Anthony Ferguson

Review copy

Midnight Echo 12 marks the rebirth of the Australasian Horror Writers Association's signature magazine. Issue 11 was published more than two years ago.

It's nice to see its return, not just because it's an important venue for Aussie writers, but because it represents speculative fiction at its finest.

I'm going to comment on just a few of the standout stories in this issue. Stories like EFFIGIA MALO by Angela J. Maher.

Lydia made a choking noise as she felt a rope tighten around her neck. 'Paul,' she rasped. 'Get out. Run! It’s the book; it’s evil. The illustration is creating a reality. Go, before it gets you too!'

I was also impressed with a delightful little ghost story called, WAR GHOST, and OLD MAN RED GUM, a tale of an ancient tree and its dark history. But, the best of the bunch comes at the end of the magazine as Matthew R. Davis tells the story of lost love. Really lost, as in never existed. But the lead character remembers his love clearly and he even gets a Christmas gift from her. A mixtape made when they were still dating. The rest of the story is told in a series of flashbacks, one for each song on the tape. Terribly clever and then there's the big reveal at the end. Perfectly told. Go read AN IMPOSSIBLE GIFT.

Midnight Echo 12 is a nice blend of fact and fiction and includes several award-winning shorts in this issue. Welcome back and don't stay away so long this time.

Midnight Echo 12 is published by the Australasian Horror Writers Association and is available in Kindle format. If you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited you can read it at no additional charge. Also, if you are an Amazon Prime member you can read it for FREE using the Kindle Owners Lending Library.… (mehr)

Ferguson, Anthony. The Sex Doll : A History. Jefferson N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2010. Print.

Contents:
Preface
Introduction
1 The origin of the species
2 She ain't heavy, she's just rubber
3 The great leap forward
4 I am your automatic lover
5 Forever young
6 Consumable women
7 Sex doll stereotypes
8 The vagaries of masculine desire
9 The dark side of desire
10 Do androids dream of electric orgasm?
11 Revulsion, lust and love
Conclusion : disengage from society and plug into the network.
Chapter notes
Bibliography
Index

I received this book as a LibraryThing Early Reader copy. While not the typical thing I might read, I requested it because: a) I typically request things through the LT Early Reader program that I normally wouldn't acquire for reading via other means, and b) I was hoping it would prove to be, if not exactly, a bookend, then a continuation, of a sort, to Rachel Maines' Technology of Orgasm. I was correct on at least one count, as it cited Maines five times by my count.

Bottom line: I found this book somewhat frustrating. While interesting enough, and while admitting that some women are attracted to sex dolls and even including a few in his interviews, he totally failed to investigate that angle. Secondarily, and even worse, his theory of sexual psychology is explicitly Freudian; that is, based on Freud's and not even on later Freudians. To support his views on aggressive male sexuality and passive female sexually he cites the originator of that view, Colin Scott, from 1896. Please tell me that we've had some slightly more enlightened, and more accurate, views on this since then.

I do, though, think that there is much of value in the book. Besides Freud, Kinsey, de Sade, and Krafft-Ebing as sources one might expect, there are many sources one might not expect to be present: Ted Nelson, Jaron Lanier, Howard Rheingold, Marshal McLuhan, Terry Eagleton, Martha Nussbaum, F.W. Taylor, David Levy, Alvin Toffler. H. Rider Haggard, Anton Chekhov, Tolstoy and others.

From the Introduction:

"…, the sex doll in its current guise seems to be moving inexorably closer to becoming a fully functioning gynoid, or demonized android" (3).

"… it is my contention that the female sex doll represents woman in her most objectified form. …. A woman rendered harmless, it is immobile, compliant, and perhaps most importantly, silent. What the user of the sex doll seeks is the negation of change and the comfort of always retaining control of the relationship" (5).

This book is "an exploration of the development of the sex doll, from its beginnings as a fantasy of ancient men to it present lifelike state. It is also a study of the type of thinking which led to the concept of an ideal woman, a study of why men would want to "improve" on nature, and an assessment of the many ways men conceive of women as objects of desire" (5).

It is in the first and last of these that I feel the author was most successful. He was least successful in the area of psychology, as far as I am concerned.

The section on Sexualizing Technology (62-66) in ch. 4 I Am Your Automatic Lover contains artist Mike Mosher's thoughts which, according to the author, imply "that technology has allowed sex, which should be a democratic process, to be reappropriated to an act of commerce" (66). His ideas, at least as summarized by the author, are quite intriguing.

Ch.6 Consumable Women (81-92) is also quite good, even in spite of its ending with Freud on infant sexuality and cannibalism. Its subsections are: Objectification, Silencing the Female Voice: Women in Advertising and the Mass Media, Commodifying Desire, Control and Consumption, State Attempts to Control Sexuality, Sexual Slavery, and The Consumption of Women.

"The body, Barthes argues, is natural and organically functional, and is thus the core of the individual's sense of free will. Sexuality, it follows, is a natural expression of free will. This is why the dominant ideological forces desperately seek to control, contain and suppress the free expression of sexuality" (85).

On Vagina Dentata (124-125) all I can say to 'the toothed place' or the 'yawning mouth of hell?' is "For real?"

In ch. 9 The Dark Side of Desire (127-41) I think he goes off the deep end. Certainly these issues are relevant but with comments like "Psychologists argue that there is a link between the desire for sex and the urge to kill" (132), and "There is a subliminal link between the philanderer and the man who kills repeatedly" (133) I begin to lose more than my patience. As I noted in my notes: "something has been bothering me about his argument in places. Here, e.g., he states: "… the unavoidably violent nature of the sex act itself. At it's most passionate, the act symbolically encompasses the consumption of the sex partner” (134). Earlier he has called it "aggressive" and so forth. I disagree. It can be those things, but "unavoidably violent"?"

Ch. 10 Do Androids Dream of Electric Orgasm? (142-66) is a look at the sex doll and related issues in the context of literature, fiction, film, TV and so on. Much of this has been sprinkled throughout the text but here it is collected and expanded.

Ch. 11 Revulsion, Lust and Love is a continuation of the previous chapter but with a focus on the horror genre. This is understandable due to the author being a member of the Australian Horror Writers Association, according to the back cover. In fact, much about the narrative becomes clearer when this is known.

His analysis and argumentation is weak in certain points, which leads me to wonder how it is in areas I am less familiar with. For example, in the Conclusion: Disengage from Society and Plug into the Network (199-204), when discussing " the increasing popularity of online communication forums such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter" he argues that the "benefit of this form of interaction for the consumer is twofold. Not only is it clean and safe, bringing little risk of disease or disappointment, but its very structure allows the user to retain complete control of the situation" (200). Do I really need to unpack how naïve, and dangerous, that view is?

Nonetheless, I think there is value in this book. But get it from your local library before spending the money on it.… (mehr)