Last week I wrote about the Mageworlds series by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald. While the books were generally pretty good space adventure stories, they did get a touch more sexual as time went on. Characters started having sex with each other in realistically-designed scenes — two characters got married and had their wedding night; two others sought out comfort; two more bonded over being cadets in the space service.

And then came the seventh book, A Working of Stars, and one of the most unexpected oral sex scenes I ever encountered. Here’s the scene in its entirety, done in screenshots. All text is by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald.

Okay, so, a few things. First of all, as far as sex scenes go, not terribly written. A little purple in places, but these things happen. Secondly, though, after six-and-a-half books where the authors didn’t really show anything, was something this explicit truly required? I’m not saying I don’t think it makes sense — these characters love each other, and people who love each other romantically often have sex, and sometimes blowjobs are involved. I just wasn’t expecting it, and it drew me out of the story a bit.

Gratuitous sex this isn’t, but gratuitous blowjob? Maybe. I just don’t think that, when this book was published, in 2002, readers were quite ready to accept the fact that blowjobs are a normal thing in many relationships. I mean, I had a sci-fi short-story published in 2012 that had oral sex in its original draft, and the editor said her readers (it was in a very established sci-fi magazine) wouldn’t respond well to oral sex in the story. So I removed it, but left in the PIV intercourse, and she published it. That was ten years after this book. Even now I think some editors are a little squirrely about including certain types of sex in their sci-fi. I certainly have never seen consensual spanking in sci-fi, except once, in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A. Heinlein, and even then, it’s just the briefest mention.

I guess we won’t get past this until sex becomes less taboo in general, and, at least in the US, I don’t ever see that happening. Oh well.