Advertisement

Heat, Vol. 1 is a collection of short tales, in a number of genres, which have graphic sexual relations between married heterosexual couples as a common thread, along with a smidgen of romance. The sex, while not always well-integrated into the story, is not flagrantly gratuitous. As for whether it is hard- or soft-core, erotic or pornographic, that all really depends on your point of view. I personally found the material fairly tame, though not unenjoyable; but then again, others, I'm sure, might find it a sure ticket to perdition.

With this sort of literature the question becomes: is the sex most important or the story plot? Or as an analogy, does one fast-forward through the conversations or through the sex scenes? Certainly there already exist well-written examples at either end of that spectrum. These stories tend to at least attempt to place the sex within a reasonable narrative context, though not always successfully. In Sean McIver's "Into the Underground Temple," for example, the amateur archaeologist couple spontaneously decide to make love among the treasure (and attendant rats) they have discovered below Mexico City. Similarly, in Stephen Mertz's "Firebase Tiger" a couple reunited in the compound of an American reconnaissance unit in Vietnam, are off having sex while in a war zone, with a homicidal soldier on the loose -- just not very credible.

Georges Dodds is a research scientist in vegetable crop physiology, who for close to 25 years has read and collected close to 2000 titles of predominantly pre-1950 science-fiction and fantasy, both in English and French. He writes columns on early imaginative literature for WARP, the newsletter/fanzine of the Montreal Science Fiction and Fantasy Association and maintains a site reflecting his tastes in imaginative literature.