[Tamilyrn]

It always amazes me that serious science fiction and fantasy novels will happily describe scenes of brutal torture, gory bloodfests, nuclear armageddon, substance abuse and any number of 'parental advisory' themes but a decent sex scene is almost never encountered.

I really don't understand the problem. Sure, gratuitous or even graphic scenes might detract from the plot but surely the emotional impact of a character could/would benefit from a little exploration of good old fashioned lust. It makes an otherwise realistic novel/series seem a little 2 dimensional when the only passions described are rage and fear.

On the fantasy front, it also seems to go from one extreme to the other. Kushiels Dart series or War of Powers goes into this territory head on whilst MbotF and WOT (unless flashing ankles is sexy ??) avoid it altogether. GRRM is probably the only modern fantasy series that uses sex for plot / character enhancement without it being the main thrust<sic> of the book. I haven't read much serious science fiction so can't really comment.

So - leaving myself open now to extreme abuse, does anyone else find this strange or feel that it detracts from the reality of an otherwise good world building / alternate universe' story ?

[Aptorian]

I think the problem is that writting good sex scenes is hard and it very easily becomes very awkward reading about the protagonist getting a good fucking.

A good example would be Richard Morgans the steel remains. There are some very graphic descriptions in that book that will litterally make you cringe, it's not so much that they're bad or that the description is wrong, it's just so... ewwwhh.

I think that some publishers might also have objections.

You hae to cut a line between sleezy fan fiction of harry potter and hermione getting their freak on and serious fiction that you want to peddle to as many readers as possible.

[Soulessdreamer]

Could be a backlash from those ultra trashy b grade scifi/fantasy sex romps of the seventies and some authors don't regaurd novels with X or even R sexual content as serious writing.

While in some books I have read it has added to or enhanced the stroy/characters there are more where i found it detracted from the story and found myself cursing "damn not another ten page sex scene blow shit up already" (the second story in John Ringo's Ghost being one of the worst)

There was one sci fi trilogy I remember had an appendix with a full page diagram of sexual groupings for the hermaphadidic centuaroid race.

From what I have read and IMO the more hard core the descriptions the more it detracts from the story rather than adds to it.

Being that it is a hard thing to get right i would guess many authors don't try, although ingnoring that sex happens at all (like a republican) is rediculous.

TTFN

[Hoods_Balls]

Read R Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series.

Its quite graphic, and the scenes depicted are used for forwarding the plot, as the Main enemy feeds off such feelings as lust. It also helps drive the psychological basis of the main storyline/protagonist.

This post has been edited by Hoods_Balls: 14 January 2009 - 05:21 PM

[alt146]

I agree, the sex in PoN does drive the plot, although the sex scenes with any of the bad guys can be a little unsettling, but I think that's the point.

Also Clive Parker writes reasonably good sex scenes, although I'm not sure if his work is strictly considered 'fantasy'.

The first of the Void books by Peter F Hamilton also contains LOTS of sex. I havent read any of his other stuff, so I'm not sure if his work is like that.

[Dolorous Menhir]

alt146, on Jan 14 2009, 05:31 PM, said:

The first of the Void books by Peter F Hamilton also contains LOTS of sex. I havent read any of his other stuff, so I'm not sure if his work is like that.

The lead character having amazing sex dozens of times with beautiful large-breasted young women is a Hamilton hallmark.

[alt146]

Dolorous Menhir, on Jan 14 2009, 09:05 PM, said:

alt146, on Jan 14 2009, 05:31 PM, said:

The first of the Void books by Peter F Hamilton also contains LOTS of sex. I havent read any of his other stuff, so I'm not sure if his work is like that.

The lead character having amazing sex dozens of times with beautiful large-breasted young women is a Hamilton hallmark.

Lol, the lead character (the one that has all the sex at least) is a woman in this one. Although beautiful large-breasted women do still feature - go figure

[Mentalist]

The Reality Dysfunction was rife with them (also by Hamilton)--seems almost all one of the main characters was doing was getting laid all over the known universe

Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs books have a few. they escalate with each successive book and the last book just has too many.

[Terez]

Dude, you spelled your name wrong.

Spoiler

There was an orgy in TTH

This post has been edited by Terez: 14 January 2009 - 11:52 PM

[Cold Iron]

OMG SPOILERZ

:zanth:

[Terez]

hahahahahahahahahahaha

uh, fixed.

This post has been edited by Terez: 14 January 2009 - 11:52 PM

[Cold Iron]

thox

[HoosierDaddy]

Cold Iron, on Jan 14 2009, 06:38 PM, said:

OMG SPOILERZ

:zanth:

The Kushiel's Scion series could be deemed ADULT-ONLY.

That's the only series I've ever read where there was hard-core sexing going on. PoN was just strange.

[Cougar]

There are boat loads of sex scenes in Hamilton books, I've always though they were dealt with quite reasonably too, just the right line between believable description and gratuitousness. I think the Bakker ones are fairly fundamental to the story line.

The problem for most writers is that sex is totally fundamental to a good deal of human interaction and motivations, but unfortunately unless you want titillation it's fairly dull to read about and also it's not an experience most people share in detail so writing about it is tough to get right.

If you wanted to write a good WW2 battle you might interview soldiers, review tactics, talk to experts, look at footage and you'd know that you were getting a good deal of candor and accuracy etc.

If you want to write the most accurate sex scene you only have your own experiences and fantasies to call on, and you might be a freak or in common with most people have never had the supposedly mind-blowing intercourse that you want your characters to have, or will probably never (hopefully) have committed a rape.

[stone monkey]

John Barnes has a tremendous amount of quite graphic (and mostly very, very wrong, for all sorts of reasons) sex in his books. I remember picking up Mother of Storms for the first time and being extremely surprised; that's really not what I was expecting from an sf novel that's ostensibly about a global hurricane.

He makes Richard Morgan's sex scenes look positively tame by comparison.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 18 January 2009 - 01:28 AM

[Terez]

You could always read Dean Koontz. I haven't read any of his books since junior high but there's this one book where there's hermaphrodite that impregnates herself, and has beautiful blonde lesbian twin daughters who like to have sexual relations with cats, and a son with no penis and four testicles (poor guy).

Thing about sex is that it's not really comparable to violence. People have very different ideas about how sex should be done. People have weird kinks and fetishes, or different ideas about romance - do we want romance or do we not? If we want it, do we agree on what is romantic? Probably not. Some of my favorite authors (like SE and RJ) are those who mostly leave the details of such things to your imagination. It works better that way.

I'm hardly a prude - I don't mind discussing sex with people who have very different ideas of how sex should be done. Those can be fun conversations. I like porn, and I like quality erotic fiction (though there is little enough of it). But in mainstream fiction, IMO it's best to leave sex to the imagination so that you can appeal to a wider audience.

[frookenhauer]

No sex please, we're British!

[Use Of Weapons]

1610: A Sundial In A Grave has some delicious sex scenes.

And i remember Clive Barker's _Imajica_ having some salciousness, though this may be exaggerated by distance and the fact that I was 13 when I read it.

This post has been edited by jitsukerr: 21 January 2009 - 03:29 PM

[stone monkey]

And speaking of Mary Gentle, Ash is fairly graphic too. As are some of Barker's short stories; I remember being quite shocked, as a somewhat-less-jaded-than-I-am-now youngster, by the scene between the two protagonists (who both happen to be male) in "In the Cities, In the Hills" from the Books of Blood the first time I read it.

[Tamilyrn]

My point is that a lot of fantasy novels seem quite happy to cover the violence without fleshing out the story with the underlying reasons.

Religion aside, the whole sex, love, jealousy, hate, bitterness, revenge cycle is what incites people to act in the way the authors describe but it's almost always glossed over or left out altogether.

I'm fine with (and enjoy) the more surreal fantasy novelists such as RJ where no pretense is made on the tone of the books, but where an author is striving for a gritty, believable series it seems to me that something is missing on the character front. To take an SE example,

Spoiler

I never really felt for Silanah, nor did Korlat's hunt for Kallor really grab hold of me

in the way that so much of the books did.

This post has been edited by Tamilyrn: 22 January 2009 - 12:00 PM