elfs | Entries tagged with story

Carnal Machines: Steampunk Erotica is a collection of erotic short stories with steampunk settings.

Kannan Feng's "Deviant Devices" feels more like a set piece from Neal Stephenson's "neo-victorians" than a real steampunk story. All of the pieces in Carnal Machines involve someone being bound, thrusted, entwined, drained, or otherwise intermingled with a piece of hardware large enough to see yet mystical enough to do profound things to the human mind and body, and this one is no exception. It does have the benefit of having an interesting, voyeuristic trope to it, and you're never quite sure who is being pleased here.

Still, it's a good and arousing story that does its job. and at least on the sex part it delivers at a fever pitch for the duration.

Current Mood: satisfied
Crossposts: http://elfs.livejournal.com/1525007.html

Carnal Machines: Steampunk Erotica is a collection of erotic short stories with steampunk settings.

Poe Von Pages's "Mutiny on the Danika Blue" is a curious story. The setting is Space: 1889, the idea of steampunk in space, powered by philostigon or flubber or whatever. The sex is fun and unexpected, although the sensibilities of the main characters are so late 20th century it's hard to take the setting seriously, and the main conflict of the story, the reason for the "mutiny" of the title, is never very clearly explicated. This is a writer's habit story with more used furniture: the writer knows how to write this kind of story, and borrowed someone else's set.

That's been the problem of at least two of the stories so far. Steampunk is more than a setting; Victoriana has its own ways of thinking, it's own ideology of men and women. Some writers get it, some make a pass at it, and some just give up and sneak onto another's stage in the middle of the night for some illicit hanky-panky.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Nine Inch Nails, Mr Self-Destruct.
Crossposts: http://elfs.livejournal.com/1523208.html

Carnal Machines: Steampunk Erotica is a collection of erotic short stories with steampunk settings.

"Sleight of Hand" by Renee Michaels, is the third story in this collection. The story has the interesting quality of being monogamous and confrontational all at the same time, when a skilled thief and her estranged mad inventor husband have a fateful meeting. The dialog is quick, witty, and brings a smile to the face; the sex is wonderfully written and delightfully cute, and the resolution well worth the effort. The story does feature more than a hint of (initial) non-consensuality, which may be triggery, but so far this has been the best of the bunch.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Juno Reactor, High Energy Protons
Crossposts: http://elfs.livejournal.com/1523130.html

Carnal Machines: Steampunk Erotica is a collection of erotic short stories with steampunk settings.

"The Servant Question" by Janine Ashbless is the second story in this volume, and it's much better than the first. The tale of a clockmaker who has mastered the mysteries of his mystical steampunk universe sufficiently to make mechanical maids. He has the very fine Mrs. Pemberton for a client, and she is extremely demanding about the precise movements necessary to beat rugs and polish champagne flutes. The erotica comes at a rush but is nonetheless effective, and this story has a punch and a payoff that is both charming and funny.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Maroon 5, One More Night
Crossposts: http://elfs.livejournal.com/1522924.html

Carnal Machines: Steampunk Erotica is a collection of erotic short stories with steampunk settings.

"Human Powered" by Theresa Noesse Roberts is the first story in the collection, and it's not very convincing. While delightfully and convincingly told from the woman's point of view, without headhopping, "Human Powered" is a fairly ordinary story about a woman "defying convention" and her lover's introducing her to the joys of the vibrator. There's a lovely MacGuffin to start the story which leads to a nice but fairly obvious closure. The writing is pedestrian, the sex scenes are merely serviceable and driven mostly by visual cues. The transition from arguing to fucking takes place at pornoverse speed, which annoys me. In the end, this is airplane quality erotica with used furniture.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: The Kinks, Victoria
Crossposts: http://elfs.livejournal.com/1522635.html

The people of Nackle would have been hard for us mere humans to understand. They were crystalline beings, perfectly cube-shaped, with only minor variations. Much like humans are unique despite changes to less than three percent of their DNA, the Nackyllines were a quiet, crystalline people who went about their crystalline lives under a tiny sun in an eternally clear sky, pearlescent in the day and pitch black at night, exchanging ammoniated gasses with their neighbors and contemplating the meaning of life.

They were not prepared for that day when something, some thing appeared in their skies. The rounded, bulbous, hanging polyps of vapor, some oozing away slowly, not like a scratch or shattering wound, but sliding away in a horrific, cold imitation of melting, was enough to drive the Nackyllines who saw it mad.

That was only the introduction. A polyp of gas descended low, and a twisting, sucking sound emanated across the sky. A distended sphincter opened, and from this horrifying orifice emerged a multi-shaded spew of brown liquid that engulfed Nackyllines in their entirety. Their outer shelves, evolved only for the thin, cold air that hugged Nackle's low gravity, dissolved readily under the onslaught of thick sludge. Explosive gasses erupted from the fluid, which added only battering endnotes to the screaming Nackyllines as they were swept to their destruction.

No one remained to ask, why had this happened?

Current Mood: amused

I just finished reading the short story Permanent Fatal Errors, by Jay Lake (available free at the title link). It's typical Lake in some respects: what you're interested in as a skiffy reader may not be congruent with the point Jay's making. The story's pretty straightforward, but the setting is interesting: a starship entirely crewed by Heinlein heroes.

And what is a starship entirely crewed by Heinlein heroes like? Desperately dysfunctional. Jay does an excellent job of showing how and why it would be dysfunctional, in an "I'm so competent no mess I can make could possibly be so bad I can't fix it, so let's see what disasters we can cause and recover from, before the ennui of our insanely long lives drives us nuts!" way. Good points all around, and a fun read. Quick, too.

Current Mood: amused

Continuing the ongoing ten-episode Yowlerverse series, the latest title, Boy from Brazil, is now up and ready to go. The story is coded M/M, slow. It was doing well as a character study, but it has a weak ending such that I wish I could have come up with something better. Still, it’s a pretty good story and a welcome continuation of the Yowler series. This story is dated to 1986.