[lit, movies, psych/anthro] More realistic fictional depictions of polyamory?

[siderea]

A lot of people who identify as polyamorous have cited reading fictional depictions of polyamory as crucial to them. Heinlein is frequently mentioned, for instance.

I'm not enormously well-read in that corpus, though I have read a bit of Heinlein, including Moon is a Harsh Mistress and FridayThe limited poly-positive fiction I'm aware of, all the

Comments

[en_ki]

The closest thing I've read to what you want is at best halfway there: in The Girl Prepositional Phrase series, Stieg Larsson depicts a vee that has some strong negotiated boundaries, but the negotiation is mostly not in the text. There's like one scene where jealousy is a factor in the vee, and a little more where the polyandrous woman feels jealousy toward one of the men when he gets something going on the side, but it's not really a subject of action in the story.

Definitely interested to hear what other examples may come up.

[indicolite]

Sorry, but my inner linguistic pedant has been muttering all night that it's The Girl Relative Clause, not The Girl Prepositional Phrase. :)

[en_ki]

Hm, I overgeneralized from "with" and you're overgeneralizing from "who". It is a tragedy of witticisms that nothing seems to work here.

[indicolite]

You're right. We should just stick with the proper title of the exception: "Men Who Hate Women." It will still have a relative clause in it, then.

[spacehawk]

Not that has been published (I've read some manuscripts) -- I will go on the hunt! This is a very good point.

[heron61]

It's been a long time since I last read it, but I remember that Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake has a few excellent bits about non-monogamny. Also, while not perfect, I think Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels to a considerably better job than any of Heinlien's work a depicting poly - the best being The Forbidden Tower, in part because you have a protagonist who is from a non-poly culture being introduce to poly.

One difficulty I've seen in that most of the fiction with polyamory in it that I've read have been has been about cultures where everyone is raised with the assumption that polyamory is normal - I love Diane Duane's series that starts with The Door Into Fire, but it largely doesn't deal with this sort of thing.

Oddly, the best examples I know of for depicting polyamory in all its complexities are all fanfiction, most of which is clearly written by people who understand polyamory exceedingly well. I can provide some recommendations if you are interested.

[siderea]

Yes, I would love pointers. Please do.

[heron61]

Here are three of the best that I've read: a White Collar story about actually being in a poly triad, some of the details are very familiar to me, a Sherlock story about kink, poly, and non-traditional sexuality - this story has a surprising amount of excellent examination of poly issues (amidst more and more varied kink than I've literally ever seen in a single story), and a Buffy story written by one of my partners that deals with the early stages of such negotiations and complexities

[coraline]

i am in your debt -- that sherlock story kept me amused through some very annoying waiting around this weekend! also, looks like i may well have to check out everything basingstoke has written, since i liked that and i don't even know the modern TV show it was based on :)

[siderea]

I can't remember how Stile juggles his various relationships.

By casting a spell which magically makes everybody friends with everybody else. It's the climax of Book 1.

[dilletante]

oh dear. i think of the problem you described in your post as the "jealousy centers excised with lasers" model of polyamory, but i hadn't seen a story (outside of porn) in which the author said explicitly that the lovers minds were altered to make them all okay with it. ick.

i'm going to have to go back and reread a lot of marion zimmer bradley because of this thread; now that y'all say it her describing poly relationships sounds plausible, but the only relationship stuff i could remember off the top of my head from her books was a woman being grumpy that her husband couldn't read her mind like all her relatives could so she had to do the hard work of figuring out how to tell him what she was feeling with words and she didn't wanna. (i sympathize with finding it hard work!)

(hi, sneaking into the thread from coraline's journal...)

[siderea]

i hadn't seen a story (outside of porn) in which the author said explicitly that the lovers minds were altered to make them all okay with it. ick.

If it helps any, the protagonist didn't do it deliberately. :) He offered his de facto secondary a magical oath of eternal friendship so pure and true that everybody witnessing it got caught up in it too and became BBF, including the not-yet-but-inevitable-primary. So, yeah, "jealousy centers excised with lasers".

[indicolite]

I'll need to review it once I get back, but I remember Robert Silverberg's "The Stochastic Man" as having an open marriage that runs into jealousy issues. It's hard to find, though; my copy was used and a gift.

[wetdryvac]

Haven't read it, but it seems to be available reasonably cheaply via half.com - http://search.half.ebay.com/The-Stochastic-Man_W0QQ_trksidZp3030Q2em1446Q2el2686QQmZbooks