Aye, and Gomorrah

"Aye, and Gomorrah..." is a science fiction short story by American writer Samuel R. Delany. It is the first short story Delany sold, and won the 1967 Nebula Award for best short story. Before it appeared in Driftglass and Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories, it first appeared as the final story in Harlan Ellison's seminal 1967 anthology, Dangerous Visions. It was controversial because of its disturbing sexual subject matter, and has been called "one of the best stories by a gay man published in the 1960s." [1]

This article is about the 1967 short story. For the 2003 short story collection, see Aye, and Gomorrah, and other stories.
"Aye, and Gomorrah..."
AuthorSamuel R. Delany
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Science fiction
Published inDangerous Visions
Publication typeAnthology
Publication dateDecember 1967

Graham Sleight has described it as a "revisionist take" on Cordwainer Smith's story "Scanners Live in Vain".[2]

Synopsis

The narrative involves a world where astronauts, known as Spacers, are neutered before puberty to avoid the effects of space radiation on gametes. Aside from making them sterile, the neutering also prevents puberty from occurring and results in androgynous adults whose birth-sex is unclear to others. Spacers are fetishized by a subculture of "frelks", those attracted by the Spacers' unattainability and unarousability ("free-fall-sexual-displacement complex"). The mischief-loving Spacers exploit this for amusement and money — and possibly out of loneliness and a desire to recapture their lost sexuality.

"Frelk" is used as a derogatory term by the Spacers in the story, who nonetheless engage in prostitution by accepting money to give frelks the pseudo-sexual contact they desire.

gollark: ~np
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gollark: ~queu
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References
  1. Nelson, Emmanuel S., ed. (26 January 1993). "Contemporary Gay American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook". Greenwood – via Amazon.
  2. Yesterday's Tomorrows: Cordwainer Smith, reviewed by Graham Sleight, in Locus, April 2007; archived online October 18 2007; retrieved December 19, 2017
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