The Stars Change by Mary Anne Mohanraj

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Stars Change by Mary Anne Mohanraj

Comments

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

Doomed lovers would make an interesting story, but how do you write it so it's not too sad? Dark humor, perhaps.

[sorenlundi.livejournal.com]

Some of us happen to like sad.

[johnreiher.livejournal.com]

Considering the myriads of ways Earth animals reproduce themselves, human-alien "courtship" may have to use adapters for a successful connection...

[w. dow rieder (from livejournal.com)]

"the various intelligent races seem to be implausibly plug-compatible. They are all basically tetrapods and they all approach sex in broadly similar ways."

The last two could be related. If two intelligent races are both tetrapods that recently (in evolutionary terms) became bipedal and experienced a rapid increase in brain size, the resulting constraints could drive convergent evolution to make the plug compatibility plausible, if not necessarily likely.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Also, the campus bookstore probably stocks an adapter.

[sanskritabelt.livejournal.com]

Get them for free at the student health center.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

I'm currently reading mainstream romance author Jenny Colgan's sf novel, written as Jenny T Colgan (which I choose to believe, with no evidence whatsoever is a tribute to Iain M Banks [/headcanon] ), Resistance is Futile, and she mentions the plug compatibility issue early on by having an alien respond to the human heroine's enquiries in that direction by asking her: "Well, are you full of a thousand million eggs?" and mentioning four sexes. Being a romance novel they manage anyway... with a certain amount of authorial cutting away to waves on the beach (probably a knowing reference).

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

David Brin's Uplift War had a human fall in love with a bipedal tetrapodal alien. A curtain was drawn over their intimate encounter(s), but there were some comments about how just because people's reproductive organs weren't designed for each other, doesn't mean people can't work out some ways to experience stimulation. It helped that the non-human had some limited ability to manipulate her body, so she did things like shink her lower four breasts in favor of expanding her uppermost pair, because she knew he liked them best.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

There was also an early-70s David Gerrold short story about a (human) guy in love with the idea of sex with alien women, and his search for someone with some compatible body parts (and, must be said, also compatible personality and desires). In the punch line he finds what he was looking for once he gives up one of his search constraints.

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

Ha!

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

My impression from science fiction is that heterosexual men generally like the idea of more than two breasts but admit they'd find the reality confusing. Lesbians presumably cope better.

/there's a gendered multi-tasking joke in there somewhere

[selki.livejournal.com]

Ordered!

No spoilers herein

[spiralsheep.livejournal.com]

I finished Resistance is Futile this evening and for me it's a 4/5 because Colgan conveyed some of the messy complexity of life as a highly social and technologically enabled species, although the novel is mostly written in a light romantic comedy style. (Warning for several moments of not-especially-graphic violence and torture and death.)

Re: No spoilers herein

[selki.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I can handle that, but appreciate the warning. Last night I gobbled up
We Are All Completely Fine Paperback by Daryl Gregory, a novella of group therapy and other adventures of survivors of Lovecraft-type situations. Horror, no sex.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

The story in which everyone else is sexier than we are, and tragedy ensues, was of course written by Tiptree/Sheldon.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

I don't quite get the bit about numbers - humanity outnumbers all the alien races put together?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I believe so, yes.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

So, adding in the terrorism thing and the fear of humans unifying, we're the Teeming Swarthy Alien Hordes in this setting?

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of the Quark episode in which the obligatory Gratuitous Space Babe has set her sights on a member of the crew who is, awkwardly, a humanoid plant. One thing leads to another and they wind up laying flat on their backs, fully clothed, in a meadow...

Him: And now we wait.
Her: For what?
Him, lustfully: The bee!

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a fun read, at least.

(A tall, lean, pedantic chap -- with unruly light-colored hair, a great many pockets overflowing with markers, pens, and slips of paper, and a striped scarf that brushes the floor at both ends -- approaches thnidu and asks to take over the keyboard for a few moments.)

     Actually, that would be Ad Astra Per Libidinem.

(He bows and departs, leaving a card inscribed
Dr. Whom
Consulting Linguist, Grammarian
Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody
)


Ad Astra Per Libido

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Fixed!