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Jean Roberta
Telling it like it is - - -

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The Golden Age of Lesbian Erotica 1920-1940 edited by Victoria Brownworth & Judith M. Redding	SEXUAL UNIVERSE, Book 1: The Empire by Michael Stone (Lulu, 2003)

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Sex Wars in Space

SEXUAL UNIVERSE, Book 1:
The Empire by Michael Stone
(Lulu, 2003)

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The appeal of a well-conceived sci-fi or fantasy novel (or a series) is the pleasure of living temporarily in an alternative world with its own laws and cultures. Michael Stone's imaginary universe is not exactly that of Star Wars (which seems like its closest equivalent), but it is worth the effort of reading a first volume of almost 300 pages. (There are also two sequels.)

Book One begins with "History of the Sexual Universe," a summary of over 1000 years which serves as an introduction to the main story, that of a quasi-military organization, CUM (the Coalition of Upright Moralists) which was formed to defeat an ancient black market empire run by a hereditary ruler variously known as Maiden Japan, the Empress and the Lady.

According to the historical backstory, discovery of a process named "fasion" (different from fission and fusion) has enabled earthlings to discover numerous other planets capable of supporting human life but with no humanoid local inhabitants. This gave rise to an unprecedented era of space colonization and government incentives for increasing the population. During the "Age of Breeding," the new pioneers accepted tax breaks and start-up grants to produce at least twelve children per family and to submit to genetic tinkering to increase their libidos. Eventually, volunteers mated with non-volunteers, and over a period of 700 years, the whole human race has become hard-wired to be incurably horny. Scientific discovery and invention slows down as all the resources of numerous planets must be used for survival needs.

After many years, a critical mass of brave souls learn to control their appetites enough to direct their efforts toward improving the general quality of life. Although more-or-less-constant lust is part of the general human condition, a conflict develops between those who also desire the greatest good for the greatest number and those who work for the Evil Empire, which exploits the general addiction to sex to make a profit.

In the first few chapters, the reader is introduced to the agents of CUM, whose mission (Operation Blow Job) is to discredit and ultimately destroy the Empire. In this phase of the plot, the actions and the characters seem cartoonish, funny and imaginative. Agent Dawn Shaft has been captured by agents of the Lady, who find the secret microchip she carries in (ahem) a secret place. Back at CUM headquarters, Major Enos is dismayed that Dawn, his best agent and favorite playmate, is in danger along with her mission.

The reader is introduced to the CUM Sex Squad, all of whom have enhanced sexual powers to use as weapons against the enemy. "The Titillator" (who also has a civilian name and a history) constantly produces aphrodisiac milk. When she twists her own nipples, everyone within range feels the same pain in theirs. "Orgasma" is a sensitive woman who can sense the sexual arousal of anyone within her range and can also cause powerful, involuntary orgasms in others, thus weakening and distracting her attackers. "Captain Testosterone" produces radioactive sperm, which gives him superhuman strength. His farts are powerful enough to propel him through the air for short distances. "Rubberdick" has an incredibly long and flexible penis with a tiny camera in its head. These sexual superheroes are sent to rescue Agent Shaft, and the adventure begins.

Unfortunately for the Squad, the Lady has minions with sexual powers of their own. Meet Brass Balls, who contains tiny nuclear generators in his (and they clang as he walks), who captures and torments the squad. Pubia is a deceptively small woman whose live pubic hair can literally snatch whatever it wants, including Rubberdick as he reaches for the keys of the dungeon. Nutcracker, the Lady's female bodyguard, is especially threatening to men, and Black Hole, a man, can pull anything and anyone into his anus. The Rattler, who seems to illustrate the concept of men as snakes, is highly infectious.

The action is fast-paced and imaginative as the Squad repeatedly escapes from almost certain death or conversion, and more obstacles appear in their path. To add spice to the game, Undercover Angel is CUM's agent in the Lady's headquarters, while someone (who?) is an undercover agent for the Lady at CUM headquarters.

Major Enos is told that Agent Shaft and the Sex Squad have all been killed. In despair, he steals a starship and goes AWOL. Eventually, of course, the Major meets up with Agent Shaft (whom he missed more than he wanted to admit) and the four superheroes. Together, they decide to abort Operation Blow Job because the beans have been spilled. And they know they will have to sniff out and deal with the enemy agent at CUM headquarters. By this time, however, the Squad has a hostage or recruit: Cherry, one of the Lady's sex-slaves, whose virginity is magically renewed after every time she has sex. She has a hypnotic effect on men (even on a transwoman who was born male), and she becomes a valuable ally of the Squad.

The plot continues to thicken through 27 chapters, and the Squad not only survives but comes to seem surprisingly three-dimensional. The reader is told the histories of each of the four characters which led them to volunteer for dangerous work as well as freakish abilities which would forever separate them from (relatively) normal people. We learn that Orgasma (Victoria) was originally a nurse with a desire to heal the sick, while Captain Testosterone (Sydney), that manliest of men, has self-doubt.

In a climactic scene, Sydney fights off the hypnotic influence of a stone idol of the Lady (or the Goddess she worships), and tears himself away from the woman he has been programmed to fuck to death. He declares:

"NO! I will not succumb! I love her! I will not hurt her! There's more to being human than fucking one another, and no matter what we've become, we're still more than animals! We can feel compassion and kindness and we can restrain ourselves! We enjoy sex, we don't need it! Your way is selfish and cruel. I don't believe in your way! I choose love!"

Volume One ends on this heartening note, but not all the loose ends have been tied up. The next Empress is already born, and the Squad has a motive to find her and rescue her from her destiny.

Unfortunately, the endless plot twists and sheer physical exuberance cannot disguise an essentially conservative, exclusively heterosexual model of human love. The Empress as a wily but ultimately tragic victim of the heartless culture in which she was raised can be seen as a sexist and racist stereotype, presented with no noticeable irony. The narrative style is sprinkled with tense shifts and other grammatical glitches which make a complicated story harder to follow than it needs to be. This novel is likely to appeal hugely to teenage boys. While this is not a bad thing, the rest of us would like a little more depth in a story of this length. It is an entertaining X-rated space opera, and it only disappoints the reader when it fails to develop into what it could have been.

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Fresh from the Past

The Golden Age of Lesbian Erotica 1920-1940
edited by Victoria Brownworth
& Judith M. Redding
(New Milford, Connecticut: Magic Carpet Books, 2007).

This remarkable collection of vintage lesbian erotica would surprise anyone who believes that soft-core lesbian erotica began with Sappho (circa 600 Before the Christian Era) and then went into hibernation until the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Much of this material would fit in well with explicit lesbian sex stories written post-2000.

As Victoria Brownworth explains in her long introduction, the status of lesbians changed several times before Stonewall. Paris at the turn of the twentieth century was a magnet for English-speaking lesbians who could behave more flamboyantly there and write more explicitly (at least in French) than they could in their home countries. This was the period of Natalie Barney, Gertrude Stein, Radclyffe Hall and Djuna Barnes, all of whom influenced literature in more than one language, but as members of a bohemian, expatriate community. When several of the women in this set had affairs with previously-respectable married women, and when Radclyffe Hall's 1928 lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness became a subject of controversy, erotic love between women became something that conservatives wanted to ban from all published writing, or (if this was not possible) to pathologize.

Under these conditions, asks Brownworth, why regard the period of 1920-1940 as a "Golden Age" of lesbian erotica? She explains:

"In addition to being the untapped ore of lesbian erotic literature, The Golden Age also serves as the Golden Mean--the middle between two extremes, in this case between the repression of the Victorian era, which was secretly ribald, and the repression of the McCarthyism of the 1950s, which was terrorized into silence. Both periods made homosexuality a crime. But between those two points, there was an exploration of lesbian sexuality in erotic literature that was both provocative and authentic and which set the precedent for real lesbian sexuality on the page--written by and for lesbians, not by men for the titillation of men."

Several of these pieces were translated from French originals (one by Brownworth herself) and one from a famous or notorious German novel, The Scorpion (1920). One English-language story involves an American female artist in Paris who casually hires a female prostitute to substitute for the female model with whom the artist is becoming obsessed. Another American story from the 1930s features a female narrator who passes for male and who attracts the bored wife of a rich man as well as her "niece" (actually her illegitimate teenage daughter). Several of these stories would probably attract attention from the forces of law and order if they were posted on websites today.

In a story set during the Prohibition of the 1920s, a jolly group of young working-class men and women gather at a private drinking party where one woman invites another into her room and then seduces her without much preamble:

"Soon Valerie's mouth found the hollow of Dolores' throat, and Valerie gently ran her hands along Dolores' breasts and down to her waist. It was nothing that Dolores hadn't had done to her before by any number of boys. But this felt different. Her stomach felt like it was flipping itself over and her knees felt rubbery and Dolores didn't want Valerie to stop touching her."

It gets better:

"She leaned back against the window frame as Valerie slid her hands up under Dolores' dress and into her knickers. Before Dolores could imagine what might be next, Valerie had parted her sex and was gently stroking it with her finger, a stroke that made Dolores sigh. Then she leaned forward and began to lick Dolores' sex, a slow, deliberate motion like a cat grooming itself. Dolores found her fingers gripping Valerie's dark curls, swooning with the intense pleasure."

After this scene, the two women rejoin their friends as though nothing had happened, and it is understood that they can never speak of this to anyone they know. However, Valerie offers to lend her long string of beads (described as the signature of a flapper) to Dolores so that she will have an excuse to return the token.

A few of the authors represented in this collection became known to a new generation of readers when their work was reprinted by the pioneering Naiad Press in the 1970s and 1980s. There are excerpts here from two of Gale Wilhelm's novels of the 1930s, both reprinted by Naiad: We Too Are Drifting and Torchlight to Valhalla. Wilhelm's work is reminiscent of the poetry of Sappho; it is not sexually explicit, but full of emotional tension and suggestive descriptions.

A 1929 story named "Silent Stars" by Edwina Leonard reads like racy Hollywood gossip. Whether the film sirens Lillian and Dorothy Gish were both as fond of other attractive women as they are described will probably never be proven, of course, but it is notable that the author of the story was never sued for libel.

At the end of the book are three stories by Diane DeKelb-Rittenhouse, all written in 2006, but which capture the flavor of the roaring 1920s ("Jazz Babies"), the hard times of the 1930s ("Harlowe Blonde") and the wartime era of the 1940s ("Make Do"). All three stories are more detailed and structurally complex than the stories actually published in the "Golden Age," but they all convincingly convey the atmosphere of a time when lesbian love affairs were dangerous and very private.

The cover design of this book perfectly represents the contents. In a moody black-and-white photograph, a babe in pearls and decolletage gazes upward as though thinking of someone special. The rescuing of these stories from obscurity was well worthwhile, even though there has been no shortage of lesbian sex stories in recent years. Reading the work of forerunners who took great risks to tell the truth about their libidos is a spine-tingling experience, much like -- well, dip in and find out for yourself. You won't regret it.

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Reviews by Jean Roberta Telling it like it is - - -