens where every alien has the same culture and religious beliefs. Look how many different cultures and religions we have here on Earth.

LANGUAGE:

The most common SF theme is aliens who can speak and understand English because they've been listening to our radio and TV broadcasts for a hundred years. Another common SF theme to take care of language differences is the universal translator device.

C.J. Cherryh's leonine aliens cannot understand their human stowaway when they first meet him. In fact, they're not even sure he's not an escaped animal until he starts writing numbers in his blood that's smeared on the deck plate from the cuts he received from one of the Chanur spacer's claws. Half of the first book in that series shows the human working with a computer and painstakingly speaking his words into that computer for the different images shown in order to give their translator device enough human words to use. Gaining a complete dictionary/glossary of the human language becomes a critical and very important item of trade for the Chanur.

In The Huntress, Rulagh implants his language into Sonia's brain with a sleep-teaching device. I also created alien words for Rulagh to use when he referred to breasts and genitals and because he has a forked tongue, he hisses and for every word in English that began with an s, I added extra ss's. For example, he would say "I ssee you."

For my Alternate Earth Reality book Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, they have mute telepaths who can transfer the new language into a person's mind. Teoh, the mute telepath in this story transfers his language into the two women, Twig & Sammy who get transported into this alternate Earth via the Bermuda Triangle.

PART II: CREATING ALIEN CULTURES:

You can use following types of cultural systems as a basis for your alien cultures.

1. Patriarchal: A system of social relations whereby the senior, decision-making member of the group, clan or tribe is a male elder. Patriarchal groups often have a matrilineal kinship system, with descent being reckoned from a male ancestor. Extreme examples of patriarchal cultures are manifested by a few of the more restrictive Islamic religions. There's nothing that says your aliens can't have a patriarchal culture. However, if your aliens have the exact same culture as the basic WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) mainstream culture in many countries on Earth including the USA, then they won't seem very alien to your readers, would they?

2. Matriarchal: A system of social relations whereby the senior, decision-making member of the group, clan or tribe is a female elder. Matriarchal groups often have a matrilineal kinship system, with descent being reckoned a female progenitor. Many of the Eastern Native American tribes like the Iroquois had matriarchal cultures. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A890552

a.) Celtic: Celtic laws were created by a matriarchal culture. http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Group/46415

The position of women in the Celtic Law system was amazingly advanced compared with the rest of the world. They were lawyers and judges and queens, while women in other parts of the world were the chattels of men.

Even in some religions today women are not given the power that men have. Ireland was possibly the most advanced of all European cultures: it had an Iron Age culture which included bards, historians, judges and a set of laws that governed all aspects of life.

This voluminous set of laws covered everything from hurting a chained dog to behavior while drinking. The set of laws was known as the Law of the Commoner or Freemen, or the Brehon Law. So balanced and just was the ancient Law that it was adopted by the majority of the Norman conquerors and held sway among the populace until ruthlessly put down by Cromwellian forces in the 17th century. Many suppose that the Brehons served as judges. Actually, the Brehon was but the legal expert.

b. Australian Aborigines: The Australian Aborigines are said to have a matriarchal culture. http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/culture/culture.php

c.) Tauregs: The Tuareg culture are a Berber tribal culture in Africa's Sahara that has a complex system of both matrilineal and patrilineal descent. They were originally patrilineal but adopted matrilineal descent. They also have a complex society of Thaggaren or nobles. Marabouts or priests, Innghad or serfs, and Ireghenaten or cross-breeds.
http://www.gosahara.org/kel.html

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/africa/tuareg.html

http://lexicorient.com/e.o/tuareg.htm

d. Role Reversal: This is another subset that's under matriarchal cultures. Too many writers make the mistake of doing role reversal when they try to create a matriarchal culture. This is incorrect. A true matriarchal culture is NOT a patriarchal culture with women as the strong rulers and men as weak, submissive partners.

A strong woman wants a strong man as her partner, not a weak, submissive slave. Wen Spencer does a little bit of role reversal in her SF story, A Brother's Price but she makes sure the men in this culture are strong and sexy. You can read an excerpt of Chapter One from A Brother's Price here at this url

http://www.wenspencer.com/abrothersprice.html

Wen Spencer uses polygyny (more commonly referred to as polygamy) for this culture i.e. one husband with multiple wives instead of polyandry where you have a woman with multiple husbands.

Another common SF cliché is to portray women only, matriarchal cultures as static, technologically backward, hierarchical and insect-like. Those stories based their culture on Queen bees and their hives filled with female workers and male drones. This kind of fiction operated very much out of traditional cultural assumptions. The female characters were alien because they weren't "proper" women.

Or they have men and women living in separate societies (and I'm not talking Mars and Venus, either).

3. Polygamous/ polyamorous cultures. A basic l definition of polygamy is the practice of marriage to more than one spouse at the same time versus monogamy where each person has only one spouse or life mate. Technically speaking with divorce and remarriage accepted as normal part of the mainstream WASP cultures, you could say they practice serial monogamy rather than pure monogamy which would mean 'until death do us part' with no remarriage after the death of a spouse. There are numerous examples and excellent definitions presented of the many different types of polygamous cultures at this web page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy

There is additional and detailed information about polyamory arranged by topics at the following website.

http://www.polyamory.org/~joe/polypaper.htm

Classic SF books that look at polyamorous line marriages are Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in A Strange Land and The Moon is A Harsh Mistress. Another excellent SF novel with polyamory/group marriage as a normal part of the culture is Courtship Rite by Donald Kingsbury. But don't expect a lot of sensual sex in these stories. The sex scenes are very short.

I created a matriarchal/polyamorous culture for my Sidhe trilogy, Covenants, Down Came a Blackbird and Out of The Dark. If you're interested in reading the first three chapters of these books, they're at my author website of www.sff.net/people/selkiewife


4. Transgendered cultures: A good example of this would be the Native American Berdache. Bisexuality, cross-dressing and transgendered were all part of
the many different types of berdache in the Native American tribes.

http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/gender/intersexuals/berdache_tradition.htm

http://www.geocities.com/westhollywood/stonewall/3044/berdache.html

http://www.hotcakencyclopedia.com/ho.BerdacheOriginMyth.html

Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness is a classic SF novel where the inhabitants are a neuter gender who change to either male or female depending on pheromones of their lover.

My novella Christmas Noir has a hermaphrodite as the main character in a future where hermaphrodites are the last minority to receive equal rights. Of course, there's a serial killer targeting hermaphrodites in this story and Shannon the hermaphrodite character has two detectives, a man and woman guarding her after Shannon receives a death threat with photos of the latest murder victim.

I also have hermaphrodites as part of the alternate Earth reality in Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, which won the 2005 Dream Realm Award for Best SF Erotica.

Lots of possibilities here if you want aliens who are transgendered, who can morph into either sex depending on who their lover is or who are dual-sexed.

You can find tons of information about hermaphrodites at this website.

http://www.isna.org/faq


5. Animal culture models: If you want to create an alien culture modeled after wolf pack socialization, this website has very detailed information.

http://www.fiu.edu/~milesk/behavior.htm

Lion social behaviors are shown here at

http://www.thebigcats.com/lion/lion_social.htm

and at

http://www.nature-wildlife.com/liontxt.htm

Feeding habits, social behaviors of seals, sea lions and walrus.
http://www.britannica.com/ebi/article-207840

Development of sea lion social behavior through play.
http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/14/1/391

Some animal species reproduce asexually. Seahorse males carry their fetus in pouches. Other fish species lay their eggs in the water and have nothing to do with them afterwards. I mentioned in an earlier lecture the fact that reptilian reproduction is scent-based and that many reptilian species have a double penis. Flamingos need a group of other flamingos around them in order to reproduce. Some zoos use multiple mirrors around their caged flamingos in order to encourage them to reproduce.

6. Marriage customs: A subset of the different cultural systems covers marital customs:

When a community does not allow marriage with members outside of the community, this is called endogamous marriage patterns. Endogamous marriage means that individuals are marrying their relatives in some way and so the lines of descent remain fairly pristine.

When a community marries only members outside the community, this is called exogamous marriage patterns. Such communities incorporate the one spouse into the other spouse's community, depending on which family the married couple settles down with. Individual married couples and nuclear families almost never settle by themselves, but they move in with or next to one of the spouse's family.

In exogamous marriage cultures, then one spouse must move out of their kinship-based community and move to the other spouse's community. If a society demands that the wife move in with the husband's family or move to the husband's community, that is a patrilocal, or "father-located" kinship society. If the husband must move in with the wife's family or community, that is a matrilocal, or "mother-located" kinship community.

In C.J. Cherryh's sprawling epic about human space exploration, Downbelow Station, she shows a mixture of marriage customs. There are three political structures pitted against each other, the Alliance, Company and Union. Stationers and merchanters are the Alliance. Earth with its vast mercenary troopships funded by corporations is the Company and Cyteen and its colony planets are Union.

Stationers have a patriarchal and patrilocal structure. The traders who live on the vast merchant ships that travel from star to star have a matriarchal and matrilocal structure. The soldiers on the Company ships fighting the colonies of Cyteen have a polyamorous structure for their lives and no children. The colonies past Cyteen run the gamut of all the different customs depending on the planet.

She illustrates this with the relationship between Quen and Konstantin, the stationmaster at Pell. Ellen Quen's ship was destroyed in the war. She is the last Quen simply because she left her ship for one year to be with Konstantin and now that her ship is gone, she wants to get pregnant despite the war that is going on between Alliance, Company and Union space.

Konstantin wonders about trader morals. He asks Quen about the fact that they move from station to station and they make love promiscuously and accept all children born to their women into their family name. Quen looks at him and says, "But all the men on my ship are my cousins, where else would we get our children?" So, after he thinks about it for a bit, he comes back to her and tells her, yes he'll give her children and he agrees that the first child she has will be a Quen in order for the Quen Name to continue because the Konstantin family already has more than enough children to continue their Name.

7. Symbiotic cultures. Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/bloodchi.htm

shows a large wormlike alien species that develops a unique symbiotic relationship with humans. In return for humans acting as the host bodies for the alien fetuses, the aliens cure human illness and give them a much longer lifespan. Of course, there's also extreme danger with this symbiotic relationship. The aliens must remove the fetus via C-section right before it becomes fully mature because the normal process of "birth" has the fetus eating its way out of the host body.

I used symbiotic aliens for my book, On The Edge of Time. In that book, the aliens are shapeshifters who can function on their own within wrymhole space and they form a partnership with humans whereby they fight wrymdragons in wrymhole space and keep the wrymdragons from destroying the human spaceships and brutally killing the humans. However, in order to survive outside of wrymhole space, the aliens in this story must link with their human hosts and they appear as living serpent tattoos on their hosts' bodies. Plus, for reproduction, they implant their eggs within the male host because the male has the larger and stronger body.

*******
In order to write Alien Sexuality, you need to think the cultural themes through first. After you’ve developed the culture, the sexuality for your alien characters will have a natural flow within the story and the love scenes will be believable.

Thank you.

Barbara Karmazin
www.sff.net/people/selkiewife

Psychological consequences of Alien Sex

Psychological consequences of alien sex for the human character (... and, especially for the alien!)

By Barbara Karmazin

www.sff.net/people/selkiewife

1. FIGHT or FLIGHT response: This is the very basic response pattern regardless of species.

Imagine that you’re a caveman/woman/child picking berries when you come nose to nose with a sabre-tooth tiger. While you were gathering, the tiger was hunting, and the sight of you makes his mouth water.

Evolution gives your body a set of automatic responses that take over in the event of an emergency. At the sight of the tiger, your hypothalamus sends a message to your adrenal glands and within seconds, you can run faster, hit harder, see better, hear more acutely, think faster, and jump higher than you could a few earlier.

Your heart pumps at two to three times the normal speed, sending nutrient rich blood to the major muscles in your arms and legs. The tiny blood vessels (called capillaries) under the surface of your skin close down (which sends your blood pressure soaring) so you can sustain a surface wound and not bleed to death. Your eyes dilate so you can see better.

All functions of your body not needed for you to fight or flee shut down. Digestion stops, sexual function stops, even your immune system is temporarily turned off. If necessary, excess waste is eliminated to make you light on your feet.

Your suddenly supercharged body helps level the odds between you and your attacker. Consequently, you narrowly escape death by leaping higher and running faster than you ever could before. When the danger is, you find a safe place to lie down and rest your exhausted body.

FLASH FORWARD to the present day. Despite the huge amount of technological change in the ensuing 25,000 years, you have the same set of internal body parts as that of your remote forefathers and foremothers. You're in the break room at work, hunting for coffee and gathering donuts.
Your boss walks in, hunting you. He says, "Could I see you for a moment in my office, please?"

At the sight of the tiger, er, uh...your boss...your hypothalamus sends a message to your adrenal glands and within seconds your body summons the strengths and abilities that your stone-age ancestor needed to fight a sabre-tooth tiger.

Blood pressure soars as you take the long walk down the hall to your boss's office. You remember a rumor you heard about an upcoming round of layoffs. Now your mind races, your heart pumps harder, your mouth dries up, your hands feel cold and clammy, sweat pours down your and you may even feel a sudden urge to go (to the bathroom). Maybe you'd like to run and hide or maybe you'd like to punch your boss in the nose, but you can't do either. Welcome to the modern era.

(Every time your body triggers the fight or flight response, for situations that are not truly life-threatening, you are experiencing, in effect, a false alarm. Too many false alarms can lead to stress-related disorders like, heart disease, high blood pressure, immune system disorders, migraine headaches, insomnia and sexual dysfunction.)

So, going back to our aliens. If an alien, vampire, werewolf or stranger suddenly appears in your bedroom, what’s going to happen? Are you going to open your arms and legs and invite him or her into bed with you for a sexual tryst? Or are you going to reach for the baseball bat you keep under your bed and clobber this intruder, then run away and dial 911 for help?

Keep this normal psychological reaction in mind whenever you set up a sudden meeting between human and alien.

I kept this fight or flight response in mind when I wrote the first face-to-face meeting between Sonia and Rulagh. And because Rulagh is an exo-biologist working for the Interstellar Humane Society, then this meant he would also be aware of this common response to danger and/or a potentially dangerous stranger. So of course, he uses that knowledge to defuse the situation and reassure Sonia that his intentions are harmless instead of dangerous.


2. Stockholm Syndrome: I’m sure you’re familiar with this syndrome.

The Stockholm Syndrome comes into play when a captor/abductor shows token acts of kindness to his or her prisoner. It typically takes about three or four days for the psychological shift to take hold.

A strategy of trying to keep your captor happy in order to stay alive becomes an obsessive identification with the likes and dislikes of the captor which has the result of warping your own psyche in such a way that you come to sympathize with your tormenter. Rescue attempts are seen as a threat, since it's likely the captive would be injured during such attempts.

It's important to note that these symptoms occur under tremendous emotional and often physical duress. The behavior is considered a common survival strategy for victims of interpersonal abuse, such as battered spouses, abused children, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors.

Needless to say, if your hero or heroine is a reasonably intelligent and educated human, then he or she would also know about the Stockholm Syndrome and would be suspicious of his or her feelings if he or she were captured, kidnapped and/or imprisoned by an alien.

I’m also sure if your readers are reasonably intelligent and educated, they would also be aware of the effects of the Stockholm Syndrome and would also be suspicious of the validity of any emotional attachments formed under this type of alien/human scenario. Last but not least, it’s a very common SF cliché to have aliens kidnapping human females for sexual experimentation.

So, if you’re going to have a situation where a human is abducted, number one, you need to make it a plausible abduction, not a cliché one and number two, you need to establish very quickly that the human is free to go within the first hour after abduction but decides to stay and help the alien resolve the issue that caused the abduction in the first place.

For example, the alien abducts the human because he or she needs a critical component to repair his or her spacecraft. Have the human and alien work together to solve a problem and in the process of solving the problem get to know each other better and watch the sexual attraction and emotional bonding grow before you have any sexual interaction take place. Create the sexual tension first. It’s a lot more exciting, sensual and romantic that way.

Another example or twist of the trite alien kidnap cliché could be a third alien enemy species who kidnaps the human and throws him or her into the holding pen with another alien species. This type of scenario forces the human and alien to work together to escape and of course they forge emotional bonds while planning their escape, escaping, eluding their mutual enemy and defeating their mutual enemy.

3. Florence Nightingale Syndrome:

Florence Nightingale Syndrome refers to an inappropriate attraction which can arise between two individuals, one of whom is receiving support or positive attention of some kind. In time, natural feelings of gratefulness and appreciation become exaggerated, turning into declarations of love. The receipt of medical attention is a prime opportunity for such interactions to take place. Obviously, the relationship between Florence Nightingale and the soldiers of the Crimean War, who were said to kiss her shadow as it fell across their bed, gives rise to the syndrome's name.

Florence Nightingale Syndrome is also used to refer to a constant and uncontrolled desire to protect and alter the lives of others, often without regard to whether one possesses either the right, or indeed the ability to do so. The feeling of providing help reinforces within the individual a feeling of power, and thus provides for the basic need to feel wanted and loved.


4. Dominance/Submission:

Many of the different animal species you will look at as models for shapeshifters and aliens have a complex social hierarchy that blends dominant and submissive behaviors to form their packs and family groups.

a. BDSM is a specific sexual subculture with specific rules and guidelines for the relationships within this subculture.

D/s consists of a consensual relationship that is based around a power exchange between two people. One person is the controlling one, known as the Dominant; the other person is the controlled one, and is known as the submissive (note that 'Dominant' is usually capitalized and that 'submissive' is not). The submissive gives a certain amount of 'power' to the Dominant over their lives. This can be as simple as the Dominant telling them what to wear each day, or can be as complex as the submissive having to ask the Dominant for permission to even leave the room. The important thing to note here is that we are talking about consensual relationships. The rights of the submissive are not taken from them without consent, they are given freely during a period of negotiation.

Total Power Exchange Arguably, the 'pinnacle' of D/s relationships is a Total Power Exchange (TPE) relationship, where the submissive gives up all control to the Dominant. Total means just that. The Dominant controls every aspect of their lives from what they wear or eat, to where they go and who they see. (You’re walking a very fine line between D/s and Domestic Violence with this type of relationship. Why? Because many abusers seek to control every facet of their spouse or lover’s life.)

Here’s a list of terminology within the D/s lifestyle:

Dominant - The person who has been given some amount of control over the submissive. Other terms describing them are Dom and Domme.

submissive - The person who gives some amount of control to the Dominant. Other terms describing them are sub, pet and slave.

D/s - Dominance and submission. A power exchange relationship.

Lifestyle - Generally those that practice D/s are part of 'the lifestyle'. It doesn't mean anything, it's just a descriptive term.

Vanilla - a non-D/s relationship.

24/7 - Living a D/s relationship 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To put it another way, you are always in a power exchange relationship.

Scene - The best way to describe this is to think of a 'scene' from a movie. This is one interaction between a Dom and a sub. It doesn't have to be sexual; all that is required is that a power exchange has taken place. Those not in a 24/7 relationship tend to have 'scenes' where the power exchange happens. Even those in 24/7 relationships can have scenes, where the exchange becomes deeper.

Top - A person who Dominates for only a scene. If you think of it as a 'one night stand' in the D/s lifestyle you wouldn't be quite correct, but it's a good start. This doesn't mean that the Top is a 'Dominant', just that the dominate for the one scene.

Bottom - A person who is submissive for only a scene. This does not mean the person is always a submissive, just that they are submissive for the scene. See 'Top'.

Switch - Someone who switches between the Dominant and submissive roles.

Safewords - These are words that are used by either Dom or sub to slow down, or stop a scene. Having negotiated a safeword is very important. It means that if something is happening that makes either person uncomfortable, they can either back off a little, or stop.


b. A Few Myths, D/s isn't about Abuse

Though the point has already been made it's important to emphasize that the normal D/s relationship is about a consensual power exchange. Whatever happens to the sub, whatever demands are made of them, they have agreed to this. If they haven't, if they never asked for this, or they don't want this, then it's an abusive relationship not a BDSM relationship.

Submissives aren't always women. If your image of a submissive is a woman, no matter how she's dressed, think again. There are a great number of male submissives.
Submissives aren’t weak. If someone has to have someone else run their lives for them they must be weak, right? Wrong. Many submissives are quite powerful people outside their D/s relationship: lawyers, managers, business people, police, soldiers and so on. For some, being a submissive in the home, or merely in the bedroom, is a way of escaping from the normal pressures of being in charge.

D/s isn't about Kinky Sex. Sure, D/s couples often have kinky sex. Then again, vanilla couples often do too. What defines a D/s relationship has very little to do with the methods used, so much as the power exchange. A simple 'no' when a sub asks if they can have a drink can have as much 'power' as getting them to kneel.
Entering a D/s Relationship. When two people are about to enter a D/s relationship, the first step is negotiation. This is a period where no power exchange occurs, but is a discussion where the parameters of the relationship are discussed. How much power will the Dominant have over the submissive? What hard limits do both have; that is, to what activities are one or both opposed? What will be the safewords? What will be the period of the relationship?

Often after negotiation a contract is drawn up, setting out all of the parameters discussed. In this way there can be no misunderstandings.


c. Erotic SF/F, BDSM and aliens

Many Erotic SF and Fantasy writers model their alien and futuristic human cultures using the BDSM culture. A few of the very popular stories walk a fine line between an abusive type of relationship and the classic Stockholm Syndrome psychological response.

You can incorporate elements of BDSM into your alien cultures but make sure you know what you’re doing and make sure you have a specific list of behavior/cultural rules set up for the culture when you do this. Don’t just do it on a random fashion and always show consent for the relationship. Know what rules you have and know how each rule effects the way the aliens interact with each other and with humans.

Because I worked for twenty-nine and a half years as a bilingual social worker in my day job and have had numerous cases that involved abused women, abused men and abused children, I’m very aware of this fine line. I also have a tendency to avoid the more extreme versions of BDSM culture and will often use only the mildest forms of sex play from this culture in my writing because of my past work and personal experiences.

When I created Rulagh’s alien culture for The Huntress, I modeled his entire culture on a basic pack family system where dominant and submissive members cooperate within their pack and fight all outsiders. Their corporate/business interactions are also very dependent on dominant and submissive behavior patterns with each corporation/business looking at the other corporations/businesses as non-pack members and enemies to be watched.

Sonia and Rulagh staged ‘scenes’ of dominance and submission during their sex games with one another and forged deeper bonds of love and commitment to each other with these scenes.

I combined the fact that reptilian sexual arousal is scent-based and the fact that many animal species use scent to physically ‘mark’ their territories. So, because Rulagh’s species has two penises, I decided that the second penis was used to ‘scent mark’ their women. Rulagh’s unique pheromone scent from his penis happens to be cinnamon.

Sonia and Rulagh had to fight the other alien members of the team sent to Earth on their animal control mission in order to establish their dominance and leadership of the team.


5. Cross Species References/Standards of Beauty and Sexual Attractiveness:

When you look at a horse galloping across a field, you recognize and admire the beauty of its body even though this is a different species. The same recognition and admiration occurs when you see images of wolves, bears, seals, dogs, cats and many other animal species.

You’re not sexually aroused because you’re aware that they’re animals and that their intellectual capacity and ability to communicate with you and interact with you is not on the same level as another human being. However, this doesn’t stop you from forming bonds of love. I love my furbabies, my dogs and cats. And I’m sure that those of you who are in this group who have pets, all love your pets dearly and you know your pets love you and return your affection with licks and touches and body contact and they enjoy it when you touch them and pet them also.

The key element here is intelligence. I went over that element in detail during my first lecture when I went over the definition of bestiality. Regardless of shape and form, if the intelligence is present and the intelligence level is equal to or higher than human intelligence, there is no bestiality. Without intelligence then there is no way to form emotional and sexual relationships.

Many SF writers when they write an alien often show the aliens looking at humans with disgust and horror because humans look so different from them and humans don’t meet their standards of alien beauty. Perhaps, but the ability to recognize the beauty of another species is already there despite the physical differences. I believe that aliens have this ability also and will be able to recognize the attractiveness of the human form despite the differences the same way humans can recognize the beauty of a horse, wolf or panther.

On the other hand, just as there will be aliens who can recognize and admire the physical beauty of other species, there will always members of the alien species who loathe anyone or anything different from their normal expectations of beauty and sexual attractiveness.

The traditional view of sexual arousal focuses on the physical changes associated with the genitals. Sexologists have broken the sexual response cycle into four phases, excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. The amount of time a person spends in each phase, and even the order in which they experience them may vary.

At birth we respond to sexual stimulation based solely on instinct. If we feel safe and our basic material needs are met, we will most likely respond to sexual stimuli very easily. This is perhaps why the simple acts of nursing and exposing the genitals to air results in sexual arousal in infants. At birth our bodies are very sensitive to external stimuli, and our minds have not learned "appropriate" sexual response yet. As a result, at birth, orgasm is probably controlled more by physical stimuli than mental thought processes. Orgasm is a simple physical reflex response at birth.

By the time puberty rolls around we have already been taught "appropriate" sexual response.

Sexual arousal and orgasm is a complex process involving the entire person, mind and body. The human mind receives in sexual stimuli from the body, processes the stimuli, and based on past learning and experience this causes a physical response. The brain may start the sexual arousal process in response to thought (sexual fantasy), visual stimuli (seeing a partner nude), audible stimulation (hearing a partner's voice), olfactory stimuli (the smell of a partner's body), and taste (the taste of a partner's body).

The mind and body while able to experience sexual arousal separately cannot experience orgasm separately. Orgasm requires both the mind and body to work together. Mental thought alone can trigger orgasm, but the actual sensations are physical reactions.

Then there is what I call the feedback loop in sexual arousal. Knowing and seeing that your lover is aroused makes you feel sexy. The same thing applies to your lover, when your lover knows that you’re aroused that increases your lover’s arousal. Back and forth this feedback loop continues throughout the love scene until both (or more) participants orgasm.

Many SF writers use this ‘feedback loop’ to describe two or more persons linked mentally while they’re making love and knowing and feeling the other lover/lovers reactions and arousal stimulates all to a mutually satisfying and mind-blowing orgasm.

What if your aliens have a special sensory and telepathic ability that occurs whenever they have physical contact with others? You could write very intense and involved love scenes using this concept.

Keep the complex dance of sensual thoughts, actions and reactions in mind when you consider how to show an alien’s POV (point of view) and their cultural matrix for interpersonal relationships. Try to apply this information on general psychological reactions to different situations and the basic information about sexual arousal when you create your aliens. The possibilities are endless.


Thank you.


Barbara K.