Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2003 19:18:40 -0500
From: Jeff Wilson 
Subject: (urth) Re: RAH sex

> From:
> "Alice K. Turner" 

>>I don't find sprunging nipples to be an inappropriate idiom, and neither
>>did my ex-wife. The spiggots remark I will give you, but I find Clarke's
>>depiction of sex to be poorer storytelling than Heinlein's overall.
> 
> Have you considered why she's your ex-wife, hmmm?  No, seriously, none of
> the Golden Agers could address sex; you could say that they were trained out
> of it by convention, and by the time things loosened up it was too late for
> them. Clarke had the further problem of the het stuff being a bit alien,
> hence indeed "poor storytelling." But only RAH was actively offensive in a
> horrible lame, leering, really repulsive sort of way--for me it's that chalk
> screaming across a blackboard syndrome to a degree I've never felt with
> another writer in any  genre. Ask your ex if she likes any of RAH's later
> books (anything after -Stranger-) and if so why.

She's not a Heinlein reader, she's damn near a Heinlein character! She 
described her own sexual responses similarly, with her "boing" being a 
close cousin to Deety's onomotopoeia, in addition to red hair and a 
certain response to corporeal punishment.

A Golden Ager who did less than cringeworthy sex references would be 
Simak; a prostitute is one of the supporting characters in THEY'D RATHER 
BE RIGHT, and the topic comes up more than once.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - http://www.io.com/~jwilson


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