Date: 10 May 1984 17:40-EDT
From: Dan Hoey <hoey@NRL-AIC>
To: SF-LOVERS
Subject: Blue Sky Fie

LRC.HJJH@UTEXAS-20 remarks that YOLANDA: THE GIRL FROM EROSPHERE is
more pornography than SF.  As a devotee of both genres, I have to
agree.  You have to expect sex if you pick up something published
by Grove Press--they made their start publishing Ulysses or Lady
Chatterly or something back when they were obscene.  Unfortunately,
there's a lot of skiffy porn these days, probably because there's a
lot of skiffy and porn in pop culture.

But in the tradition of Kilgore Trout, the Vonnegut character who
published masterpieces of SF in nudie mags, there are a few fairly
decent examples SF and pornography being emulsified with humor.
Unfortunately, you have to go to the used book shelves (in either of
two sorts of shops) or hit the hucksters' tables at a con for the
ones I know of, as they are all out of print.

My favorite example is Ray Kainen, who wrote for the Olympia Press
(another of ``those'' publishers, sadly now defunct).  His novel
THE COSMIC GASH follows Professor F. Rancid Gelding in his Raunchy
Stabber as drives down the Screw-way, where all motive power is
derived from sexual energy.  There is a cast of zillions, all
hilarious stereotypes: Rancid's wife Palomine and her horse Herman,
secretary Wee Kling, biker Hott Cock, dancer Shenta Vidus, guru
Shilly Brahmin, financier J. Burnup Gettit and his wife Gotta,
valet Trudgen, Senator Homo Humnuts, author Norman Pitter-patter,
psychiatrist Sickman Fried and his patient Amanda Punchingjelly,
and the title character, a giant concave alien.

Kainen's A SEA OF THIGHS is a similar piece, set on a university
campus where a stereotypic cast of zillions comes together as the
sex researchers Roseystern and Gildedk*ntz have an ``incident''
with their nuclear-powered experimental apparatus.

The only other example of Kainen's work I have been able to find is
SATYR TREK.  This differs in that the c. of z. do not get together
for one huge orgy, but interact with the protagonist serially as
he gets tossed across time and space, sort of like a priapic Billy
Pilgrim.  I would have to rate this as the best SF of the lot,
though it's a little too much of a cliff-hanger for my taste in
pornography.

I suppose I should also mention THE SEX MAGICIANS, by Robert Anton
Wilson (co-author of the ILLUMINATUS trilogy).  A Mama Vibe, sort of
an orgone inversion, blankets Chicago and everyone goes crazy until
the Illuminati intervene.  A lot of the stereotype play like Kainen,
though the humor is a little less wacky.

Dan Hoey