In the 1960s and early 1970s my friend Charles Platt was an editor, writer, and designer of the British science fiction magazine, New Worlds. Here’s an interesting story he shared with me about an article about cybersex he wrote 37 years ago for the magazine, and how he found the image for the cover of the issue it appeared in.
I found the magazine in which I wrote about erotic
haptics (before the word “haptic” existed). It was in New
Worlds, and although the cover is undated, the issue appeared
in March 1970 — 37 years ago! Just shows how SLOW progress can
be….An excerpt of the scanned text is attached. It makes no
mention of modems, because I don’t think even modems existed
in 1970.The file cabinet drawer on the cover was at a sleazy
publisher of softcore porn magazines, for which I wrote bios
of the models. The photo editor was puzzled as to why I was
photographing his file cabinet. I never bothered to get
permission to do anything back then.
Link to scanned article. Text version in extended entry. (Thanks Freddy de la Cruz in Valparaiso, Chile!)
Psychoanalysis computer programs have already been used, giving intelligent responses to the patient’s statements. One can see that in ten or fifteen years it may well be impossible to distinguish between a real woman and a replica, for the purposes of coitus and limited verbal exchanges in a dim-lit brothel. Even now visitors to Disneyland find it hard to believe that the many computerised robots are not real people.
Meanwhile, in the home, mechanical aids for marital sex will obviously supercede the oscillating bed. Visions of body-harnesses, cables and pulleys powered by a ten-horsepower motor with reduction gearing and elaborate cams and levers, are impractically mediaeval. A coital labour-saving device on more elegant lines would work on the ‘waldo’ principle: in, for instance, experiments with radio-active materials, the movements of the operator’s hand in a metal ‘glove’ lined with sensors are translated into impulses which operate a metal ‘hand’ at a distance.
It would be equally feasible to insert the penis in a metal ‘vagina’ lined with sensors which would feed an artificial ‘phallus’, not only mimicking the operator’s movements, but, if desired, amplifying them. The artificial phallus in turn would sense the woman’s pelvic movements and vaginal contractions, feeding back to the artificial ‘vagina’. The mutual feedback, lubrication, constriction and so on could be easily adjusted to suit. Partners would only need to move minimally for the mechanical ‘genitals’ to simulate violent coitus.
This would be a great boon to the disabled. More important, it would enable love at a distance:
The Englishman has never met his Australian girlfriend, but speaks to her often on his picturephone. They know one another intimately, and so, with some shyness, she agrees
to plug in. They make love watching each other on the colour TV tubes, and feeling each other with great tenderness and emotion. It is a very personalised system, and in addition avoids danger of disease and pregnancy.Later, the man re-lives it by playing into the artificial vagina the tape he has made of his lover’s movements. He sees her face on the screen again, and hears her words of love…
Still later, he enjoys a tape linked with picture and voice of his favourite screen star.
Technology of this sophistication is not quite developed as yet. But simpler masturbation machines could presumably be manufactured and sold much as the vibro-massagers have been.A woman-replica need not be the optimum design for a sexual substitute. Many men display more affection for their cars than their wives; perhaps the ultimate love-object could be a plastic thing, with many alternative orifices offering various tactile qualities, shapes and depths. How many ‘breasts’ should this object possess? What temperature should it operate at? What consistency of ‘flesh’? Should it have a ‘face’?
The idea of something like a long sausage, vibrating softly, full of warm treacle, has certain attractions as a sexual toy.
Previously on Boing Boing:
• Charles Platt profiles cold fusion researcher
• Charles Platt profiles inventor of Neutron bomb
• Charles Platt guest edits Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools newsletter
Reader comment:
John Coulthart says:
There’s an archive of covers for New Worlds here.
Badly-designed site with frames makes navigation difficult but this is the New Worlds index page.
Oddly enough I only discovered it this weekend but it seems like it may have been there for a while.
Lastly, credit could perhaps be given to Michael Moorcock who was editor of New Worlds at that time (and still has control over the “resting” magazine now, I believe.) For me, one of the most important magazines of the 60s, period; it’s scandalous so few people seem aware of its existence or influence — Ballard, Gibson, cyberpunk, etc — these days. Good to see the mention anyway.
One other piece of prescience: Moorcock wrote a feature in New Worlds for October 1968 entitled “Into the Media Web”, a McLuhan-esque speculation about a coming future when all media of the time–books, film, newspapers, tv, music, etc–would be conjoined in a single global, interactive “web”. Forty years down the line, here we are.