From: utzoo!decvax!cca!csin!cjh
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Title: Re (Heinlein's latest book and) sex in SF
Article-I.D.: csin.264
Posted: Mon Feb  7 12:44:29 1983
Received: Wed Feb  9 01:32:51 1983

In response to your message of Fri Feb  4 12:27:01 1983:

   Now wait a minute! Farmer isn't an old-timer who put sex into SF
when it became more popular; Farmer is the writer who \first/ put sex into
SF. Books like THE LOVERS and ALLEY GOD were shocking when they came out
(although now they seem rather quaint), and they were followed by more
and more perverse material (e.g., "Mother"). As for Sturgeon, VENUS PLUS X
was published in 1958---and Sturgeon has never been especially explicit or
perverse (one of the best words to describe his work is "delicacy"---not
what past generations would have called "good taste", which simply means
not discussing large parts of the real world, but dealing with the most
awkward situations without grossing out the reader).
   As for Heinlein, one of his problems is that he isn't very tolerant;
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND was a satire, and his attempts since then to
deal with personal issues or problems generally have been failures. (Worse,
they frequently reflect his personal problems---both traditional male
fantasies like being such a dynamite stud that both your mother and your
daughters want to bed you, and individual hangups such as the childlessness
which becomes a really gross philoprogenitivity in several of his stories.)