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No Mercy: Short Stories
This long-awaited collection of short fiction by world-renowned leatherdyke author and activist Pat Califia combines pornography, science fiction, romance, fantasy, fairy tale, and horror into a potent cocktail for queer grown-ups who have been very, very bad and aren't one bit sorry.
When Califia opens the doors to his imagination, there is no predicting what might spill out: A submissive female android turns the tables on her abusive master in the very funny and nasty "Dolly", Little Red Riding Hood gets a millennial makeover and two 1950s teens discover the front seat of the car is a lot more fun than Your Hit Parade.
Continuing the boundary smashing tradition of Macho Sluts and Melting Point, No Mercy is leather-flavored fiction without a safeword -- smart, challenging, intellectual, funny, transgressive, and hotter than the gates of hell. For her legions of fans who have been panting for more, Pat Califia is back with a vengeance!
When Califia opens the doors to his imagination, there is no predicting what might spill out: A submissive female android turns the tables on her abusive master in the very funny and nasty "Dolly", Little Red Riding Hood gets a millennial makeover and two 1950s teens discover the front seat of the car is a lot more fun than Your Hit Parade.
Continuing the boundary smashing tradition of Macho Sluts and Melting Point, No Mercy is leather-flavored fiction without a safeword -- smart, challenging, intellectual, funny, transgressive, and hotter than the gates of hell. For her legions of fans who have been panting for more, Pat Califia is back with a vengeance!
272 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2000
1 person is currently reading
149 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Califia
66 books161 followersPatrick Califia, who formerly wrote under the names Pat Califia and Patrick Califia-Rice, is a writer of nonfiction (on men, gender, transgender identity, and sexuality) and fiction (erotica, poetry, and short stories).
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 10, 2019
According to the publisher's breathless blurb, this collection of stories is "fiction without a safeword—smart, transgressive, too exciting to be kind." Like the author's previous collections, Macho Sluts: Erotic Fiction and Melting Point: A Collection of Erotic Short Stories, these stories of Dominant/submissive sexuality explore the author's favorite themes in fresh ways. Califia-Rice, who has undergone a gender change from female to male, is a veteran producer of erotic writing which is both profoundly "queer" and relevant to a wide readership. Like the author himself, the voice of the narrator in most of these stories conveys a kind of worldly-wise androgynous glamour based on layers of paradox.
The collection begins and ends with a pair of matched stories, like bookends: Mercy and No Mercy. The titles invite the reader to consider the significance of compassion in the context of a consensual inequality of power: is it more merciful for the domme to withdraw when the submissive panics, or to give her what she really wants, and for which she is willing to confront her own fears? In a deceptively clear style, both stories explore the complexity of fear and desire in a social context of subversive gender difference (Dominant femme and submissive butch) in a lesbian relationship which is influenced by differences of social class.
The first title story begins with a compelling scene from a story-within-a-story about the deposed Marie Antoinette, last queen of France, as an object of lust for a female peasant guard. This historical piece, which resonates with the tensions of the relationship in which it is written, dramatizes the effects of life on art and the woman writer's need for a "room of one's own." Although the reader is not shown how the relationship between the queen and her guard develops in the fictional aftermath of revolution, the misunderstood writer makes progress: the ugly duckling finds her community, and thereby begins to know herself as a swan.
The writing process is discussed further in the author's Afterword:
If realistic fiction usually is, as some critics have claimed, a study of the individual interacting with the collective, these stories qualify as realism despite their obvious fantasy elements. All the characters live in well-developed social milieu, which range from present-day America to the medieval European setting of Blood and Silver (a feminist revision of Red Riding Hood) to the slave society on the planet Yggdrasil (first described in Califia-Rice's famous story, The Bounty Hunter) to the future world of Skinned Alive, in which the ultimate act of communion is voluntary transmission (and acceptance) of a fatal disease.
Califia-Rice's stories work as "one-handed reading," and are usually promoted as such. In some sense, however, they are never simply masturbatory, since the sexual impulse to own or be owned constantly motivates the characters to try to break down each other's essential isolation, no matter how hard this proves to be. In the words of one experienced butch: "No one ever has a girl. . . You just get to borrow them for awhile."
The interactive nature of S/M eroticism seems to be demonstrated by the story written by Califia and his partner, Matt Rice. The cop in The Cop and His Choirboy is a particularly bitter and ruthless predator, but the submissive response of the homeless young hustler he captures has the power to save the sinner from himself. This story of suffering and redemption is possibly the most moving in the book, especially since it appears to be the result of a seamless collaboration.
Several of the stories in this collection can be read as social satire, or comedies of manners. In Incense for the Queen of Heaven, two "faggot" dykes discover their attraction to each other after each has been dismissed from the service of a dominant lady whose "fashion sense had stopped at the year 1914, along with the heart of Archduke Franz Ferdinand." The lady, an over-the-top high femme, tries to educate the "butch cadets" who serve her by teaching them obscure words which then become part of their stream of consciousness. Her latest swain observes the sign of a "faux English tavern" which has become a dyke bar, and thinks: "The pearl in the peacock's tail had a nacreous shimmer, and its prurient fan had a chatoyent luster."
Passages such as this teeter on the edge of self-parody and self-contradiction. While the author clearly favors the working-class heroes in his fictional worlds, his own viewpoint has become more ambiguous in the years since he responded sarcastically to the "intellectuals" who panned his 1980 lesbian sex manual, Sapphistry: The Book of Lesbian Sexuality. Since then, the author's fiction has consistently featured underdogs who outwit the "Thought Police" of the dominant class, but who often use words as their weapons, a strategy which might be considered intellectual. The author's academic credentials (Master's degree in Psychology) combined with a long list of published work, including well-researched non-fiction, raise further questions about the social conflict in his fictional worlds: who, exactly, are the Good Guys in a class-divided society? And who is the enemy? Will the real Slim Shady stand up?
The nacreous shimmer of the author's trademark wit decorates a variety of tales presented as sexual display. Beneath the flash, however, there are messages aimed at the heart and the intellect as well as the libido. There is kindness in these stories as well as cruelty, and tragedy as well as comedy. It seems unlikely that the shapeshifting author has exhausted his Muse yet.
The collection begins and ends with a pair of matched stories, like bookends: Mercy and No Mercy. The titles invite the reader to consider the significance of compassion in the context of a consensual inequality of power: is it more merciful for the domme to withdraw when the submissive panics, or to give her what she really wants, and for which she is willing to confront her own fears? In a deceptively clear style, both stories explore the complexity of fear and desire in a social context of subversive gender difference (Dominant femme and submissive butch) in a lesbian relationship which is influenced by differences of social class.
The first title story begins with a compelling scene from a story-within-a-story about the deposed Marie Antoinette, last queen of France, as an object of lust for a female peasant guard. This historical piece, which resonates with the tensions of the relationship in which it is written, dramatizes the effects of life on art and the woman writer's need for a "room of one's own." Although the reader is not shown how the relationship between the queen and her guard develops in the fictional aftermath of revolution, the misunderstood writer makes progress: the ugly duckling finds her community, and thereby begins to know herself as a swan.
The writing process is discussed further in the author's Afterword:
Each time I send in the manuscript of a book of sexually explicit fiction, I think to myself, That's the last one. I don't have any more to say in this genre. Yet here I am ... assembling another collection of work infused with the eroticism of S/M.The bottomless well of inspiration seems somewhat miraculous even to the author, who credits it with keeping his life "verdant" despite a chronic illness, fibromyalgia, and a resulting loss of status in the S/M community he helped to form. Written expression, like sexual energy, is shown to be even more essential for individual survival than the presence of a community which can be fickle.
If realistic fiction usually is, as some critics have claimed, a study of the individual interacting with the collective, these stories qualify as realism despite their obvious fantasy elements. All the characters live in well-developed social milieu, which range from present-day America to the medieval European setting of Blood and Silver (a feminist revision of Red Riding Hood) to the slave society on the planet Yggdrasil (first described in Califia-Rice's famous story, The Bounty Hunter) to the future world of Skinned Alive, in which the ultimate act of communion is voluntary transmission (and acceptance) of a fatal disease.
Califia-Rice's stories work as "one-handed reading," and are usually promoted as such. In some sense, however, they are never simply masturbatory, since the sexual impulse to own or be owned constantly motivates the characters to try to break down each other's essential isolation, no matter how hard this proves to be. In the words of one experienced butch: "No one ever has a girl. . . You just get to borrow them for awhile."
The interactive nature of S/M eroticism seems to be demonstrated by the story written by Califia and his partner, Matt Rice. The cop in The Cop and His Choirboy is a particularly bitter and ruthless predator, but the submissive response of the homeless young hustler he captures has the power to save the sinner from himself. This story of suffering and redemption is possibly the most moving in the book, especially since it appears to be the result of a seamless collaboration.
Several of the stories in this collection can be read as social satire, or comedies of manners. In Incense for the Queen of Heaven, two "faggot" dykes discover their attraction to each other after each has been dismissed from the service of a dominant lady whose "fashion sense had stopped at the year 1914, along with the heart of Archduke Franz Ferdinand." The lady, an over-the-top high femme, tries to educate the "butch cadets" who serve her by teaching them obscure words which then become part of their stream of consciousness. Her latest swain observes the sign of a "faux English tavern" which has become a dyke bar, and thinks: "The pearl in the peacock's tail had a nacreous shimmer, and its prurient fan had a chatoyent luster."
Passages such as this teeter on the edge of self-parody and self-contradiction. While the author clearly favors the working-class heroes in his fictional worlds, his own viewpoint has become more ambiguous in the years since he responded sarcastically to the "intellectuals" who panned his 1980 lesbian sex manual, Sapphistry: The Book of Lesbian Sexuality. Since then, the author's fiction has consistently featured underdogs who outwit the "Thought Police" of the dominant class, but who often use words as their weapons, a strategy which might be considered intellectual. The author's academic credentials (Master's degree in Psychology) combined with a long list of published work, including well-researched non-fiction, raise further questions about the social conflict in his fictional worlds: who, exactly, are the Good Guys in a class-divided society? And who is the enemy? Will the real Slim Shady stand up?
The nacreous shimmer of the author's trademark wit decorates a variety of tales presented as sexual display. Beneath the flash, however, there are messages aimed at the heart and the intellect as well as the libido. There is kindness in these stories as well as cruelty, and tragedy as well as comedy. It seems unlikely that the shapeshifting author has exhausted his Muse yet.
September 4, 2012
Hanne Blank handed me this book along with Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters when I was 18 and all I could think when I saw the cover was, "What?" Then I thought, "This is hot as hell," and "Wow, I'm that obvious?" This was a formative title for me and I've wanted to read it again later in life to see how I felt about it, but haven't been able to secure a second copy. I will probably always like it, though. :)
August 30, 2007
I can't really separate the califia erotica books in my mind, since I got them all at once and read them interchangeably.
Overall, as long as s/he is not writing weird science fiction porn, I am in to it. Some of the stories contain some pretty graphic violence, so you might want to look out for that. In general though...hott.
Overall, as long as s/he is not writing weird science fiction porn, I am in to it. Some of the stories contain some pretty graphic violence, so you might want to look out for that. In general though...hott.
June 20, 2007
I used to be really into the sex-centered short stories of Pat Callifa, but I don't know if I am so much any more. They're a bit too hardcore SM for me these days.
Pat sure can write.
Warning: This book contains possibly triggering material.
Pat sure can write.
Warning: This book contains possibly triggering material.
November 14, 2008
not quite as good as 'macho sluts', but another great work of kinky queer erotic fiction nonetheless.
Read
June 6, 2025i just have to be done with this book. I read most of it, enough to mark it as read. I skipped the sci-fi bits and most enjoyed the story about triangulation.
June 9, 2025
Gender fuck, queer as fuck, fuck gender but mostly hot, steaming hot
January 2, 2008
Again, not as great as Doc and Fluff, but still liked it!
September 27, 2010
not my favorite dark hunter book but still awsome i really love the peltiers and hope to learn more of their stories
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews