Let's talk about sex...

[TheTomG]

I don't think sex has *become* a big part of our lives - I think it always has been. It's a biological imperative, programmed into your brain and nervous system as a whole. It is built-in. It's only really beaten by hunger, thirst, and the need for sleep, as those too are built-in to your body.

All of these biological imperatives tie in to your conscious wishes and wants - thus, hunger ties in not just to making you want to eat, but becomes a love of particular foods, the merging of the necessity with your personality. Sex does the same.

Thus we have structures built on top of the base necessity - hunger, now that food is readily available (for most of us in the rich and well-off countries), channels into all sorts of other moires and behaviors. Same with sex.

If either became a shortage again, as it was in the earlier phases of our evolution, those fancy structures could be stripped away, but the base need would remain. People would fight and die over hunger. And over sex.

The fact that these motivations are primary and innate are why we see so much of our society built on them. The prevalence of fast food? The use of beautiful men and women to sell products? These things are not mere exploitation, they arise because of what we are on our most fundamental levels.

And I think this is nothing new. Discussion and thought on it all has become more common, but the drives themselves and their importance in shaping our lives and who we are - that hasn't changed in many many thousands of years

 

[oddhero]

Without - as a newbie on this site - sounding like too feverish, I'd say I'd judge a book that starts with a sex scene more harshly, as sex scenes are sooooo often badly written. Not that I am a student of such scenes, mind you, but it'd have to be good, and give me an inkling that there was some point to it, even if the point was in establishing a protagonist as a notorious rake, seducer/seductress or some such.

 

[alternatesanity]

Sex in sci-fi nooo.
Actually, it may be sci-fi but it still involves people so sex is always a possibility. Where it falls flat is when sex scenes are used for titillation or as page fillers. If it is important to the story, for character/relationship development then it is something that needs to be there. I don't particularly like it when it isn't pertinent to the story, then it just becomes page filler. Works best if it is well done and that isn't as easy as many people would tend to think. Get it wrong and its just smut, get it right and it can be very powerful.

 

[Steve Jordan]

If it is important to the story, for character/relationship development then it is something that needs to be there. I don't particularly like it when it isn't pertinent to the story, then it just becomes page filler. Works best if it is well done and that isn't as easy as many people would tend to think. Get it wrong and its just smut, get it right and it can be very powerful.

I think you can say that about just about any genre, not just SF. But SF has historically shied away from serious sexual content, or utilized the "kiss kiss, cut to morning" method, because most publishers assumed the major audience of SF was kids.

As SF has grown up and evolved, I see no reason not to include sex in stories... even gratuitously, if that's what the author wants to write (and the readers want to read). As an SF writer, I've wrestled my puritanical demons into submission, and I am willing include sex in my stories if I decide it's good for the story... not because someone else tells me to include or avoid it.

 

[steve12553]

Caution: this post may offend someone. Several Liberals may want to suppress my right to say this.

Or not....


Here's something else to consider. I picked the not blink and keep on reading one then I started reading the posts. I got as far as the post regarding male-male relations. I like females so heterosex in a book would not bother me. Lesbian sex also would not bother me for the same reason. Male/male sex is something that I was not wired for. It wouldn't so much offend me by its existence but not make me comfortable to read a graphic description. So.... since there are at least three possible combinations without getting into alien sex and all the more possibilities, maybe there are lot of people of several orientations who would not want to read a graphic description of sex they are not wired for. In other words maybe the graphic sex of any sort belongs in books advertised as such.

 

[Christopher Lee]

I would be more inclined to read on simply because of it. It's not something that sci fi uses very often, and I'm all for trying to change things up. It depends of course on how well it's written too.

 

[BetaWolf]

I think that it depends on what happens next, which is art imitating life I think. The first scene rather sets the mood for the novel, so I would keep that in mind, too.

If you start this way, watch it if your hero spends the next 500 pages alone on a science vessel taking sensor readings in a nebula. Or whatever. Of course, you could be saying something, really stressing what he's missing at home.

Sort of, I really need to finish these scans so I can get back to my honeymoon. Grr, grr, grumble, grumble, stupid job that pays the bills.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Despite voting otherwise, there are instances where I will put a book down where a particular sex scene happens along. This one did exactly that:

Appalling syntax...

It's from Robert Goddard: 'His international bestseller' according to the blurb, and I kid you not when I tell you the book is entitled Long Time Coming.

Okay, so make sure my grammar is right.

Sex in sci-fi nooo.
Get it wrong and its just smut, get it right and it can be very powerful.

Okay, so I put the scene up in the writing group and the consensus is that, smut-wise, they're very tame.

I think you can say that about just about any genre, not just SF. But SF has historically shied away from serious sexual content, or utilized the "kiss kiss, cut to morning" method, because most publishers assumed the major audience of SF was kids.

One thing I didn't state earlier is that this book is very deliberately trying to tell sci fi from a woman's pov, and that maybe makes the inclusion more valid. I'm not sure, but I'm really not trying to write a traditional sci fi story, but something very different. Something that will probably never sell... hey ho.

Here's something else to consider. I picked the not blink and keep on reading one then I started reading the posts. I got as far as the post regarding male-male relations. I like females so heterosex in a book would not bother me. Lesbian sex also would not bother me for the same reason. Male/male sex is something that I was not wired for.

In other words maybe the graphic sex of any sort belongs in books advertised as such.

No aliens were involved in the making of these scenes. And it's all hetero (not that I'm averse to the other kinds in books, but that's not the storyline here). Apparently, it's not that graphic, either.

If you start this way, watch it if your hero spends the next 500 pages alone on a science vessel taking sensor readings in a nebula. Or whatever. Of course, you could be saying something, really stressing what he's missing at home.

Sort of, I really need to finish these scans so I can get back to my honeymoon. Grr, grr, grumble, grumble, stupid job that pays the bills.

Yes, this is a point, and why I think it's important that the tone of the book is not traditional sci fi because I so don't do sensor readings. I do mucky human stories. In space, mainly. But the balance is the challenge. (Heroine, btw. )

Thanks everyone.

 

[bluenimbus]

if it should be there then keep it, avoid the PG intimate moment then cut to morning, this is too obvious for the reader and suggests you are uncomfortable with writing this scene. i am not implying however that it should be graphic or very explicit, like many people have said it depends entirely on the context and what reaction you are trying to elicit from the reader.

putting it too early in the novel may make some people think its sci fi with heavy romance leanings and they may drop it quickly.

this said i'm not an exert so anything goes i suppose...

 

[bluenimbus]

*off topic*
why is this sub forum called 'aspiring writers'.
you won't get far if you just 'aspire' to write, either you do or you don't. being a published or unpublished writer is something different entirely...
am i being pedantic?

 

[Abernovo]

But even when you're published, you can aspire to become even better, can't you?

Pedant! (You'll fit right in )

 

[steve12553]

*off topic*
why is this sub forum called 'aspiring writers'.
you won't get far if you just 'aspire' to write, either you do or you don't. being a published or unpublished writer is something different entirely...
am i being pedantic?

"Do or do not. There is no try" (aspire).
Master Yoda
a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

 

[bluenimbus]

"Do or do not. There is no try" (aspire).
Master Yoda
a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

hahahaha!
i was so not thinking along that vein...

agreed Abernovo, but you that would make you a writer with aspirations to improve your skill, would it not? not someone who has some vague idea about aspiring to write.

arrgh, i cringe at my own words! too bad, *send*

 

[allmywires]

agreed Abernovo, but you that would make you a writer with aspirations to improve your skill, would it not? not someone who has some vague idea about aspiring to write.

A fair point BN, yet not quite as catchy My own personal favourite title would be 'Writers Who Still Don't Really Know What We're Doing Wrong But We're Trying Really Bloody Hard Not To Do Whatever That Thing Is'.*

*may or may not only apply to a select few forum members ie just me.

 

[bluenimbus]

ok, i think i get it now, i guess 'aspiring writers' is a sort of general title to include everyone's separate issues and interpretation, also who could be asked to have 'Writers Who Still Don't Really Know What We're Doing Wrong But We're Trying Really Bloody Hard Not To Do Whatever That Thing Is'. (however catchy) as a title, a title, for a forum, i mean one would have to click on the forum just to read the full title! then again that could be a good tool with which to snare people! i think we're onto something...

 

[Ursa major]

If you accept what one member here - it's one of his PG tips - says about what constitutes a writer, I think most of us are still aspiring.

 

[chrispenycate]

The only book I can remember which achieved coitus in the first paragraph was a Spider Robinson (a Callahan one) as an excuse for a bad joke. Only winced at the pun.

When I started reading SF about all sex was oral - talking about it, or possibly working up to a kiss. I prefer the genre since Philip Jose Farmer liberated it.

 

[jastius]

someone who aspires to something has not yet attained that state but desires to with a great eagerness. perhaps a more accurate but less fun designation would be, " those who wish to write, who wish to write better or who wish to write to be published or need feedback about the process of publication and support column for all stages there of and therein forum thread"
but how would that look up on the index now, really?

and back on topic, i always skip ahead when i get to the sex parts in books from when they start after each others belt buckles to the part where the van stops shaking, feeling that a ****dy book character should not be having a better social life then moi.

 

[Brian G Turner]

On the issue of sex at an opening of a book - I was sent a debut to review, called "Nexus". At the beginning, a man is using future tech which controls his body and he goes to a party. He ends up being chatted up by a drunk girl and they go upstairs.

Basically, what happens next is that the tech goes a bit haywire, resulting in the man accidently sexually assaulting the woman. Apparently this was supposed to be entertaining and funny, but I just filed it under "rapey" and put it down, never to pick it up again.

 

[Christopher Lee]

On the issue of sex at an opening of a book - I was sent a debut to review, called "Nexus". At the beginning, a man is using future tech which controls his body and he goes to a party. He ends up being chatted up by a drunk girl and they go upstairs.

Basically, what happens next is that the tech goes a bit haywire, resulting in the man accidently sexually assaulting the woman. Apparently this was supposed to be entertaining and funny, but I just filed it under "rapey" and put it down, never to pick it up again.

Sounds a bit "rapey" to me too, I Brian. I'd have filed it into the paper shredder, but I guess that's why I don't review stories for living, eh?