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Edge Plays
Five erotic fantasies of female submission on faraway worlds from BDSM science fiction maven Cecilia Tan. Collecting five pieces of fiction that all take place in the same universe as Tan’s classic story “Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords,” EDGE PLAYS explores the boundaries between pain and pleasure, love and loyalty, and dominance and submission. Includes:
* Master Mind, originally published in the Master/slave anthology
* The Game, originally published in No Other Tribute
* Passage, original to Edge Plays
* The Velderet, Chapter Four from the novel
* Royal Treatment, an enticing excerpt from the forthcoming Torquere Press novella
* Appendix and Glossary
* Master Mind, originally published in the Master/slave anthology
* The Game, originally published in No Other Tribute
* Passage, original to Edge Plays
* The Velderet, Chapter Four from the novel
* Royal Treatment, an enticing excerpt from the forthcoming Torquere Press novella
* Appendix and Glossary
ebook
First published January 1, 2009
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62 people want to read
About the author
Cecilia Tan
198 books588 followersSusie Bright says, "Cecilia Tan is simply one of the most important writers, editors, and innovators in contemporary American erotic literature." Since the publication of Telepaths Don't Need Safewords in 1992, she has been on the cutting edge of the erotic form, often combining elements of fantasy and science fiction in her work. She is also founder and editor of Circlet Press.
RT Book Reviews awarded her Career Achievement in Erotic Romance in 2015 and her novel Slow Surrender (Hachette/Forever, 2013) won the RT Reviewers Choice Award and the Maggie Award for Excellence from GRW in 2013. She has been publishing Daron's Guitar Chronicles as a web serial since 2009 and her Secrets of a Rock Star series (Taking the Lead, Wild Licks, Hard Rhythm) is published by Hachette/Forever. In 2018 Tor Books will launch her urban fantasy/paranormal series, The Vanished Chronicles. In her other life, Cecilia is also the editor of the Baseball Research Journal and publications director for SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research.
RT Book Reviews awarded her Career Achievement in Erotic Romance in 2015 and her novel Slow Surrender (Hachette/Forever, 2013) won the RT Reviewers Choice Award and the Maggie Award for Excellence from GRW in 2013. She has been publishing Daron's Guitar Chronicles as a web serial since 2009 and her Secrets of a Rock Star series (Taking the Lead, Wild Licks, Hard Rhythm) is published by Hachette/Forever. In 2018 Tor Books will launch her urban fantasy/paranormal series, The Vanished Chronicles. In her other life, Cecilia is also the editor of the Baseball Research Journal and publications director for SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research.
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January 7, 2010
Edge Plays: Erotic Stories from the "Telepaths Don't Need Safewords" Universe
by Cecilia Tan (Circlet Press, 2009).
This e-book from Circlet Press is set in an imaginary universe that lives in the mind of author/publisher Cecilia Tan. As she explains in the introduction:
"In 1991 I wrote what I consider the first whole story of my adult life. I had graduated college, moved to Boston, discovered the Internet and BDSM all at once. I wrote a story entitled 'Telepaths Don't Need Safewords' and posted it on alt.sex.bondage, then the main Usenet newsgroup for people into leather, spanking, bondage and other kinks to gather. . . . In the story, it is clear they [the central characters, Arshan and Mriah:] have been partners for a long time, and also that they share a singular gift: they are telepathic."
She goes on: "Over the next 15 years or so I wrote many stories (and one novel, The Velderet) that filled in some of the backstory of the universe I had created." Until this e-book was compiled, however, these stories couldn't be found in one place.
In the universe of these stories, a race of humans called the Kylar have colonized a variety of other planets in various ways, but the Kylaran culture has changed in the process. As the author explains in the Appendix:
"The crisis in Kylaran culture in Arshan's day has been building for at least two generations and involves what began as a 'moral drift' away from a spiritual belief that slaves are equal to masters. The basis of harmony in the universe, in the Kylaran view, is that each person is able to find their level int he grand scheme of thing, that is, who is one submissive to and who is one dominant to? And that for harmony to be maintained, one must find a soulmate who is ones opposite, a master for every slave and vice-versa. But of course 'slavery' has far too many commercial and political conveniences associated with it. Maintaining an empire is expensive. It is all too easy for those in power to abuse it, and to justify their enslavement of entire populations by keeping just the convenient part of the religious and spiritual teachings -- that bit about 'everyone finding their level' -- while tossing out the inconvenient parts about 'monogamy' (one master for one slave in a pair bond) and equality."
In the story named “Master Mind” (first published in a Venus Bookclub anthology of Master/slave erotica edited by N.T. Morley), the half-blood Arshan is a son of a former Kylaran priest and a woman from the island of Llysa on the remote planet Ardria, where at one time most of the population had telepathic powers. Arshan does not remember his mother, and like many such people, he needs to explore his heritage while conveniently laying low to avoid trouble in the heart of the empire. Arshan looks and behaves like a Kylaran man. He enjoys wielding ordinary types of power, especially in a sexual context. When he arrives, however, he doesn't believe he can communicate telepathically.
While amusing himself with a Llysan woman who is his sexual counterpart, he is exposed to the intense grief of Mriah, a woman whose former soulmate, the local priestess, has died of an incurable disease. The traditional funeral ceremony is intended to send the spirit of the dead woman back to the natural world while enabling the survivor to share her grief with all her people, and Arshan is expected to attend.
Here he considers what Mriah really needs:
“How many times had I held a woman like her in my arms, at that point of no return? I don’t mean mad from grief, I mean struggling to fight the pain, rather than letting it shatter her. She clung to her sense of self like a drowning man clutching at a sinking stone, desperately, without realizing it was the very thing dragging her down. I needed to shatter her, to let each of us take a piece of her.”
The first meeting of these two characters is unusual, to say the least. Mriah’s crisis, rather than a more conventional spark of sexual attraction, is the catalyst that leads to a deep, long-lasting relationship that transcends sexual orientation as well as cultural differences.
Three of the other stories, “The Game,” Chapter 4 of The Velderet, and “Passage,” deal with the Kylaran empire in earlier times. “The Game” first appeared in the print anthology No Other Tribute, edited by Laura Antoniou and published by the late Masquerade Press. According to the time-line in the appendix, this story takes place before the other events.
This story, told from the viewpoint of a female indentured slave (serving a sentence for an undisclosed crime), follows three mechanics or “tech mechs” on Malakai, a technologically-advanced planet in the empire. The narrator is the only one on the team who is not “free,” and she works with two attractive men. For two years, she has not been allowed to have sex with anyone, but Marik, one of her coworkers, offers to give her relief by “forcing” her.
This “game,” as they think of it, mimics the more formal Master-slave relationships of Kylaran culture. Step by step, the “game” becomes more elaborate and more serious. At one point, Marik gets hold of an illicit deadly weapon. He orders the narrator to kneel, and when she challenges him by refusing, he uses it to “force” her compliance:
‘Down,’ Marik said, pushing the muzzle against the soft place under my chin. I went down inch by inch, as he held my hands behind my back with his other hand, bending backwards until I felt my knees touch the floor. He drew a line down my body then with the gun, straight down the center, ending at my crotch. He rubbed the muzzle in the space between my legs and I moaned.
‘Marik, you bastard...’ I couldn’t say any more as the sensation swept over me and I closed my eyes. My whole pubic area began to ache and I felt the wetness starting to drip under my loose coveralls.”
Despite the fact that the three characters have been thrown together temporarily, their impromptu “game-playing” comes to seem like more than an apprenticeship. And when the narrator is offered another choice, she remains true to her feelings.
“Passage” takes place in the time of Arshan’s father Audan, who serves as a kind of warrior-priest in one of the colonies. This story, like “Master Mind,” focuses on a ritual which includes a whole population. At the last minute, however, the official celebrant, heroine or martyr becomes terrified and unwilling to play her role in a ritual ordeal. Luckily, one of her litter-bearers, a sword-fighter named Nayelle, finds the chance she has been waiting for.
Chapter 4 of The Velderet takes place on a planet where social equality, that great liberal-humanist dream, seems to be well-established when the Kylarans arrive with their shockingly hierarchical culture. In this self-contained chapter of the novel, local folks who crave BDSM relationships or scenes must seek each other out in secret, much like human beings at the time the novel was written. Here a submissive woman hopes she will find the Dom of her dreams, against the odds:
“Merin brushed her hair in the bathroom mirror, drawing out her slight curls with each stroke and trying not to think too much about tonight. But even in this simple act of brushing her hair, she felt she was preparing herself for Him, the mystery man who had met her through cyber
sex and who might, just might, connect with her again tonight. Thinking of him brought a rush through her system and she sighed. It had been four weeks since that first rendezvous and the memories of it were still vivid in her mind: how he’d played the forbidden role of dominant with words and gestures, coaxing her to lie still as if bound in place, and controlling her pleasure seemingly for his own satisfaction. Let him be there tonight, she thought, please.”
The last story in this collection is an excerpt from Royal Treatment, a novella about Arshan in the Sunset Palace, where Princess Trella, daughter of the corrupt Kylaran Emperor, is supposed to be attended by a “torun” or circle of courtiers who are to be trained to serve her. The princess, as a Kylaran of royal birth, is expected to be Dominant as a matter of course. And Arshan, a Kylaran male with instinctive Dominant tendencies, is meant to be broken in training, made fit to serve those who outrank him.
When the “torun” (five young men, including Arshan, and two women, none of whom have met before) is gathered in the apparent absence of their Mistress, Trella, an older female trainer, Siksie, tells them what to expect:
“’You all begin at the bottom. Are you familiar with the tale of Zal’s Ladder? As of this moment you are not even on the bottom rung, yet. How you perform during your tenure will determine the hierarchy within your little group and whether you rise in station above others outside of your group, as well.” Her eyes flicked to me. ‘Trella will be training you herself some of the time, and one of you will bond to her, caishen to caitan.’ She used the formal words for master and slave.”
Arshan must survive by his wits in a place where he has no allies except those he can persuade to be loyal to him. (Royal Treatment will be reviewed at great length in a separate review.)
This collection of stories looks like a intriguing set of random fragments from a universe which could produce whole series of novels. This e-book is an absolute must for anyone who has enjoyed Cecilia Tan’s earlier stories of the Kylaran empire. Please encourage her to take a break from writing contemporary romances and to spend more time in her complex empire in space. While her romances have charm, the universe of “Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords” is legendary.
----------------------------------------
by Cecilia Tan (Circlet Press, 2009).
This e-book from Circlet Press is set in an imaginary universe that lives in the mind of author/publisher Cecilia Tan. As she explains in the introduction:
"In 1991 I wrote what I consider the first whole story of my adult life. I had graduated college, moved to Boston, discovered the Internet and BDSM all at once. I wrote a story entitled 'Telepaths Don't Need Safewords' and posted it on alt.sex.bondage, then the main Usenet newsgroup for people into leather, spanking, bondage and other kinks to gather. . . . In the story, it is clear they [the central characters, Arshan and Mriah:] have been partners for a long time, and also that they share a singular gift: they are telepathic."
She goes on: "Over the next 15 years or so I wrote many stories (and one novel, The Velderet) that filled in some of the backstory of the universe I had created." Until this e-book was compiled, however, these stories couldn't be found in one place.
In the universe of these stories, a race of humans called the Kylar have colonized a variety of other planets in various ways, but the Kylaran culture has changed in the process. As the author explains in the Appendix:
"The crisis in Kylaran culture in Arshan's day has been building for at least two generations and involves what began as a 'moral drift' away from a spiritual belief that slaves are equal to masters. The basis of harmony in the universe, in the Kylaran view, is that each person is able to find their level int he grand scheme of thing, that is, who is one submissive to and who is one dominant to? And that for harmony to be maintained, one must find a soulmate who is ones opposite, a master for every slave and vice-versa. But of course 'slavery' has far too many commercial and political conveniences associated with it. Maintaining an empire is expensive. It is all too easy for those in power to abuse it, and to justify their enslavement of entire populations by keeping just the convenient part of the religious and spiritual teachings -- that bit about 'everyone finding their level' -- while tossing out the inconvenient parts about 'monogamy' (one master for one slave in a pair bond) and equality."
In the story named “Master Mind” (first published in a Venus Bookclub anthology of Master/slave erotica edited by N.T. Morley), the half-blood Arshan is a son of a former Kylaran priest and a woman from the island of Llysa on the remote planet Ardria, where at one time most of the population had telepathic powers. Arshan does not remember his mother, and like many such people, he needs to explore his heritage while conveniently laying low to avoid trouble in the heart of the empire. Arshan looks and behaves like a Kylaran man. He enjoys wielding ordinary types of power, especially in a sexual context. When he arrives, however, he doesn't believe he can communicate telepathically.
While amusing himself with a Llysan woman who is his sexual counterpart, he is exposed to the intense grief of Mriah, a woman whose former soulmate, the local priestess, has died of an incurable disease. The traditional funeral ceremony is intended to send the spirit of the dead woman back to the natural world while enabling the survivor to share her grief with all her people, and Arshan is expected to attend.
Here he considers what Mriah really needs:
“How many times had I held a woman like her in my arms, at that point of no return? I don’t mean mad from grief, I mean struggling to fight the pain, rather than letting it shatter her. She clung to her sense of self like a drowning man clutching at a sinking stone, desperately, without realizing it was the very thing dragging her down. I needed to shatter her, to let each of us take a piece of her.”
The first meeting of these two characters is unusual, to say the least. Mriah’s crisis, rather than a more conventional spark of sexual attraction, is the catalyst that leads to a deep, long-lasting relationship that transcends sexual orientation as well as cultural differences.
Three of the other stories, “The Game,” Chapter 4 of The Velderet, and “Passage,” deal with the Kylaran empire in earlier times. “The Game” first appeared in the print anthology No Other Tribute, edited by Laura Antoniou and published by the late Masquerade Press. According to the time-line in the appendix, this story takes place before the other events.
This story, told from the viewpoint of a female indentured slave (serving a sentence for an undisclosed crime), follows three mechanics or “tech mechs” on Malakai, a technologically-advanced planet in the empire. The narrator is the only one on the team who is not “free,” and she works with two attractive men. For two years, she has not been allowed to have sex with anyone, but Marik, one of her coworkers, offers to give her relief by “forcing” her.
This “game,” as they think of it, mimics the more formal Master-slave relationships of Kylaran culture. Step by step, the “game” becomes more elaborate and more serious. At one point, Marik gets hold of an illicit deadly weapon. He orders the narrator to kneel, and when she challenges him by refusing, he uses it to “force” her compliance:
‘Down,’ Marik said, pushing the muzzle against the soft place under my chin. I went down inch by inch, as he held my hands behind my back with his other hand, bending backwards until I felt my knees touch the floor. He drew a line down my body then with the gun, straight down the center, ending at my crotch. He rubbed the muzzle in the space between my legs and I moaned.
‘Marik, you bastard...’ I couldn’t say any more as the sensation swept over me and I closed my eyes. My whole pubic area began to ache and I felt the wetness starting to drip under my loose coveralls.”
Despite the fact that the three characters have been thrown together temporarily, their impromptu “game-playing” comes to seem like more than an apprenticeship. And when the narrator is offered another choice, she remains true to her feelings.
“Passage” takes place in the time of Arshan’s father Audan, who serves as a kind of warrior-priest in one of the colonies. This story, like “Master Mind,” focuses on a ritual which includes a whole population. At the last minute, however, the official celebrant, heroine or martyr becomes terrified and unwilling to play her role in a ritual ordeal. Luckily, one of her litter-bearers, a sword-fighter named Nayelle, finds the chance she has been waiting for.
Chapter 4 of The Velderet takes place on a planet where social equality, that great liberal-humanist dream, seems to be well-established when the Kylarans arrive with their shockingly hierarchical culture. In this self-contained chapter of the novel, local folks who crave BDSM relationships or scenes must seek each other out in secret, much like human beings at the time the novel was written. Here a submissive woman hopes she will find the Dom of her dreams, against the odds:
“Merin brushed her hair in the bathroom mirror, drawing out her slight curls with each stroke and trying not to think too much about tonight. But even in this simple act of brushing her hair, she felt she was preparing herself for Him, the mystery man who had met her through cyber
sex and who might, just might, connect with her again tonight. Thinking of him brought a rush through her system and she sighed. It had been four weeks since that first rendezvous and the memories of it were still vivid in her mind: how he’d played the forbidden role of dominant with words and gestures, coaxing her to lie still as if bound in place, and controlling her pleasure seemingly for his own satisfaction. Let him be there tonight, she thought, please.”
The last story in this collection is an excerpt from Royal Treatment, a novella about Arshan in the Sunset Palace, where Princess Trella, daughter of the corrupt Kylaran Emperor, is supposed to be attended by a “torun” or circle of courtiers who are to be trained to serve her. The princess, as a Kylaran of royal birth, is expected to be Dominant as a matter of course. And Arshan, a Kylaran male with instinctive Dominant tendencies, is meant to be broken in training, made fit to serve those who outrank him.
When the “torun” (five young men, including Arshan, and two women, none of whom have met before) is gathered in the apparent absence of their Mistress, Trella, an older female trainer, Siksie, tells them what to expect:
“’You all begin at the bottom. Are you familiar with the tale of Zal’s Ladder? As of this moment you are not even on the bottom rung, yet. How you perform during your tenure will determine the hierarchy within your little group and whether you rise in station above others outside of your group, as well.” Her eyes flicked to me. ‘Trella will be training you herself some of the time, and one of you will bond to her, caishen to caitan.’ She used the formal words for master and slave.”
Arshan must survive by his wits in a place where he has no allies except those he can persuade to be loyal to him. (Royal Treatment will be reviewed at great length in a separate review.)
This collection of stories looks like a intriguing set of random fragments from a universe which could produce whole series of novels. This e-book is an absolute must for anyone who has enjoyed Cecilia Tan’s earlier stories of the Kylaran empire. Please encourage her to take a break from writing contemporary romances and to spend more time in her complex empire in space. While her romances have charm, the universe of “Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords” is legendary.
----------------------------------------
April 8, 2020
Another brilliant offering from Cecilia Tan. I love her erotic fantasy and science fiction and some of my favourite of hers go back to the Kylarian stories. Hot hot hot plus great characters, great story line. Cannot recommend Cecilia Tan's work enough.
August 10, 2016
Five well-written, intriguing sci-fi BDSM short stories. First (Master Mind) a Top meets a bottom longing for attention in a culture without much opportunity for D/s, but they have little emotional connection (but good sex), then story moves on to S/m as a teatment for extreme grief.
Second (The Game) M/f exploring D/s, it's her first time. She's a slave, but not to him. There's a third (M) voyeur. Then moves onto D/s that is basically non-con (In that she had no choice but was not unwilling) and looks at the contrast between a chosen partner and one not chosen.
Third was straight from The Velderet and deals with cyber sex and D/s in a society where D/s is forbidden. Velderet was a very good book, by the way.
Fourth (Passage) was about virgin sacrifice (willing, if manipulated) with heavy S/m elements. a little slow starting but well done.
Fifth was straight from Royal Treatment which is M/m and D/s where the true bottom is supposed to top and the true Top is supposed to bottom (and the affair is illicit anyway). Involves slavery and S/m.
Second (The Game) M/f exploring D/s, it's her first time. She's a slave, but not to him. There's a third (M) voyeur. Then moves onto D/s that is basically non-con (In that she had no choice but was not unwilling) and looks at the contrast between a chosen partner and one not chosen.
Third was straight from The Velderet and deals with cyber sex and D/s in a society where D/s is forbidden. Velderet was a very good book, by the way.
Fourth (Passage) was about virgin sacrifice (willing, if manipulated) with heavy S/m elements. a little slow starting but well done.
Fifth was straight from Royal Treatment which is M/m and D/s where the true bottom is supposed to top and the true Top is supposed to bottom (and the affair is illicit anyway). Involves slavery and S/m.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews