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Season of the Witch
She was the first woman he had ever been! An SF transgender erotic classic! Chosen "One of the "Thirty Most Important Science Fiction Novels of the 1960s," Season of the Witch tells the story of Andre, a man who murders a woman in a post-apocalyptic future.
A dangerously low population has resulted in an end to capital punishment. Instead of execution, Andre has his brain transplanted into his victim's body, while his own body is given to an aging, brilliant scientist. Andre’s search for his original male body takes him through a series of physically and spiritually disorienting sexual encounters to an unexpected denouement during an Agape ceremony in the temple of a strange, hedonistic cult.
No wonder Foundation called the book, "A powerful tale of biological transformation and sexual identity." Or, that 20th Century Science Fiction Writers hailed it book as, "A special combination of science fiction and erotic detail and rhetoric. The quality of the novel artistically justifies this radical strategy." In 1995 the book was filmed as Synapse (U.K. as Memory Run), introducing its unique mix of transgender and science fiction to a whole new audience.
A dangerously low population has resulted in an end to capital punishment. Instead of execution, Andre has his brain transplanted into his victim's body, while his own body is given to an aging, brilliant scientist. Andre’s search for his original male body takes him through a series of physically and spiritually disorienting sexual encounters to an unexpected denouement during an Agape ceremony in the temple of a strange, hedonistic cult.
No wonder Foundation called the book, "A powerful tale of biological transformation and sexual identity." Or, that 20th Century Science Fiction Writers hailed it book as, "A special combination of science fiction and erotic detail and rhetoric. The quality of the novel artistically justifies this radical strategy." In 1995 the book was filmed as Synapse (U.K. as Memory Run), introducing its unique mix of transgender and science fiction to a whole new audience.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
220 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 23, 2024
This book promised a good story in the beginning. Futuristic world with a government capable of putting one's mind into another's body. Then the rest of the story is some crazy sex scene after sex scene after sex scene (not in a makes you hot kind of way but more like shut up with all the useless nonsense words). As a woman reading this story you can tell the author has no friggin clue how a woman works or feels and it really fell short. I really wanted to like this one but instead couldn't wait to finish it.
November 12, 2014
I think I like the idea of this book more than the book.
The basic plot is this: a man rape and murders a woman in a far future when the population has been so reduced by war and plague that the death penalty is taboo. The judge rules that the perpetrator's victim will be given to science: his mind will be placed into the body of the woman he murdered.
Sound interesting enough, right? The social and legal situation don't make that much sense: in such a future one might imagine that murdering someone would be especially heinous and so the death penalty used. And if the technique to put one's consciousness into another body, why isn't it used more often, rather than just as a freakish judgment of a court? Still, there could be some interesting exploration of gender issues.
But that never really comes through, at least as I read the book. And that's because the story is clearly the working out of the author's personal issues. Jean Marie Stine was born Henry Eugene Stine, and this book was written while he was still wrestling with his sexual identity: which is another way I like the idea of the book, not as a novel but as a marker in Stine's life story, a valuable document that way. Just not a good story.
The exploits are told, almost entirely, through a series of vividly described sexual encounters. Call it erotica if you want, it's pornography and it blows my mind that a book like this one could be published only a decade after the obscenity trials for Allen Ginsberg's Howl. It is clear that what interested Stine the most was the act of imagining himself into a woman's body. He admits as much in the afterword of this edition. The imagining is very explicit, very material, very thorough. It triumphs in that way.
But fails, in my opinion, at the more difficult emotional transformation. This is handled sketchily; the dialogue does not help: there isn't much, but what is there is bad. Stine says she was in the thrall of Ayn Rand at the time, and that influence may account for the woodenness of the conversations. Major plot devices are used to force the story along. And the conclusion is, in its own way, much too pat, much too conservative: the rakish man has ben turned into a . . . well, not a good woman, given her very many sexual experiences, but the right kind of woman. She's pregnant, by her husband, and ready to settle down into a life of domesticity.
Note that this edition has very many typographical mistakes.
The basic plot is this: a man rape and murders a woman in a far future when the population has been so reduced by war and plague that the death penalty is taboo. The judge rules that the perpetrator's victim will be given to science: his mind will be placed into the body of the woman he murdered.
Sound interesting enough, right? The social and legal situation don't make that much sense: in such a future one might imagine that murdering someone would be especially heinous and so the death penalty used. And if the technique to put one's consciousness into another body, why isn't it used more often, rather than just as a freakish judgment of a court? Still, there could be some interesting exploration of gender issues.
But that never really comes through, at least as I read the book. And that's because the story is clearly the working out of the author's personal issues. Jean Marie Stine was born Henry Eugene Stine, and this book was written while he was still wrestling with his sexual identity: which is another way I like the idea of the book, not as a novel but as a marker in Stine's life story, a valuable document that way. Just not a good story.
The exploits are told, almost entirely, through a series of vividly described sexual encounters. Call it erotica if you want, it's pornography and it blows my mind that a book like this one could be published only a decade after the obscenity trials for Allen Ginsberg's Howl. It is clear that what interested Stine the most was the act of imagining himself into a woman's body. He admits as much in the afterword of this edition. The imagining is very explicit, very material, very thorough. It triumphs in that way.
But fails, in my opinion, at the more difficult emotional transformation. This is handled sketchily; the dialogue does not help: there isn't much, but what is there is bad. Stine says she was in the thrall of Ayn Rand at the time, and that influence may account for the woodenness of the conversations. Major plot devices are used to force the story along. And the conclusion is, in its own way, much too pat, much too conservative: the rakish man has ben turned into a . . . well, not a good woman, given her very many sexual experiences, but the right kind of woman. She's pregnant, by her husband, and ready to settle down into a life of domesticity.
Note that this edition has very many typographical mistakes.
December 4, 2022
Rosa recommended
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews