I like Iain M. Banks' descriptions of the erotic life of the Culture's
citizens - basically an entirely de-anxietized existence, where you
can change sex at will, metabolize your own drugs for any purposes
whatsoever, more or less choose when or whether you die, etc. etc.
The point is that they all seem a bit bored with it.
Dominic
On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 08:47:39 -0700, Douglas Barbour
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This has become a fascinating conversation, & I too am grateful to Knut
> (and have a great reading at the Stanza Poetry festival, Knut) for his
> comments, not least because I too am a huge fan of Delany's writing, &
> he has certainly brought the erotic & the political together in a field
> where, when he entered it, did not do very much of that. In fact early
> SF had little sense of the connections between technology & culture,
> nor how culture dealt with the erotic lives of its citizens. Delany
> always brought all those fields into interesting strife...
>
> Doug
> Douglas Barbour
> Department of English
> University of Alberta
> Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 Canada
> (780) 436 3320
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
>
> 'Goodbye Porkpie Hat': A slow air written by bass legend, band-leader
> and composer Charles Mingus . . . . It originally appeared on is 1959
> album for Columbia "Migus Ah Um" scored for quintet.
>
> Tony Mcmanus "Ceol More'
>
--
// Alas, this comparison function can't be total:
// bottom is beyond comparison. - Oleg Kiselyov
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