"Gone to Pieces", by Connor Wright [ss, review]

Connor Wright's short story, "Gone to Pieces," appears in the ebook Don't Read In The Closet: An M/M Romance Collection. It's billed as "M/M sci-fi romance with some light BDSM elements," but that billing is so far off the mark that it seems almost mocking. What we get instead is a masturbatory sex scene between a man and a mannequin, laden with enough suggestions of sexual sadism that I'm sorta glad he has a mannequin on which to take out his frustrations rather than another human being.

There is no romance here. Neither character is emotionally invested in the other. The "robot," Tebri, is simply a beautiful boy mannequin with a tape recorder that says, "Yes, sir," "No, sir," and "Oh, please sir, fuck me," when triggered. Tebri is simply never depicted as being complicated enough as a robot to have genuine feelings, merely a fairly trivial decision tree over a script that could last a few hours. The protagonist, Brice, is merely a jackass managerial type who can afford a high-end sex mannequin.

(And can we please stop having every gay managerial character work as the "Gay and Lesbian Outreach Consultant to Human Resources for a Large Unnamed Corporation?" If I see another one of those, I shall scream. Can't they do something else. I'm sure there are gay janitors, programmers, truck drivers and CEOs. "GLBT Consultant" is the new "hairdresser.")

There is also no story here. There is no conflict, there is nothing to overcome. We don't even get enough of Brice's character to wonder what he could possibly be conflicted about. All he does is spank, fuck, and otherwise use his mannequin as a masturbatory relief toy, without any desire other than to relieve his sexual and personal frustrations in a blunt and somewhat passionless fashion.

There's also some bad POV management. At least twice, we get sensual details from the robot's point of view, without warning. And given that the robot's persona is shallower than the entire cast of Jersey Shore, that's an uncomfortably tight space to find yourself in.

I know I'm being harsh here, but I write this stuff. And I take pains to make something out of the story, to make the story about something other than a man merely getting his rocks off. Human/robot stories are, usually, about exploring what it means to be human by eliding or changing the definition in the Other, and then trying to puzzle out what that means: what it means to feel, to love, to be angry, to be loyal. This is the basis for romance, and for conflict: the human character has to come to grips with his or her understanding of the Other, of what it means to love, and be loved by a machine, or if a human-seeming robot even has the capacity to love. Nothing like that is present in Wright's story. There is no story, no plot, no conflict, no speculation. There isn't even a couple at the heart of the story, so there's no romance. We're reading about a guy jerking off. Big Fat Hairy Deal.

Murray is simply wrong here.

Charles Murray writes:

Data can bear on policy issues, but many of our opinions about policy are grounded on premises about the nature of human life and human society that are beyond the reach of data. Try to think of any new data that would change your position on abortion, the death penalty, legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage or the inheritance tax. If you cannot, you are not necessarily being unreasonable.

I can easily imagine new data that would change my position on abortion, the death penalty, legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage or the inheritance tax. What I can't imagine is that that data will be forthcoming anytime soon: I cannot imagine that someone will prove, successfully and soon, that a three-week-old blastocyte has the full moral agency of a born human being; I cannot imagine that someone will prove, successfully and soon, that legalizing marijuane would result in a policy disaster similar to the legalization of alcohol; I cannot imagine that someone will prove, successfully and soon, that legalizing gay marriage will result in the downfall of civilization. But I can imagine the conditions under which I would entertain changing my mind. So yes, if you can't imagine those conditions, you are unreasonable.