Two New Pieces Up At Future Of Sex!

Very cool: not just one but two of pieces of mine are live at FutureOFSex! Check them out:

Man with ‘Bionic Penis’ to Have Sex for the First Time

When he was six years old, Mohammed Abad, 43, a resident of Glasgow, Scotland, was involved in a horrific car accident resulting in the loss of his genitals.

In 2012, he was equipped with an artificial penis, though it was non-functioning at that time. A total of 119 operations later, University College London doctors now say that Abad can have sexual intercourse thanks to bionic technology.

[MORE]

&

Sex Tech at CES 2016: Erotic Innovations Aplenty

One of the key places for developers to show off their new tech products is at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. This year’s event, which ran from January 5 to 8, was particularly interesting for those intrigued by sexual technology. On display weren’t just exciting new devices, but also a new acceptance for adult sex and wellness product

[MORE]

New At Future Of Sex: Sensual Technology - How Sex Tech Is Becoming All Kinds of Pleasurable

More, more, more fun at Future Of Sex: my new article on sensual technology just went live.  Here's a tease!

Sensual Technology: How Sex Tech Is Becoming All Kinds of Pleasurable

We really love technology—in all kinds of ways.

We’ve always been smitten with technology: at least for as long as it’s been around. But now our devices aren’t just handy but are becoming actually, aesthetically, sexy.

Just ask any serious gear aficionado: it’s like they’re aroused not just by what their devices can do but how beautiful they are.

But what’s coming soon in sex tech—the perfect melding of erotic stimulation and arousing aesthetics—is really going to turn you on.

Form follows function… or function follows form?

Human nature, I guess: as soon as anyone invents anything, the next generation of it gets sexy. Locomotives, at first, were steamy, clanking, greasy monstrosities. Sure, they got Victorians from point A to point B, but soon they were brightly colored, filigreed, and satin lined, as well as efficient.

In the following century or so, designers had become celebrities, and their technology lusted after for its sensual appeal and function. Raymond Loewy, for example, applied his own particular style of organic streamlining to everything from airplanes to the already mentioned locomotives.

In the 60s and 70s, German industrial designer Luigi Colani took the pleasure and sensual aesthetic of those decades into engineering. While the functionality of some of his designs for cars, trains, ships, and such is a matter of debate, you have to admit that his creations have a very arousing appeal.

But designers these days are really taking the idea of sensual technology to heart. Products are often not just functionally a turn-on but are sensual as well.
Sex tech as sexy tech

Obviously, we are seeing a lot of progress towards pure sensual technology: the melding of being turned on with and turned on by sexuality devices.

Many developers have even used the idea of sensual technology in their marketing materials as well as their design aesthetic. Co-founder/designer Ti Chang of CRAVE, an adult pleasure device, said, “If anything deserves good design, it’s the things we bring to bed with us.”

Many sex tech products mentioned here on Future of Sex reflect that concept. The Kiiroo smart vibrator isn’t just pleasant to use, but also pleasurable to look at. The OH-DOMETER by OhMiBod is profoundly intimate, yet doesn’t look at all like hardware.

With developers and designers totally embracing the idea that sex tech should appeal to the eyes and mind, as well as the body and “naughty bits,” we are seeing technology that is a perfect melding of mechanical elegance, sensuality, and practically seamless interactivity.

The question then is what’s next?

[MORE]

Jean Roberta Loves Skin Effect!

I'm so very touched: just check out this amazing review the fab Jean Roberta gave my science fiction erotica collection, Skin Effect:

A World in Each Character

By Jean Roberta

M. Christian’s latest collection of nine erotic sci-fi stories is a worthy sequel to his earlier book, The Bachelor Machine. While both collections show how technology can enhance sexual experience, Skin Effect actually seems more focused on the fluid nature of identity than on sex as a physical experience. This is not to say that the sex has shrunk in importance in the imaginary future; if anything, sex is shown to be the one thing that breaks down human isolation and self-delusion.

In the playful “Pret-a-Porter” (French for ready to wear), an introverted young woman buys a substance called “smartfabric” from a persuasive salesman, and no longer needs any other clothes. The substance forms itself into various garments in response to the wearer’s desire – and it knows her better than she consciously knows herself. Her visit to a nightclub named Hell could have led to a gruesome ending, but in this story, her new appearance in a new milieu is liberating.

“The Bell House Invitation” is a dizzying story, originally published in an anthology of gender-bending erotic fantasy.* Several house-mates of all genders and sexual orientations form a “pocket collective” based on a shared consciousness, and they collectively interview Sarah, a woman they hope will enhance their group relationship. This story fleshes out the theory that everyone is at least potentially pansexual, and that if we all had access to each other’s consciousness (as every reader can see the world through the eyes of different characters), we could be intimate on levels that once seemed impossible. It’s a noble premise, but this reviewer found the multiple perspectives distracting in a short story. A novel might have given the collective a more spacious “house.”
“Happy Birthday” shows multiple identities over time rather than coexisting in the present. An individual consciousness has explored different eras and environments, and has acquired enormous knowledge as a result.

Two stories in Skin Effect were reprinted from The Mammoth Book of Erotic Romance and Domination, one of editor Maxim Jakubowski’s “mammoth” erotic anthologies. “[Title Forgotten]” is about the general human desire to erase painful memories, and the parallel desire to recover them in order to understand their influence on the present. The other story, “The Subsequent State,” is the most moving story in the collection (in this reviewer’s opinion), and it brilliantly captures both the visceral effects of growing up in a culture of religious intolerance and the relief of escape into a “green” culture which is not damned but salvational.

The nine stories in this collection are bracketed by an introduction by Ernest Hogan, “Dirty Minds Across Space, Time and Beyond,” and the author’s afterword: “It’s NOT the End of the World as We Know It – And I Feel Fine.” M. Christian’s rejection of dystopian endings explains the upbeat tone of most of these stories as well as his belief that the real world is not necessarily doomed. This afterword serves as a better introduction to the stories than the opening piece by another writer. M. Christian explains his optimism:

“Pretty soon the world is not going to split into have-nots and haves but rather the smart and the dumb. Sure, the superrich will buy their way out like they always have but just look at the world right now: you have folks who are repairing, making do, making things last, buying affordable and durable, and actually having the gall to enjoy their simpler lives.” He goes on to say: “Nuclear war and/or biological attack? Pish . . As I told my hysterical friends on September 11th, the terrorists showed anything but brains in their attacks.”

In these stories, human ingenuity combined with the human desire to connect with other humans is shown to have the power to outlast whatever seems to threaten human survival. It’s an exhilarating message.

*Up for Grabs 2: Exploring More Worlds of Gender, edited by Lauren Burka (Circlet Press, 2011).

New At Future Of Sex: Getting to First Base in Second Life - A Virtually Fun Guide to Virtual Sex

The fun at FutureOfSex keeps coming!  My brand new article on (ahem) scoring in Second Life just went live.

Check out this tease:

Getting to First Base in Second Life: A Virtually Fun Guide to Virtual Sex

Tools, tricks, and techniques to having a sexy time in the virtual world.

Despite being created back in the sticks and stones era of (gasp) 2003, Second Life has remained a virtual second home to over one million users.

For many of its fans, Second Life’s allure is all about freedom. With pretty tolerant owners, Linden Research, Inc., and a robust and wildly various modding community, Second Life has become anything for anyone.

Especially in regards to sexuality.

While there are other MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) experiences available that are specifically designed for virtual sex play—such as 3DXChat [NSFW], Red Light Center [NSFW], and Chathouse 3D Roulette [NSFW] (all reviewed here on Future of Sex)—Second Life still remains one of the most preferred domains for digital erotic entertainment.

In addition to the already mentioned, almost unlimited freedom of creation, Second Life’s sex appeal also stems from its affordability—for basic membership, though add-ons and such will cost you—plus having the ability to bounce from adult play to non-adult play with a mouse click.

For first-timers, though, Second Life may appear a bit daunting. It’s vast artificial reality universe is easy to get lost in, and trying to decipher the social mores of avatars, alts, groups, and more can be daunting. So here is a brief intro on a few techniques and digital tools to help the virtually virginal (or at least not that experienced) have a sexy time in Second Life.

Use your imagination

Second Life is all about creativity. It’s a blank slate for anyone to create practically anything. Though blank slate also describes the default Second Life avatar, as when you first arrive you’ll be sans genitalia.

You can always do text or voice sex with someone in Second Life, but as the virtual playground is so wonderfully visual most elect to try to play using their avatars.

Unless you’re seriously into coding, you’ll need to equip yourself with the necessary equipment to have Second Life sex. Xcite! [NSFW] has an entire marketplace for all kinds of erotic Second Life additions, including nose rings for your avatar, bondage gear for your space, and all kinds of toys for virtual sex fun. Oh, and, of course, it offers the much-needed body parts for sex. It’s not the only provider of sexual equipment, though, so if you don’t like what it offers try looking around elsewhere.

Many of its avatar additions are wildly exaggerated—in ways that’ll make your digital head spin. As with life everywhere, a few will be turned off by these crazy genitals and such while others will find you the hottest thing in cyberspace. The good news is that you can change any aspect of your appearance at any time—so have fun experimenting.

Then there’s verification. The great openness of Second Life means that anyone can join, but many will not engage in virtual sex play with someone who may be underage. By verifying your account with a credit card you basically tell Second Life, and all its virtually sex residents, that you are old enough to play.

[MORE]

More Cool b.senory News: Nice Little Interview With Vocativ!

The fun b.sensory stuff just keeps on coming! A few days ago I did a quick interview with Jennings Brown at Vocativ about this great new technology - combining sex tech and erotica - and the piece just went live!

Here's the link - and I'm pasting in the piece itself below:

The Future Of Erotica: E-readers That Sync Up With Your Vibrator
An erotica author explains how he will write literature made for a sex toy 

A particularly highbrow sex toy is on display this week at CES—and, of course, it’s French. 

French startup E.Sensory won a CES Innovation Award for their vibrator designed for bibliophiles. The device, called the Little Bird, will connect to the company’s reading app B.Sensory (forthcoming on iOS and Android) via Bluetooth. With the app, users can access scores of erotica stories, and each one will interface with the vibrator in exciting ways. Readers can activate vibrations on their own by caressing or breathing hard on the tablet or smartphone, or they can touch highlighted words that are especially arousing and trigger a vibration meant specifically for that part of the story. The app will come preloaded with a variety of erotic stories, and the company is working with several authors to write erotica that is specifically written for use with the “vibrating love egg.” 

“Now we have 25 authors in France and two in the United States,” E.Sensory founder and CEO Chistel Le Coq told Vocativ, “In erotica, they want to give sensation to their reader. So this is a new way to do that and make the experience better.” 

For some of the writers, this new technology is already changing how they plan to write future erotica. “One thing I will probably do is add a little more detail,” M. Christian, an award-winning erotica writer whose work will be available in B.Sensory, told Vocativ. “Instead of writing, ‘He kissed her,’ I would say ‘His lips tingled on her nipple’ or something like that, and that would be a perfect key in to a certain type of vibration.” 

Christian, who writes paranormal and sci-fi erotica, along with many other genres, said erotica written for this device would also be structured differently. “The story could have more of a thematic build [focused on] the titillation more than the actual sex act,” Christian said. In erotica, simply reading page after page describing sex acts is usually boring, he said, but this interactive format could allow for longer, more drawn-out erotic interactions to remain exciting. “You could have a tingle when someone winks. A sex scene would be much more protractive—almost musical.” 

For those interested in protractive, musical erotica, the Little Bird is already available for pre-order at the bargain price of $99. The free app, which should be available this month will launch with excerpts from Christian’s sci-fi erotica collection “The Bachelor Machine.”

New At Future Of Sex: Johns Hopkins Plans 60 Penis Transplants for Injured Veterans

Check it out: a new piece I did for the great FutureOfSex just went live.  Here's a teaser - for the rest just click here.

Johns Hopkins Plans 60 Penis Transplants for Injured Veterans

With almost daily technological developments in sex tech, it’s important not to overlook innovations that are not hardware or software—but rather exist in the very intimate world of medicine.

Case in point: doctors Gerald Brandacher, W.P. Andrew Lee, and Richard J. Redett at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore are planning the first-ever penis transplant in the United States. It will be conducted in perhaps only a few months.

The operation will be performed on a wounded Afghanistan war veteran and, if all goes well, the patient should be able to have urinary function, feeling, and even the ability to eventually function sexually. Though doctors caution that total restoration, such as having the ability to father children, is unlikely at this time.

To date, two other attempts at penis transplants have taken place—with mixed results. The first was performed in 2006 in China and, unfortunately, was not a success.

However, another attempt in 2014 by professors Frank Graewe, André van der Merwe, and Rafique Moosa in Tygerberg Hospital, South Africa, did succeed—leading to the current project by Johns Hopkins.

Initially, the focus for the first attempt in the United States as well as plans for future transplants will be wounded soldiers.

Chairman of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Johns Hopkins, Dr. W. P. Andrew Lee, said to The New York Times, “I think one would agree it is as devastating as anything that our wounded warriors suffer, for a young man to come home in his early 20s with the pelvic area completely destroyed.”

[MORE]

Did You See Me At CES?

Well, not me, per se, but rather a bit of my presence.  You see, there's this very cool tech called b.sensory: teaming a vibrator with a special app.  The way it works it that you read erotica and, as you enjoy, the app triggers certain ... actions in the sex toy.

The folks at b.sensory contacted me awhile ago to use a few samples of my work for their new product.  Very cool, eh?

I've even written about the b.sensory for the great folks at FutureOfSex, and my name has come up in a few of the companies promo materials.  

You can read about the b.sensory tech at places like The Next Web, engadget, Digital Trends, and other places.

And here's an except of my FutureOfSex piece on b.sensory:

Words, Eroticism, and Technology: B.Sensory May Very Well Combine Them All

“In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.”
–Nora Ephron

Technologically speaking, writing sits in a very odd place. Sure, the typewriter, then the word processor, and now ebooks have totally changed the entire business of telling stories. But the end result is always the same.

Novel or story, saga or memoir, fiction or non; you pick it up—and read it. However, has anyone really contemplated adding anything more to the actual reading experience?

This is where French company B.Sensory comes in. With its Little Bird sex toy it’s developing an app (Android and iOS) that links ebook erotic stories and sex tech. This pairing aims to enhance the reader’s experience with all kinds of arousing vibrations, buzzes, and more.

The reader, meanwhile, can control when, where, and how much of a vibratory enhancement they receive by interacting with their chosen e-reader. A By shaking stroking… even blowing on the screen, the story they’re reading takes on a whole new—and sexy—dimension that delivered through the Little Bird.

Adding to the fun, the Little bird can be synched with audio books as well, meaning that it will be possible for some truly “hands-off” experiences with the technology.

[MORE]

Karla Tangh's Fun Review Of Bachelor Machine!

Karla Tangh is such a very, very very fun trip: just check out her new review of my science fiction erotica collection, Bachelor Machine!  Thanks so much, Karla!

Here's a tease, for the rest just click over to Karla's site.

Book Review: The Bachelor Machine by M. Christian

Her Tangh-i-ness Does read other things besides Erotica. But since we're on the subject—there's always time for more recreational Smut. Creatives are some of the most highly-sexed beings on the planet; I mean near everything they produce is the result of an orgasm of the Creative Mind.

Take this M. Christian guy, for example. Yeah. Yeah. I started with his short story collection Skin Effect. This guy, he just keeps writing more…more...reasons to moisturize the underthings or try and hide the evidence of stimulation upon the erogenous zone of choice. There's lots of male on female action, female on female, a genuinely happy foursome (two males make out with the females and also each other). For pure male on male, do refer to M.Christian's other short story collection, one being, Dirty Words.

However, for the People of Color in the Reading Audience, be aware this collection does contain Triggers. These are Sistah-shaped ones both golden, black, and brown. I hear ya'll saying just what does she mean? Read and find out. Just remember Her Tangh-i-ness saw that the work went there and got to the end of the book. Just saying. By the way, she kept reading other M. Christian works. Consider what the author has to say about himself: "For me, being a pioneer in this area, I feel like I have to create my own respect, in a way. I'm like a missionary – at first no matter what tribe I visit, I get the hairy eyeball." So it's obviously time to start eyeballing this dude until he creams in his pants or something.

To make it easy for potential readers of this collection, Her Tangh-i-ness will return to the following rating system that came in mighty handy when describing M. Christian's Skin Effect and other works.

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* This means the sexiness might have to grow on you.

WT *Wet* Self-explanatory. No?

H/OA *Hand/Object Assisted* Requires immediate action after the story climax.

FAPP *Find a Partner Pronto* Try this one at home, Folks.

*Spoiler Alert*

Her Tangh-i-ness greatly appreciates pithy plot summaries. However, for those who must have a virgin reading experience, read no further, and eyeball elsewhere.

*Spoiler Alert End*

STATE

WT *Wet* Fiction. M/F Action. She-Machine meets with man. The idea of exciting the man makes the She-machine cum. And when it's over and done with all the She-machine wants to do is sleep? Ok. Can we point to this story as an example of reverse gender post-coital physiology? Maybe the real reason to read this story can be found in the music of this sentence: "Too quick, maybe, too sudden, probably, but he was hanging way down, his breathing was quick and deep, his legs were columns of meat and tension." What does ya'll think?

HACK WORK

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* Fiction. M/F Action. This is the story where Her Tangh-i-ness counted to a thousand before she turned the page to the next story. Yup. This is the one of the Oh-No-He-Didn't-Go-There! stories. As the dear, departed writing instructor, Blake Snyder of Save the Cat fame once told me, Her Tangh-i-ness Ain't in the Target Audience.Those that are—ya'll know who you is when you read it. A female shares her consciousness with her paying fares and finds herself taking a young Black woman for a session with a riding crop.

WINGED MEMORY

TAMTT *Take A Minute to Think* Fiction. M/F Action. Dusk, a desperate young man named without prospects sells off painful sexual memories in order to afford the cyber-whore of his wet dreams. Each time he does this. He keeps losing more and more of his essential self until the only thing left is to turn the tables on the memory merchant to whom he dealt all his unrecoverables.

EULOGY

WT *Wet* Fiction. M/F Action. Jeff and Julie, two survivors of a broken triangle comfort one another rather orally. Find more of those musical sentences here. "Our breaths synchronized, and we steamed together like a pair of heavy engines." This is the second of the mouth-whore stories.

[MORE]