M. Christian - Erotic Cyberpunk Author, Thanks!

Thanks VERY much — I’m blushing like a schoolgirl!

NP, Chris, thanks again for sending! But now that I got you here, I gotta ask - you’re set of book topics is extremely diverse. Where do you find the inspiration and ideas for all these?

And more specifically, regarding The Bachelor Machine, you seem to have some pretty interesting cyberpunk thoughts and visuals throughout. Did you do research or reading of any particular authors (or movies) prior to writing this, or do you just dive in?

And if there were some interesting concepts or tropes from cyberpunk you wanted to pursue that prompted you to write this, what were the most exciting ones to you?

No problem — I’m jazzed you’re jazzed about the book!

It’s funny, but I never really planned to write CP, smut, queer fiction, or everything else I find myself doing these days. I just love to write — and really love it when people love what I write, so I’ve gone where I’ve been nudged. Not that I’m not having a blast! I chock it up to being a big ‘imagination game’ fan: when I get an opportunity, or invitation, I really enjoy creating something fun and interesting to fit the project. That’s where my queer novels have come from – and most of the smut I’ve written.

The Bachelor Machine was a hoot because it gave me a chance to really play with sex and society and technology: what sex is, or could be; what gender is, or could be; what pleasure is, or could be … etc. For inspiration I have to of course mention Gibson, but also Jonathan Littell’s Bad Voltage, Ernest Hogan, Alexander Jablokov, Adam Warren and Warren Ellis’s comic work, and lots of anime and manga: anything by Oshii, Yamashita Ikuto, Yukito Kishiro, FLCL, anything from Madhouse … my brain is starting to hurt … and flicks like Strange Days, Brainstorm, Equilibrium … there goes my brain again ….

Where to go from here? Oh, man, what a fun playground! I could do CP until I’m old and gray, or older and grayer, or just a head in a jar. I’m been having a blast with the novel I’m doing, Painted Doll, and should have that done in a few weeks. I’d love to play more with the idea of identity, how we’re close to a time when who we are could be as changeable as our wardrobe, or the idea of getting more-than-intimate with other people – biological, digital, or whatever ….

I love the identity questioning. Considering in a few short years when all these cool technologies come to fruition (see the poll question to the right), our definition of humanity will be altered significantly, one wonders how this will affect notions of sexuality. Give us a sense if you could some of the issues you raise with this in your upcoming book, Painted Doll. Should we expect to be seeing a different side to Wintermute in this book?

And I agree - one of the fascinating things about cyberpunk is the degree to which doors of humanity are often flung open, far past anything resembling cultural norms. We see this the most vividly in extreme japanese cyberpunk flicks like Tetsuo, Rubber’s Lover, I.K.U. and others where it seems that a large part of the rationale for the film is to give the view a sense that they’ve detatched themselves from anything considered part of humanity. In the future, when we essentially start to become transhuman, do you think our concepts of eroticism change as significantly, or will we still be oogling over hawt android sexbots chicking butt?

I love this stuff! Painted Doll touches a bit on this – autonomous AI’s, wetware neuroprogramming, augmented reality, quasi-hive minds, cool stuff like that– but as they say reality is, or will be, far weirder than any fiction. There’s definitely a lot of technological, biological, and social techno-fun on the horizon that’s going to – excuse me – screw with sexuality, or even our ideas of what sexuality is or can be. New Scientist did this great survey of ‘brilliant minds’ and what they saw as the biggest breakthroughs coming in the next 50 years. There was a lot of really BIG things (a theory of everything, etc) but a lot of what they talked about were major discoveries coming in sociology, a physiological basis for consciousness, making (or remaking) memories — in other words things dealing with what makes you into ‘you.’ Putting a sexy spin on that, in a few years we’ll be able to run our sex drive (and orientation) like selecting a song on an ipod. “Today I feel like …. (fill in the blank).” We may actually be able to change our personalities to fit any given situation (a work self, a play self, etc), or even share memories, quick-learn education or even a skill, switch on and off even supposedly abstract concepts like religion or prejudice, and so forth. Sex in that kind of society could be almost incomprehensible to us: hell, orgasms could even be like punctuation in a sentence – dropped in to amplify or conclude all kinds of social interactions (was it good for you?).

But what’s REALLY going to change things (and back to the brilliant minds) is when we begin to discover not what’s coming in regards to technology but what’s been here all along: what is awareness, identity, self? Not to toot, but I play with that in Me2: how are we sure we’re who we are?

I adore Japanese CP stuff, more than anything because it so twistedly reflects Japanese society: roles, isolation, ritual, etc. Can’t help but wonder if they look at our stuff the same way

The part about cyberpunk roleplaying (Personality changes, “today I feel like____”), this is rather exciting - it’s like LARPing gone wild!

Now regarding awareness, identity and self. Combine this with the post-human thing, and we have a situation where potentially there will be sentient artificial organisms who can define themselves. Will they have anything like a concept of sexual awareness or sexual satisfaction? If they learn how to “feel” does this automatically cover sex drive?

And for us, the individual, if we can open up our personalities, and and can explore our sexual fantasies in a very real way, what do you think the impact on society will be? The context in which these fantasies emerge will be interesting to say the least. Do you see a Transmetropolitan type future, or more of a sedate Ghost in the Shell type context? But regardless the context, I bet the fundamentalists would look at the sexual orientation chooser thing as a Godsend (I can see the mandated orientation laws going in effect in the red states already!).

Oh, man, that’s a tough call. I think that AIs ‘spawned’ from an uploaded human mind or directly patterned after one might very well have a form of sexuality – but then would you want them to have one? Luckily the thing with things digital is you can edit them to your heart’s content, so you could get rid of a perky human qualities when they get in the way of things (Adam Warren’s comic Livewires is a brilliant take on this). A more abstract AI might also have a form of ‘sexuality’ but more than likely one based on the pleasure response coming from interaction with humans or one of their own kind, or from the need to reproduce – but then the ‘pleasure’ might come from success at making a second self rather than from the getting there, as in human sex.

My crystal ball is very cracked but I often think that sex in the future will depend on access to resources. Look at sex now: if you have money you can enhance your sex life with paid partners, cosmetic surgery, drugs, cybersex, etc. In a few years we’ll have the rich sliding more and more away from what we might think of being ‘human’ leaving the rest of us staring up at them while they evolve into something else. The bottom line is that this might be a bit more like Transmetropolitan (crazy complex) than Ghost in the Shell (which appears at least on the surface as a bit more uniform), though Stand Alone Complex does an excellent job exploring the social and political disparity between those who had afford prosthetics and cyberbrains and those who cannot it rarely goes off the deep end with the possibilities of digital existence and sexuality; a deep end we can see the ancestor of walking down the street right now. Imagine what the technological/biological sexual world might it might look like in the next few years ….

Interesting you bring up changing orientation. I think that the next decade or so will see a HUGE amount of turmoil over that issue. Would you change your sexual preference? Do you have the right to change someone else’s – what about a parent changing a child’s or the state changing a sexual predator’s? Will there be an underground of orientation changers? I dread the thought of an administration like the present one getting their hands on that kind of technology: mandatory heterosexuality? Kids having their sexuality shut off until they real 21? Sexuality switched off until they get married – whenever that is? Business drones getting their sexual response cycle tied to profit and loss? I just hope with this kind of a world a healthy subculture might form that would take the idea of changing sexuality and put a fun and positive spin on it: changing orientation parties? Spending a few years as one and then another? Sex linked to positive rather than negative behaviors (like eroticizing kindness, or even just latex as in condoms). I just hope I’m going to be around long enough to see some of this fun stuff – or long enough for people to be able to get switched on to find dotty old geezers like me sexy ☺

Hi M.Christian,

Some critics have suggested that science fiction in general and the notion of the singularity specifically seems to be far more appealing and attractive to males rather than females.

Do you think that the sexual fantasies that accompany this kind of vision of the future are male dominated? And if so, what kind of cyberpunk future do you think would be a turn on for the ladies?

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