Man's World - Sexy Space Opera
I’ve been excited about Man’s World ever since the first single idea cell spontaneously generated in the primordial soup of my brain.
I love old space opera, especially in its sexy incarnations. Classic Flash Gordon comics (and the old serials to some degree) are full of understated eros, sexy costumes, and exaggerated male and female characters. The 70s movie Flesh Gordon took all these icons into an explicit direction and, even if the film isn’t great, I enjoyed it. The French comic strip and Jane Fonda movie Barbarella provided another inspiration. Hell, even the 80’s TV Buck Rogers in the 25th Century helped me craft this story.
In my novel, I wanted to tell a straightforward story about a girl’s adventures in an SF world of sexual stereotypes inspired by old pulps and 20th Century notions of sexuality. My partner Drake had also shared with me his interest in a man named William Moulton Marston, a truly twisted renaissance character who lived from 1893 to 1947. Marston was a psychiatrist, inventor, and author who had some very definite ideas about the roles of men and women.
Marston is best known today, of course, as the creator of the comic book character Wonder Woman, a comic I had read off and on for years, although I knew nothing about her creator. Besides bringing to life my favorite Amazon super-heroine, Marston’s resume also included the discovery that led to the creation of the lie detector. He also wrote a historical novel, and several books on psychology that are still influential today. His work Emotions of Normal People forms the basis of a personality analysis tool called DISC that you may have encountered if you have ever undergone business management training. Dr. Marston also led an unusual personal life. He was more or less openly polyandrous in his relationships at a time when such a thing was unthinkable. His work, distorted by centuries and transplanted onto a distant planetary colony, seemed like the perfect framework for the world I wanted my heroine to land on.
The rest of the book built on this premise and it was a hoot to write. Stella Blue Darter is a young woman with a gambling problem - an interstellar hooker trying to change her luck and her ways. Blind chance takes her to the planet Moulton, a world with a rigid sex caste structure and an old-fashioned reliance on fossil fuels. She learns lessons of dominance and submission, courage, and love in a series of comical misadventures.
Of all the books and stories I’ve written, Man’s World was, by far, the most fun. I put a lot of myself into Stella and let my imagination run wild with her circumstances and especially with her sidekick, Bo the plesomesh. Bo is a distributed nanotech device with limited, quirky intelligence and an excess of personality. She is the ultimate fashion accessory and her ability to create outfits on the fly would be welcome by any woman anywhere. It was a struggle not to let Bo take over the book.
Man’s World is definitely one of my labors of love. I hope you find it entertaining, funny and of course, hot!! I want to thank Circlet massively for publishing this story and giving me a chance to share Stella and Bo with the world.
Stay Sexy!
AC