Houston, Houston. Do you read?

Coming back to Blogger is something of a new beginning for me.  I am a Tumblr refugee.

I loved the Tumblr platform, prior to the Great Purge.  The old format encouraged so much conversation and cross talk with taboo subjects.  It was intoxicating.  I  love conversations that cross silos, particularly conversations that operate at the intersection of sex, politics, and porn.  But that's all gone now.

I am going to try to rescue several of my original Tumblr posts and post them here. [If your Tumblr is marked sexually explicit Tumblr makes it extremely hard to find your original posts, filing them among all your re-blogs and turning off the hashtag search functionality in the browser version of the platform.] 

Since this is a new beginning, I will start with my Tumblr post about the short story that sparked my own personal journey into kink: "Houston, Houston.  Do you read?"

Growing up I devoured science fiction (and still do!). Perhaps my favorite sci-fi author of all time is “James Tiptree, Jr.” - the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon, who passed in 1987 and is pictured here.

Sheldon’s works still stand as among the best of the genre. She often explored the issues of gender and sex. And the James Tiptree, Jr. Award is given in Her honor each year for a work of science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender.

My favorite Sheldon story is Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, a novella that won the Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1976 and the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1977.

The story revolves around male astronauts whose ship is damaged and thrown far forward in time where they encounter an all-woman (i.e. male-free ) society. The story explores sex, gender, sexism, patriarchy, and Feminism.  The narrative also lightly touches upon female superiority and domination, a story line that was electrifying for me as a teenager.  Looking back I can see how even at that age I was already sexually wired for kink and female domination.  And Houston, Houston fueled the fire.  Thank you, Alice Sheldon!

If you like sci-fi and you haven’t yet read Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - I highly recommend it. You’re in for a treat!

Apparently the blogger servitor did NOT have this story in mind when he put together the Star Trek mash-up caption below, but I certainly made the connection when I first saw the mash-up!