‘More Than The Sum Of His Parts’ by Joe Haldeman

We began with Haldeman and so we end. This story was originally published in Playboy (the world’s sexiest magazine) but I first read it in another erotic SF anthology, Cybersex.

Dr Wilson Cheetham gets his nob (and most of the rest of him) burnt off in a high orbit steel manufacturing accident. Luckily, they can rebuild him:

Surprisingly, to me at least, the reconstruction of a penis is a fairly straightforward procedure, which they’ve had lots of practice. Men are forever sticking them in places they don’t belong.

The story takes the form of Cheetham’s recovery journal. They patch him up and he documents his progress, whilst at the same time concealing the full extent of the strength and dexterity of his new cybernetic limbs. There is no particular reason for this apart from the fact it will prove convenient to the plot later. Cheetham is a deeply unsympathetic character; pompous, pedantic, up-tight and anti-social. Despite this:

A pretty nurse who has been on this project since the beginning came into my room after dinner and proposed the obvious experiment. It was wildly successful.

He prefaces this diary entry with the words “Most interesting.” Cheetham is the sort of bloke you try to escape from at parties but his cyborg cock proves irresistible to women. Apparently what you look like and how you behaviour doesn’t matter if you can control your erections at will and simple stiffness guarantees female pleasure. Everything is going swimmingly until – whoops – he breaks someone’s spine during a bout of bionic sex. Things go a bit pear-shaped after that.

As you might have gathered, this is not an erotic story in any shape or form and Haldeman is clearly taking the piss. He should have gone further though. As it stands, it is a very limp piss-take which is about as clever and funny as the title.

Quality: **
Sexiness: *

‘The Future Of Sex: A Garden Of Unearthly Delights’ by Joe Haldeman

But ah! there may be brave new worlds
awaiting lusty boys and girls:

and it is to these futures grand
that I will lead you, by the hand.

Yes, it is poetry and no, it isn’t very good. Haldeman opens the anthology with what I believe we are meant to call “light comic verse” but you might equally call doggerel. It sort of scans and it does at least have a structure as it takes us through the increasing cybernation of sex but really there was no need.

Quality: **
Sexiness: *

‘Road Kill’ by Joe Haldeman

I am starting to sound like a stuck a record but again this is a science fiction story with very little interest in science fiction. A mentally-ill serial killer thinks he is an alien and eats the people he murders. This allows Haldeman to indulge in gratuitous torture porn for no reason. His other main character is a bloke called Spencer who is burdened with a preposterous life story that means no one could mistake him for anything other than a character in a story. The paths of these two obviously cross and they do so in a way that suggests staggering authorial laziness.

The shock twist at the end is that the serial killer actually is an alien. Which isn’t really shocking or twisty or any justification for writing this story. Lame.

Quality: *
Shiftiness: *