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The Bachelor Machine
M. Christian’s literate, sexy brand of sci-fi is showcased in this collection of stories. The cream of Christian’s previously published works like “Intercore” and “Eulogy” is here, along with several new tales of interstellar erotic adventures.
- GenresEroticaScience Fiction
270 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2003
33 people want to read
About the author
M. Christian
135 books80 followersM.Christian is - among many things - an acknowledged master of erotica with more than 400 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and many, many other anthologies, magazines, and Web sites.
He is the editor of 25 anthologies including the Best S/M Erotica series, The Burning Pen, Guilty Pleasures, The Mammoth Book of Future Cops and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi) and Confessions, Garden of Perverse, and Amazons (with Sage Vivant) as well as many others.
He is the author of the collections Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, The Bachelor Machine, Licks & Promises, Filthy, Love Without Gun Control, Rude Mechanicals, and Coming Together Presents M.Christian, Pornotopia, How To Write And Sell Erotica; and the novels Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Me2, Brushes, Fingers Breadth, and Painted Doll.
He is the editor of 25 anthologies including the Best S/M Erotica series, The Burning Pen, Guilty Pleasures, The Mammoth Book of Future Cops and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowksi) and Confessions, Garden of Perverse, and Amazons (with Sage Vivant) as well as many others.
He is the author of the collections Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, The Bachelor Machine, Licks & Promises, Filthy, Love Without Gun Control, Rude Mechanicals, and Coming Together Presents M.Christian, Pornotopia, How To Write And Sell Erotica; and the novels Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Me2, Brushes, Fingers Breadth, and Painted Doll.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 14, 2011
Reading The Bachelor Machine is like watching the literary equivalent of a colossal train wreck, except it’s far more erotic and enjoyable . . . even if it does leave you burdened with the same feelings of voyeuristic guilt after the carnage clears.
Most erotic science fiction imagines a civilization on the rise, one where the latest gadgets and technologies are things of wonder and awe. The future is usually bright and shiny, full of sparkling chrome and unblemished porcelain, and surrounded by the blinking lights and electric hum of technological perfection. With The Bachelor Machine, M. Christian looks past that technological honeymoon, imagining instead a civilization on the decline. In his future, the gadgets are tarnished and broken, exposing the ugly legacy of humanity’s twisted desires through their own malfunctioning machinations.
Yet, for all that, they are truly incredible toys to behold . . . the kind of gadgets that make you wonder just how much of yourself you’d be willing to sacrifice for a taste of the temporary pleasures they can provide.
Having said all that, the experience of reading The Bachelor Machine is not just one of technological wonder or erotic arousal. It’s also one of confusion and uncertainty, of equal measures dread and desire. These are stories that lead you on, draw you in, and take rude liberties with your expectations. Yes, reading them is like watching an erotic train wreck, but it’s more than that – it’s like enjoying the impending wreckage from inside a luxury sedan that’s stuck on the tracks . . . and being far too enthralled to abandon your seat.
The Bachelor Machine simply IS science fiction erotica. Take away the elements of either genre, or isolate one at the expense of the other, and you’re left with a nonsensical string of words. These are stories that only work because of the fusion between human sexuality and technological assistance that – like the best of M. Christian’s gadgets – truly are more than the sum of their parts.
It’s not the most accessible collection out there, but that’s as it should be. The stories here challenge the mind even as they arouse the body, and then twist that around and challenge the body as they arouse the mind. You need to settle in and immerse yourself in the worlds being created here. So long as you don’t mind getting a little rust, grease, and blood all over you, it’s a ride worth taking . . . whether you’re on the train, or in the luxury sedan stuck on the tracks.
Most erotic science fiction imagines a civilization on the rise, one where the latest gadgets and technologies are things of wonder and awe. The future is usually bright and shiny, full of sparkling chrome and unblemished porcelain, and surrounded by the blinking lights and electric hum of technological perfection. With The Bachelor Machine, M. Christian looks past that technological honeymoon, imagining instead a civilization on the decline. In his future, the gadgets are tarnished and broken, exposing the ugly legacy of humanity’s twisted desires through their own malfunctioning machinations.
Yet, for all that, they are truly incredible toys to behold . . . the kind of gadgets that make you wonder just how much of yourself you’d be willing to sacrifice for a taste of the temporary pleasures they can provide.
Having said all that, the experience of reading The Bachelor Machine is not just one of technological wonder or erotic arousal. It’s also one of confusion and uncertainty, of equal measures dread and desire. These are stories that lead you on, draw you in, and take rude liberties with your expectations. Yes, reading them is like watching an erotic train wreck, but it’s more than that – it’s like enjoying the impending wreckage from inside a luxury sedan that’s stuck on the tracks . . . and being far too enthralled to abandon your seat.
The Bachelor Machine simply IS science fiction erotica. Take away the elements of either genre, or isolate one at the expense of the other, and you’re left with a nonsensical string of words. These are stories that only work because of the fusion between human sexuality and technological assistance that – like the best of M. Christian’s gadgets – truly are more than the sum of their parts.
It’s not the most accessible collection out there, but that’s as it should be. The stories here challenge the mind even as they arouse the body, and then twist that around and challenge the body as they arouse the mind. You need to settle in and immerse yourself in the worlds being created here. So long as you don’t mind getting a little rust, grease, and blood all over you, it’s a ride worth taking . . . whether you’re on the train, or in the luxury sedan stuck on the tracks.
March 10, 2011
The nineteen stories in this collection of sci-fi erotica by M. Christian are paradoxical: they are set in a future world which is high-tech but shabby, in overcrowded cities where everyone seems to live in claustrophobic isolation. Some of the characters in these stories seem childishly in love with flashy gadgets, but on closer inspection, the technology looks like an extension of already-existing human physical and emotional capabilities. The machines never actually enslave the humans (as in the “Matrix” movies, for instance), but humans and machines are intimately connected.
In “The New Motor,” the one story which is set in the past, the roots of twenty-first century technology are shown to go back to 1854. An eccentric prophet tells hushed crowds about “The Physical Savior of the Race, the New Messiah . . the New Motor” which was apparently described to him in a dream by spirit messengers. The motor eventually fascinates an innocent young woman, Faith, whose name suggests nineteenth-century optimism about mechanical “progress.”
In the stories set in future time, much has changed besides technology. Prostitution plays a major role in several stories, which is not surprising. Sex for hire looks like a logical replacement for the defunct social systems which used to provide some degree of sexual and emotional satisfaction: marriage, the extended family, a circle of friends, an affair. The first story deals with a kittenish sex worker who poses as a specially-programmed robot, a Mitsui Automaton. The title story (last in the collection) deals with a strangely human sex robot who continues to serve single men despite her “misfiring and stuttering movements” because giving them pleasure is her reason for being.
Several of these stories feature a “taxi service” which enables the customer to plug directly into the consciousness of the prostitute, or service-provider, for a limited time.
These stories raise questions about intimacy: how much is too much? How much is an immoral violation of necessary boundaries? The pleasure of the exchange is shown to be mutual, at least in some cases. In “Switch,” a sex worker thinks aloud:
“. . . it isn’t my wishes, my dreams about them, the clients – but a fact, hard and true, that pushes me harder, faster, upward toward the gleaming peak of a shattering come. . . No fantasy can compete with that fact. No matter who I might be. That’s what pushes me over the edge, makes me come and scream with wonderful release: no matter who I am, I am theirs.”
In “Hackwork,” another “taxi” tells the poignant story of an uncanny SM encounter involving a paying Dom, who directs the “taxi” to pick up a crop, and the willing young woman who is also picked up in a bar and taken to her own apartment. In the aftermath, when she begs the narrator to call her again, the “taxi” knows that the message is not really meant for him/her, the body that served someone else’s will.
Several of these stories deliberately mislead the reader about who is the whore and who is the john or the jane; ultimately, the roles seem interchangeable. In “Fully Accessorized, Baby,” a woman with a “milk-fed body, a pampered machine engineered and scalpeled to hit the requirements of a culture and a type” shows up on schedule to meet Cox, a harder, leaner woman. The visitor’s right arm is revealed to be “fine teak . . . set with matte-black joints and cables with undulating polymer cords.” The arm is a sex organ, and it is what Cox ordered. After both women are “done,” the third-person narrator comments: “When and if they compared notes (maybe) they’d realize (maybe) that they’d both paid, they’d both been submissive client to the dominant client.”
The marriage of human biology and technological enhancement extends (so to speak) to more conventional sex organs: dildos such as the Long Thrust, a permanent replacement for an amputated cock, and connectable cables in women’s cunts. To say that much of the sex in these stories is also queer in other ways (male-male, female-female, interracial, intergenerational) is an understatement.
Although the cultural setting in most of these stories is bleak, the plots are varied and the characters memorable. “Bluebelle” and “Heartbreaker” follow future cops tracking dealers of illegal substances. “Butterflie$” describes the stunning seduction of a lonely woman, an outlaw programmer, by a swarm of virtual butterflies:
“Like a great 256 color wave the swarm . . swallowed her. It was like falling, splashing, into an ocean of small, brilliantly beautiful colors and the feel of silk and bristle-brushes. She was lifted and carried into a zero-G oasis of a thousand silken wings, a million miniature hands, a billion tiny cocks.”
Ultimately, the woman is “taken” financially as well as sexually: the butterfly trip is an expensive joy-ride.
This collection is for technophiles but not for romantics. Fans of M. Christian won’t be disappointed, but those who like true love and happy endings will have to look elsewhere.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
In “The New Motor,” the one story which is set in the past, the roots of twenty-first century technology are shown to go back to 1854. An eccentric prophet tells hushed crowds about “The Physical Savior of the Race, the New Messiah . . the New Motor” which was apparently described to him in a dream by spirit messengers. The motor eventually fascinates an innocent young woman, Faith, whose name suggests nineteenth-century optimism about mechanical “progress.”
In the stories set in future time, much has changed besides technology. Prostitution plays a major role in several stories, which is not surprising. Sex for hire looks like a logical replacement for the defunct social systems which used to provide some degree of sexual and emotional satisfaction: marriage, the extended family, a circle of friends, an affair. The first story deals with a kittenish sex worker who poses as a specially-programmed robot, a Mitsui Automaton. The title story (last in the collection) deals with a strangely human sex robot who continues to serve single men despite her “misfiring and stuttering movements” because giving them pleasure is her reason for being.
Several of these stories feature a “taxi service” which enables the customer to plug directly into the consciousness of the prostitute, or service-provider, for a limited time.
These stories raise questions about intimacy: how much is too much? How much is an immoral violation of necessary boundaries? The pleasure of the exchange is shown to be mutual, at least in some cases. In “Switch,” a sex worker thinks aloud:
“. . . it isn’t my wishes, my dreams about them, the clients – but a fact, hard and true, that pushes me harder, faster, upward toward the gleaming peak of a shattering come. . . No fantasy can compete with that fact. No matter who I might be. That’s what pushes me over the edge, makes me come and scream with wonderful release: no matter who I am, I am theirs.”
In “Hackwork,” another “taxi” tells the poignant story of an uncanny SM encounter involving a paying Dom, who directs the “taxi” to pick up a crop, and the willing young woman who is also picked up in a bar and taken to her own apartment. In the aftermath, when she begs the narrator to call her again, the “taxi” knows that the message is not really meant for him/her, the body that served someone else’s will.
Several of these stories deliberately mislead the reader about who is the whore and who is the john or the jane; ultimately, the roles seem interchangeable. In “Fully Accessorized, Baby,” a woman with a “milk-fed body, a pampered machine engineered and scalpeled to hit the requirements of a culture and a type” shows up on schedule to meet Cox, a harder, leaner woman. The visitor’s right arm is revealed to be “fine teak . . . set with matte-black joints and cables with undulating polymer cords.” The arm is a sex organ, and it is what Cox ordered. After both women are “done,” the third-person narrator comments: “When and if they compared notes (maybe) they’d realize (maybe) that they’d both paid, they’d both been submissive client to the dominant client.”
The marriage of human biology and technological enhancement extends (so to speak) to more conventional sex organs: dildos such as the Long Thrust, a permanent replacement for an amputated cock, and connectable cables in women’s cunts. To say that much of the sex in these stories is also queer in other ways (male-male, female-female, interracial, intergenerational) is an understatement.
Although the cultural setting in most of these stories is bleak, the plots are varied and the characters memorable. “Bluebelle” and “Heartbreaker” follow future cops tracking dealers of illegal substances. “Butterflie$” describes the stunning seduction of a lonely woman, an outlaw programmer, by a swarm of virtual butterflies:
“Like a great 256 color wave the swarm . . swallowed her. It was like falling, splashing, into an ocean of small, brilliantly beautiful colors and the feel of silk and bristle-brushes. She was lifted and carried into a zero-G oasis of a thousand silken wings, a million miniature hands, a billion tiny cocks.”
Ultimately, the woman is “taken” financially as well as sexually: the butterfly trip is an expensive joy-ride.
This collection is for technophiles but not for romantics. Fans of M. Christian won’t be disappointed, but those who like true love and happy endings will have to look elsewhere.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
September 30, 2019
This book is true M. Christian. His words are always hard hitting straight down the middle to the point. There is no wasted phrases but it is not minimal either.
The Bachelor Machine is extremely well written, hard hitting apocalyptic view of sex and the world after a great war. But this isn't a read, it's a ride, a ride into a hallucinatory sex driven science fiction collection. There are 19 short stories in this collection and they will leave you breathless, unnerved, and maybe wondering.
From first to last, the reader can not escape the words. I found myself thrown in feet first and expected to survive the horrors of sex without feelings, of niceties stripped away leaving only the extreme of hard, deliberate punches to awaken long dead senses. The Bachelor Machine is a powerful work, I ached inside after reading these short stories. The strength of survival, or the fight to remember, or cast out memories—it was all too powerful for me. I felt hollowed and emptied, drained as if my very marrow had been attacked. These are stories not for easy entertainment, connoisseurs of the genre may enjoy them, but others will need to come inside, drop pretense, and allow their souls to be stripped bare.
Once again my hat is off to M. Christian, may he write forever.
The Bachelor Machine is extremely well written, hard hitting apocalyptic view of sex and the world after a great war. But this isn't a read, it's a ride, a ride into a hallucinatory sex driven science fiction collection. There are 19 short stories in this collection and they will leave you breathless, unnerved, and maybe wondering.
From first to last, the reader can not escape the words. I found myself thrown in feet first and expected to survive the horrors of sex without feelings, of niceties stripped away leaving only the extreme of hard, deliberate punches to awaken long dead senses. The Bachelor Machine is a powerful work, I ached inside after reading these short stories. The strength of survival, or the fight to remember, or cast out memories—it was all too powerful for me. I felt hollowed and emptied, drained as if my very marrow had been attacked. These are stories not for easy entertainment, connoisseurs of the genre may enjoy them, but others will need to come inside, drop pretense, and allow their souls to be stripped bare.
Once again my hat is off to M. Christian, may he write forever.
October 7, 2014
Sex is all in the mind. This is what a medtech tells the young soldier whose lower half has been blasted away in "Skin-Effect", one of the nineteen stories in M.Christian's new collection of erotic science fiction, THE BACHELOR MACHINE. In the worlds of these tales, where bodies are augmented, re-engineered or just plain replaced, and mental experience includes fully immersive virtual realities and globally-networked vicarious orgies, the definition of "mind" and "body" becomes as slippery as arousal itself.
True to his reputation, M. Christian delivers an abundance of sweet, steamy, well-lubricated sex in these stories, plenty of succulent pussies, achingly hard cocks and explosive orgasms. In nearly every case, though, the true stimulus is not physical but rather an idea, a fantasy or a situation. In "State", for instance, a wonderfully ironic reversal of cyberpunk conventions, the protagonist, Fields, is turned on by the challenge of impersonating a sex robot: a blue-skinned, manga-eyed, perfectly proportioned Mitsui Class B Automaton. When a client asks for the house "specialty", for Field's it is not just a trick. It's a performance; it's Art. Christian skillfully leads the reader to wonder whether Fields would enjoy sex as a human nearly as much.
In the stunning "Everything but the Smell of Lilies", the author dares to speculate on the arousing aspects of necrophiliac fantasy -- from the perspective of the corpse. The narrator of "Technophile" gets off imagining penetration by his lover's magnificently engineering artificial penis -- which in reality is non-functional due to low batteries. "Hackwork" is an original treatment of a BDSM threesome where the dom exercises his will over the submissive via telepresence, using the body and senses of a confused but vicariously aroused human "taxi" as an intermediary. In "Bluebelle", a futuristic cop melds with his smart, death-dealing aerial assault ship, imagining her as a big-bosomed blonde bombshell who rewards hims sexually for successful arrests. And the slyly playful "Butterflies$" offers a vivid account of virtual ravishment by a horde of Tinkerbelle's nasty cousins, from which the narrator awakens with joints aching, clit deliciously sore, and bank account empty.
The stories in THE BACHELOR MACHINE are emotionally ambiguous, like the future itself. Relatively few offer an unqualified happy ending. The two stories "Winged Memory" and "Eulogy" struck me as particularly poignant. In the former, a young drifter sells his memories, one by one, in order to spend time with the whore he loves. "Eulogy" chronicles the physical and emotional complexities of a romantic triangle after one of its members has died. M. Christian's self-consciously ironic voice rings especially clearly in this story:
"Julie was never a big girl. She had this ... well, narrow presence. Lithe, like a sudden whisper in the middle of a conversation. There, I couldn't have been that upset. 'Sudden whisper in the middle of a conversation', that was more like the real Jeff Hook. Worldnet journalist, unsuccessful on-line novelist, and dweller in a scummy part of town."
Christian has a fondness for extended descriptions that spill out onto the page, phrase after phrase, studded with technojargon: microfilaments and nanotech receptors, biolights and polyplastics. This technique works better in some cases than in others. "The Bachelor Machine", the final tale in the collection, is one of his notable successes. His images of a worn-out, discarded sex robot, smelling of "mildew and fried circuits", her movements hesitant and out-of-synch due to misfiring motors and flakey circuits, rings heartbreakingly true, evoking both horror and pity. Pity, for a machine!
Then every now and then, the author will come out with a brief image that is almost a poem:
"It is drizzling, like static." (Everything but the Smell of Lilies)
My one complaint about THE BACHELOR MACHINE is that too many of the stories are set in the basically the same dystopic cyperpunk future: a world of ravaged cityscapes and rusting factories, poisoned air and capsule apartments, where everyone is desperate and everything is for sale, where advanced technology (usually from Japan, often illicit) can augment or erase your humanity. This is by now familiar territory, explored by William Gibson, Pat Cadigan and many others. A possible future, yes, but surely not the only future.
Perhaps this is M.Christian's personal vision. In THE BACHELOR MACHINE, though, it is a bit overwhelming. For that reason, I found the story "Sight", which focuses on the aesthetics of an alien species, very refreshing. "Sight" provides a different and more positive futurescape. (I also enjoyed its lustily romantic resolution.)
M. Christian is audacious. He is not afraid to speculate (what _would_ it be like for two cyborgs to fuck?) or to push boundaries (is it child pornography if the subject is a mature woman with a synthetic body, engineered to look like a prepubescent girl?). His stories suggest that the sex drive is universal, independent of gender, race, species, or even the existence of a body. Where there is intelligence, there is the potential for arousal. Or, to quote the (patently female) cyborg in "Skin-Effect":
"Remember now... It's not the socket -- it's the _software_."
True to his reputation, M. Christian delivers an abundance of sweet, steamy, well-lubricated sex in these stories, plenty of succulent pussies, achingly hard cocks and explosive orgasms. In nearly every case, though, the true stimulus is not physical but rather an idea, a fantasy or a situation. In "State", for instance, a wonderfully ironic reversal of cyberpunk conventions, the protagonist, Fields, is turned on by the challenge of impersonating a sex robot: a blue-skinned, manga-eyed, perfectly proportioned Mitsui Class B Automaton. When a client asks for the house "specialty", for Field's it is not just a trick. It's a performance; it's Art. Christian skillfully leads the reader to wonder whether Fields would enjoy sex as a human nearly as much.
In the stunning "Everything but the Smell of Lilies", the author dares to speculate on the arousing aspects of necrophiliac fantasy -- from the perspective of the corpse. The narrator of "Technophile" gets off imagining penetration by his lover's magnificently engineering artificial penis -- which in reality is non-functional due to low batteries. "Hackwork" is an original treatment of a BDSM threesome where the dom exercises his will over the submissive via telepresence, using the body and senses of a confused but vicariously aroused human "taxi" as an intermediary. In "Bluebelle", a futuristic cop melds with his smart, death-dealing aerial assault ship, imagining her as a big-bosomed blonde bombshell who rewards hims sexually for successful arrests. And the slyly playful "Butterflies$" offers a vivid account of virtual ravishment by a horde of Tinkerbelle's nasty cousins, from which the narrator awakens with joints aching, clit deliciously sore, and bank account empty.
The stories in THE BACHELOR MACHINE are emotionally ambiguous, like the future itself. Relatively few offer an unqualified happy ending. The two stories "Winged Memory" and "Eulogy" struck me as particularly poignant. In the former, a young drifter sells his memories, one by one, in order to spend time with the whore he loves. "Eulogy" chronicles the physical and emotional complexities of a romantic triangle after one of its members has died. M. Christian's self-consciously ironic voice rings especially clearly in this story:
"Julie was never a big girl. She had this ... well, narrow presence. Lithe, like a sudden whisper in the middle of a conversation. There, I couldn't have been that upset. 'Sudden whisper in the middle of a conversation', that was more like the real Jeff Hook. Worldnet journalist, unsuccessful on-line novelist, and dweller in a scummy part of town."
Christian has a fondness for extended descriptions that spill out onto the page, phrase after phrase, studded with technojargon: microfilaments and nanotech receptors, biolights and polyplastics. This technique works better in some cases than in others. "The Bachelor Machine", the final tale in the collection, is one of his notable successes. His images of a worn-out, discarded sex robot, smelling of "mildew and fried circuits", her movements hesitant and out-of-synch due to misfiring motors and flakey circuits, rings heartbreakingly true, evoking both horror and pity. Pity, for a machine!
Then every now and then, the author will come out with a brief image that is almost a poem:
"It is drizzling, like static." (Everything but the Smell of Lilies)
My one complaint about THE BACHELOR MACHINE is that too many of the stories are set in the basically the same dystopic cyperpunk future: a world of ravaged cityscapes and rusting factories, poisoned air and capsule apartments, where everyone is desperate and everything is for sale, where advanced technology (usually from Japan, often illicit) can augment or erase your humanity. This is by now familiar territory, explored by William Gibson, Pat Cadigan and many others. A possible future, yes, but surely not the only future.
Perhaps this is M.Christian's personal vision. In THE BACHELOR MACHINE, though, it is a bit overwhelming. For that reason, I found the story "Sight", which focuses on the aesthetics of an alien species, very refreshing. "Sight" provides a different and more positive futurescape. (I also enjoyed its lustily romantic resolution.)
M. Christian is audacious. He is not afraid to speculate (what _would_ it be like for two cyborgs to fuck?) or to push boundaries (is it child pornography if the subject is a mature woman with a synthetic body, engineered to look like a prepubescent girl?). His stories suggest that the sex drive is universal, independent of gender, race, species, or even the existence of a body. Where there is intelligence, there is the potential for arousal. Or, to quote the (patently female) cyborg in "Skin-Effect":
"Remember now... It's not the socket -- it's the _software_."
November 29, 2017
There are some good stories in here, and some that didn't do much for me. Christian is very adept at blending sci-fi and erotica, and this was the first sci-fi erotica anthology I've read. The title story is good, as are others about sex with robots, computers, weird creatures, and other things that blend circuitry and flesh and bone.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews