This is yet another first for me--my first collection of erotica, both to read and to own. Cecilia Tan has brought together one poem and fourteen short stories in this eclectic compilation. After reading the first entry, a poem by John Haldeman (who also wrote the final story), I knew I had made a wise decision in picking out this book.Like most anthologies, some stories are much stronger than others, but overall these were pretty good; I enjoyed most of them quite a bit, and I found a few of them to be exceptional. "More Than the Sum of His Parts," for example, was a great choice to end the book with. This was a great collection with great selections, and I enjoyed it very much as a whole.
While all of the stories were sensual, they were not all explicit (although a few were). But these tales are about much more than sex. They are about people, technology, and the resulting culture and interactions. Some are hard science fiction while others are more fantastical. And even though they were extraordinarily diverse, all of the stories had depth to them. One of the things that I really liked about this collection is the wide variety of couplings that were portrayed; it wasn't just straight and it wasn't all queer. There was a little something for everyone which amounts to a lot of something for me.
Works included: The Future of Sex by Joe Haldeman; The Proof by Shariann Lewitt; The Book Collector by Sarah Micklem; Love Will Tear Us Apart Again by John Bowker; Poppet by Elspeth Potter; Remembrance by Beth Bernobich; The Program by G. Bonhomme; Caught By Skin by Steve Berman; That Which Does Not Kill Us by Scott Westerfeld; Value for O by Jennifer Stevenson; Softly, with a Big Stick by Gavin J. Grant; Pinocchia by Paul Di Filippo; Hot, Like Water by Lynne Jameneck; The Show by M. Christian; More Than the Sum of His Parts by Joe Haldeman.
