Celestial Reviews 115 - September 7, 1996
Note: I made a mistake last week and threw out a message before I
recorded its contents. If you offered to proofread within the last
week or so and have NOT yet been contacted, you might want to send me
your name a second time.
Second Note: If you’re interested, you may want to check out my
“Comment on Author’s Rights” at the end of this issue. I posted this
comment separately, but I am repeating it here. If you’re not
interested, simply stop and go have sex after the “CBS Evening News.”
- Celeste
“Remembering" by Michael K. Smith (incest) 10, 10, 10
“Trinity Trilogy Novel 9/14” by Tom Trinity
(miscellaneous orgies) 10, 9.5, 10
“Model Shop” by RC (mind control) 10, 8, 8
“Picaroon Bay” by Rap (masturbation on the high seas)
9, 8, 8
“Sabine” by Daniel Vian (morbid meditation) 10, 5, 4
“Concert” by Holly (orgy at the concert) 6, 5, 5
“Tripping the Lights Fantastic” by NetWanderer (mind
control) 9, 8, 9
“CBS Evening News” by Uncle Mike (television parody)
10, 10, 10
“Remembering " by Michael K. Smith (mksmith@metronet.com). Please
believe me when I tell you that I wrote the “Comment on Authors’
Rights” that appears at the end of this issue BEFORE I read this story.
In that Comment I describe a story entitled “Raped Teen Burglar” by an
author named TEX, in which that author offers a reality check: maybe
raping a teenage burglar wouldn’t be so much fun after all. In this
story Michael K. Smith suggests (to me at least) a similar reality
check: maybe incest isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
Don’t run away! Neither the story nor this review will be a moral
lecture. In the story a woman describes to a psychiatrist her sexual
experiences with her brother, who first raped her when she was thirteen
and he was eighteen years old. The brother did most of the things to
her that happen in other incest stories; but although she became a
“willing” participant for the next four years, her reaction is
different from that of the “victim” in most incest stories.
I do NOT think that a person is necessarily a pervert if he or she
enjoys reading (or even writing) incest stories in which everyone
enjoys the “family fun.” I am even willing to imagine that the world
may be full of boys and girls (and subsequently, adults) who have been
subtly coerced into having sex with a parent, sibling, or relative, and
who have maintained their normal emotional stability and have gone on
to become valedictorians, CEOs, PTA presidents, and other all-around
well-adjusted people. I just don’t know any of them. However, I HAVE
worked with high-risk (dropout-prone) adolescent girls, and it’s
astonishing how many of them have been involved in what we call
incestuous relationships.
Again, I don’t have a major problem with fantasies; but I think we
should be a little careful even there. If I at my 40-plus age see my
sexy brother, think back to my childhood, and fantasize about how neat
it would have been to do sexually intimate things with him, I see no
problem with this fantasy. On the other hand, if I find myself
fantasizing about how cute my daughter looks and thinking that maybe it
would be fun to “initiate her into the joys of womanhood,” I should
consider the possibility that I may have a problem. Even this fantasy
would quite likely be harmless - as long as I am a person that can keep
my fantasies separate from my real life; but not everyone can do that.
Unfortunately, it’s the person who can’t keep them separate who is
least likely to wonder whether he or she has a problem.
I think we readers and writers on this newsgroup should be aware that
sometimes our stories may indeed CAUSE PROBLEMS for some readers. It’s
naive to deny this. People who fantasize about chocolate cake are more
likely to eat chocolate cake; kids who fantasize about playing
basketball are more likely to play basketball; why should maladaptive
sexual practices be any different? This doesn’t mean that we should
ban advertisements of chocolate cake, abolish basketball on television,
or suppress the publication of provocative stories; it merely means
that we should acknowledge that there could be a problem. One
“solution” is to provide children and adults with accurate, sensible
information - probably as a part of a wholesome relationship between
parents and children. Another solution is to help children (and
adults) learn to deal adaptively with their fantasies. Another
solution is to post and read stories like this one that offer an
occasional reality check.
Ironically, of course, this story would be banned from the school in
which I teach. If I tried to discuss it in class, I would be fired.
My mother used to have a friend who was a religious fanatic. She used
to lug with her a shopping bag in which she carried religious tracts on
various topics. She would “accidentally” leave her pamphlets in buses,
in restaurants, in bars, and in other places, so that naive finders
would get religion. Maybe I’ll try that with this story.
Ratings for “Remembering”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
“Trinity Trilogy Novel 9/14” by Tom Trinity (stbush@iglou.com). This
segment is mostly about The Trinity Plus One - Janie has signed on
pretty much full-time. They continue doing their x-some thing at
various conventions; and Candy even deflowers a “portly virgin” on a
Friday night while the others watched from concealment.
On the road to Columbus, Ohio, Tom fucks Janie in the back seat, while
Candy and Judy look on and root from the front seat. I don’t suppose
they (Tom and Janie) were using seat belts. Then at the rest stop,
Janie stands guard, while Tom does it with Candy and Judy in the picnic
area. I guess some of those picnic areas would be secluded enough to
do it without getting arrested. Anyway, we also discover that Tom can
recognize the girls by sniffing just their panties when he is
blindfolded. Imagine that.
The main orgy in Columbus, begins with just seven people - six ladies
and Tom. Partners are selected through a random drawing of panties
that Tom collected earlier in the day. The rules are a bit subtle, and
eventually two more guys join in; but a good time was had by all.
Ratings for “Trinity Trilogy Novel 9/14”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
“Model Shop” by RC (74734.271@CompuServe.COM). Lucy and Erica run a
modeling agency. Melinda comes for an interview and the other two have
her pose for pictures. Naturally, they hypnotize her and have sex in
her presence. This is a clearly written story, but the sex wasn’t as
hot for me as it has been in other stories by this same author. I
think that’s because the focus was more on the hypnosis technique
(which I won’t describe here) than on actual sexual activity; and I
myself am more a fan of sexual activity than of hypnosis and mind
control.
Ratings for “Model Shop”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8
“Picaroon Bay” by Rap (lhundley@ix.netcom.com). I’m not sure why this
author chose to write this whole story as a single paragraph. The
story is about a woman who sails her small craft out to a secret bay
within an island, where she relaxes and masturbates. It’s really a
pretty good fantasy; but it’s hard to read in the present format. The
author should have added paragraph breaks and proofread the story a
little more carefully.
Ratings for “Picaroon Bay”
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8
“Sabine” by Daniel Vian. This is another one of those introductory
chapters from the Spectrum Press (http://users.aol.com/specpress). In
this story Sabine and Leon are on a cruise ship out of Santiago, Chile.
Leon, who is over sixty years old, purports to be dying; but Sabine
refuses to accept the idea. The story is thoroughly disjointed and
depressing. This may all make sense or be erotic in the context of the
complete novel; but this introduction does not prompt me to rush off
and obtain the whole story. I think I’ll pass on this one.
Ratings for “Sabine”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 5
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 4
“Concert” by Holly (kansica@aol.com). Holly and Randy leave the kids
with Mom and head into the big city for a concert. She plans to get
him all hot and bothered and tease him for a while, but during the
second act out on the grass Holly finds herself giving Randy head right
there in the middle of the crowd. Another couple start imitating them,
and Holly notices that the other man’s is bigger than Randy’s little
dingy. After Randy and the other guy shoot their wads, Holly and the
other woman (who sports 40D’s) decide to get it on together, much to
the enjoyment of the other onlookers. Well, the other woman’s hubby
joins in, the crowd cheers, and pretty soon the three of them are on
the JumboTron screen, while 20,000 people cheer them on. Etc.
In short, this is one of those stories in which a woman boasts about
how slutty she can be. It’s a sort of less literate version of the
“Adventures of Bobbi Sue.” Overall, the story made me appreciate
literacy. On the other hand, if you want to wade through some
incoherence to find out how horny people might copulate in a crowd, you
might enjoy this story.
Ratings for “Concert”
Athena (technical quality): 6
Venus (plot & character): 5
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 5
“Tripping the Lights Fantastic” by NetWanderer
(an182343@anon.penet.fi). The narrator is a 26-year-old male who states
at the beginning of the story that he is a pedophile. He works part-
time at some sort of psychology lab and part-time with a gymnastics
class for young girls. While working in the psychology lab, he
accidentally discovers a way to use lights to hypnotize people. He
installs the light system at his gym, and soon he has the two 17-year-
old assistants happily serving as his sex partners.
The story offers an interesting blend of mind control and voluntary
sexual behavior, of ethical and unethical behavior. He uses hypnosis
to make the girls predisposed to want to have sex with him; but after
that initial push, their sexual behavior is voluntary. He is making
the girls his sex toys, but he uses condoms when he has sex with them.
The behavior of the girls is controlled, but a lot of what they do
sexually is at their own initiative.
I normally do not like pedophile stories; but I enjoyed this one -
except that I vaguely knew that it wasn’t finished and that the author
would eventually try to rationalize some kind of sick behavior with 10-
year-olds as “normal.” The author has a pretty good story within the
existing framework; I don’t see why the eventual pedophile behavior
with younger children will be necessary to the plot at all.
Ratings for “Tripping the Lights Fantastic”
Athena (technical quality): 9
Venus (plot & character): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9
“CBS Evening News” by Uncle Mike (fr582@cleveland.Freenet.Edu). Dan
Rather had initially been miffed at having Connie Chung assigned as his
co-anchor; but of late he has begun to enjoy the visual pleasantries of
having a hot chick to look at during breaks in the evening news.
Imagine his surprise when Connie confides in him that she and Maury are
having trouble getting pregnant. Imagine his further surprise when she
asks Dan to be the sperm donor - right there on her couch! This is a
hot an sexy story. I’ll have to switch from NBC to CBS for my evening
news.
The Bad News is that Max Wojtylak recently announced that he is almost
out of these parodies. As you may know, Max himself did not write
these stories; his Uncle Mike did, and Max simply found the stories
when he was cleaning up the hard drive or something like that. My
advice to Max is to get Norton Utilities and run the Unerase program;
maybe there are another ten or so stories buried there. If that
doesn’t work, try a seance. I really like these stories; and oddly
enough, Uncle Mike seems to write better the longer he’s been dead.
Imagine that!
Ratings for “CBS Evening News”
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 10
Comment on Authors’ Rights:
The following exchange appeared in an a.s.s. post by
David Zeiger labeled “Re: Celestial Reviews 111 Aug 24.”
It dealt with my criticism of an anonymous author for
“ripping off” Randu by altering “Double Trouble” without
permission of the original author.
: If someone re-wrote this story with out
: the knowledge or permission of the REAL author,
: then I solidly agree with Celeste. Even if he
: gives credit to the original poster, he has modified
: something that he doesn't own.
Ummm, Celeste is on-record as saying that modifying/adding
to existing stories is OK so long as credit is given to
the author.. Several people (Parker stands out in my mind)
blasted her for that point of view.
As far as I can tell, her change of heart had more to do with
the fact that she didn't like this rewrite than anything
else.
--
In a separate post, Peg Leg Dukk said:
Let's get real here! This is the NET, the one last true frontier of
free-expression left on this planet, possibly in the entire universe
(unless we colonized a newly-found planet somewhere), and life is too
short to nickpick all the way to the grave about all of this
"Who-plagerizes-whom, Who-Stole-what, and What-is-their-cut?" Granted,
I
did say i would pursue IF someone was dumb enough to take my creations,
but I again state - It would only be because someone is making a lot of
Moolah off of my work, and not paying me for it!
--
First, I’d like to acknowledge that the ethical issues are complex.
It’s difficult to determine in a free-flowing, spontaneous forum like
Usenet newsgroups who owns which ideas.
Having said that, I want to point out that I don’t think I said - or at
least I don’t currently believe - exactly what I am quoted as saying.
I think I may have said that a person should never modify or add to an
existing story without giving credit to the original author. To me
that’s different than saying that modifying/adding to existing stories
is OK so long as credit is given to the author.
In legal terms, there are strict interpretations of copyright; and I
assume these apply to the Internet, although I doubt that they will be
enforced, except in cases where an offended party can demonstrate
actual loss of income.
I think the context in which I discussed this may have been with regard
to a story entitled “Raped Teen Burglar” by an author named TEX.
He/she took a rape story by another author, inserted it verbatim as the
first half of a new story, and then composed a new story that consisted
of having the rapist experience in prison the same sort of pain and
humiliation that he had inflicted on the teenage girl who broke into
his apartment. TEX acknowledged that the original story was by a
different author, gave that author’s name, and even stated exactly
where the original story ended and the revisionist version began.
TEX’s patently sarcastic argument was that the original story was
“obviously incomplete” and that the modified story supplied the “real
ending.” The obvious implication of the original story was that it
would be great fun to make a teenage burglar into a permanent sex
slave; the equally obvious implication of TEX’s story was that rape is
a horrible experience that is likely to lead to negative consequences
even for the rapist.
I viewed TEX’s story as a legitimate literary effort and ranked it
among my Top 100 Stories for 1995. The original story was weak,
because it was full of grammatical blunders and because it presented a
really grotesque view of teenage rape that was supported by neither
real-life information nor by any character development in the story.
TEX’s version was much stronger, because it was stylistically coherent
and because it drew attention to the shallowness of the original while
also conforming to reality as I (and nearly all social scientists who
have studied the topic) understand teenage rape.
I guess this could mean that I approve of TEX’s story “because I liked
it” and disapproved of the alteration of “Double Trouble” “because I
didn’t like it”; but I honestly believe there’s more to it than that.
In reality, I don’t “approve” of either version of “Double Trouble”; I
consider it to be undesirable for adults to have sex with children -
whether they be male or female children. What I strongly object to is
denying hard-working authors the credit they deserve.
I think there is a big difference between what TEX did and what this
anonymous mutilator did. My understanding is that Randu was seriously
upset to discover that his name had been stripped from the story and
that it had been revised without his knowledge or consent. After TEX’s
revision appeared, I saw one message on a.s.s. that said a reader was
seriously upset because TEX had “ruined a good rape fantasy.”
Apparently this critic had been zipping through the story fantasizing
about how great it would be to do things like that to a teenage
burglar, when all of a sudden he found himself fantasizing about being
sodomized in prison by a bunch of thugs who considered child molesters
to be the scum of the earth. This upset the writer of the message; and
I can certainly see why! Another message in that thread (with which I
myself agree) pointed out that TEX was simply painting a different view
of reality. I never saw anything from the original author of “Raped
Teen Burglar.” I suspect he enjoyed the recognition TEX gave to his
story (to which his name was still attached) and possibly enjoyed the
modified version as well.
I haven’t seen “Raped Teen Burglar” in a long time. Probably somebody
has stripped both TEX’s name and the original author’s name from the
story and is posting it under a different title. Now THAT’s what
really upsets me!
The authors on this newsgroup do not make money for their efforts.
They appreciate it when we give them feedback about their work. (I
know I myself appreciate it when I see intelligent people discussing my
reviews, as is the case in this thread.) And I also think the authors
appreciate it when we give them credit for their work and refrain from
mutilating it.
By the way, since Parker was mentioned above, I’d like to point out
that I think he is an excellent writer. He recently stopped posting
new stories, and I hope to review his work after I get finished with my
long-range commitments to a few other authors. I don’t recall
corresponding with Parker myself; but it is possible that his ideas may
have influenced my own present position.