Dorsey, Candas

Dorsey, Candas Jane. "(Learning About) Machine Sex." Machine Sex and Other Stories. Victoria, BC: Tesseract (Porcepic) Books, 1988. The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990. Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery, ed. New York: Norton, 1993.

Cyberpunkish story of how Angel, the female hero, develops the computer program Machine Sex. Set in a world that "Sells the thought of pleasure as a commodity" (Norton 760), with "a world market hungry for the kind of glossy degradation Machine Sex could give them" (756). Preeminently set in a world in which men "don't care who they fuck," or what, so "Why not the computer in the den? Or the office system at lunch hour" (757-58). Gay male suggests that people want and deserve love (758), and the story includes brief meditations on love, sex, orgasm, politics, power, and the possibility that almost all heterosex is machine sex already. Cf. and contrast F. Pohl's "Day Million" (also anthologized in Norton). (RDE, 16/02/95)