Sci-fi and spanking have always gone well together in my mind. Why? It seems counterintuitive, I know. I mean spanking is so primal and many sci-fi worlds tend towards futuristic setups with sterile logic ruling the day. Using physical force to punish someone seems backwards when you are in a future where intelligence is in charge and emotions are carefully controlled.
When you think about science fiction you think about mankind moving beyond hate and fear, putting all the negative emotions behind us and traveling through the stars—unless you picture a dystopian world, of course, then all bets are off. Aliens in sci-fi are often portrayed as being much more intelligent and much less emotional than we are. So where does that leave spanking? Still applicable! There are a thousand ways to work it in.
Physically, spanking is a turn-on for many people so as long as your sci-fi setting still has sex you can always fit in some kink. No matter how advanced we get, people are still going to be sexually excited by various things. And as far as punishment goes, you shouldn’t be punishing someone when you’re angry or emotional anyway. Actually, one of my biggest fantasies has always been the idea of a completely clinical, non-emotional punishment.
I don’t think I’m the only one either, otherwise spanking machines wouldn’t be such a popular hot button for people. The idea that no amount of begging or pleading will stop the punishment because it’s being delivered dispassionately and will continue no matter what, is both scary and hot.
I think when you are writing about worlds of the future, you actually need something primitive to balance and play off of. It creates a nice shock. Think about how unemotional Spock (Star Trek) was—but then remember the scenes where he finally broke down and expressed things? Those were the scenes that grabbed people. If you’ve ever watched the original series, you might remember the episode where he went into ‘heat’ which they call pon farr.
Vulcans must always control their emotions—until it’s time to mate and then all that goes right out the window. Suddenly they are violent lustful creatures who will fight a competitor to the death for their chosen mate.
I chose a different path for my new book: Surrendering to Her General. My aliens are among the most advanced in the universe scientifically, but because they’ve been unable to evolve past the need to fight, they are being held back politically. The main Dominant character in my book is a General who has a plan for them to channel all of that raw animal emotion into the human masochists they get from Earth.
Pouring that violence into controlled sadistic outlets with partners who actually crave pain will allow them to balance their passions, so they can take their place among the leaders. To me that’s an ideal melding of futuristic science fiction and raw animal instincts.
It’s probably my heaviest book so far, in terms of the punishment and play. These are sadists so there is a lot of spanking, but also some heavier stuff like orgasm denial, whips, bondage, butt plugs and I feel like it all worked really well. And—my book is the probably the only one out there to explain why all of these alien men are running around without shirts on, so that’s a bonus!
I’ve been a fan of science fiction since as long as I can remember but reading my first Heinlein book at nine years old (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls) clinched it. Heinlein included not only a wonderful story, full of adventure, but he also included a heck of a lot of spanking. I did a previous post on him a year ago, which you can read here, if you like: The Many Spankings of Robert Heinlein
At nine I had already figured out that there was something really interesting about spanking. I had no idea why it fascinated me so much, but every time I came across it in books or television I became completely focused. Like a lot of burgeoning spankos I even looked up the word in the dictionary frequently just to get a little thrill when I saw it written there, but nothing was as good as finding a fully described spanking in a book I was reading.
I was too young, at the time I first read The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, to be turned on or sexually excited by reading about spanking. It was a more nebulous kind of excitement that made my heart race and I had no idea why. But it was enough to put me on the track to reading all his books and pretty much any other sci-fi I could find.
When I was about sixteen I got a copy of I Will Fear No Evil and in it found a spanking scene where a woman had her first ever orgasm from being spanked for punishment and it was a life-changer let me tell you.
Sadly, most science fiction authors didn’t put as much spanking into their books as he did, but there were a few out there who seemed to think sci-fi and spanking went together like wine and cheese. Some authors were better than others. John Norman and the Gor books for instance, were very hard to get through when I was younger. I didn’t find much to enjoy about them until I got into Gorean Rp later on and even then, I still thought his writing was stilted and boring for the most part.
But I eventually I found Sharon Green and some of her sci-fi books in a used bookstore when I was in middle school. I fell in love! Ironically, I think her Jalav series, and her Terilian series were written because of the Gor books. She wanted to do the same kind of setting but with strong female characters who struggled in the male-dominated society because they weren’t weak, and they wanted the men to know it. (Plus, her writing is just so much better overall.)
I kept searching for more as I got older and could get to used bookstores in other towns. I finally came across the best and most prolific, for spanking scenes, the Spaceways Agent series with Diana Santee. I’ve probably reread all of them a dozen times now.
I suspect her publisher wasn’t too fond of all the spankings because after the first two books in the Spaceways series were published traditionally, she went independent on the rest, but I wouldn’t find that out until years later. To me, crawling through shelves of used books, it seemed like she’d simply stopped writing that series. Talk about devastated. Of course, this was just about the time when spankings started disappearing from romance too, so I think it was something that changed across the board with mainstream companies.
I ended up acquiring copies of all of her books though, and most of them had at least some brief mention of spanking in them. The second of her Spaceways series was the hardest to find, this was the days before Amazon, of course, and it took me years to track that one down—worth it! After all that time searching for her out-of-print books I was ecstatic to discover a new book by her in the bookstore one day when I was in high school. Sadly, the new series was following the mainstream trend at the time and there was no spanking talk at all. They were still great reads, almost all of her books are, but I did miss the naughty stuff.
Fast forward to find me all grown up, in my twenties, and working for my previous Publisher, CF Publications, only to find out that he knew Sharon! That she had continued to write the Spaceways series and he had them for sale! I happily traded part of my pay for the loose printed pages that he mailed me as she released each one and rushed off to Kinkos to have them bound before allowing myself to read them. So much happiness!
The first two mainstream published books about Diana the Agent were pretty graphically filled with spanking and assorted kinkiness, amazingly so considering it was published by Daw, but once she knew her target audience was kinky people she took it even further and the following books have all kinds of fun stuff, even a kind of ageplay and a brief attempt at femdomme which the alpha male of the series didn’t put up with for long, and tons of not-really-consensual punishment spankings. She never finished this series and it was left with a massive cliffhanger, but she keeps saying she will write the last one eventually so I’m hopeful.
Interesting bit of trivia: I met Sharon (online) many years back and fangirled a bit at first. We become friendly. I wouldn’t presume to call us friends per say, but we’ve had various conversations over the years and still keep in touch through e-mail. I interviewed her once way back when and posted it on the newsgroup I was active on at the time (SSS), which had an interesting and unexpected consequence.
I’m not sure if Sharon remembers this, I’m pretty sure Janet doesn’t, but after reading my post about Sharon, Janet Hardy contacted me, asking if I could put her in touch with Sharon about republishing some of her out-of-print books that had spankings in them. Up until then most of Janet’s books were non-fiction how-to like The Topping Book and The Sexually Dominant Woman (which was recently updated and re-released and I got to be a beta-reader for it!) so I think this was an attempt to try something new.
I was thrilled to put them in contact, and I know Janet went on to republish at least one of Sharon’s earlier series–the Terrilian books, which was filled with all kinds of spankings and punishments. After that Sharon wrote her first ‘specifically for spankos’ book— Haughty Spirit, which Janet also published. So, there, I’ve done my part to enrich the world of spanking fiction with more Sharon Green work.
Anyway, Sharon was one of my early influences as I was just starting out in my writing career, and unlike Heinlein I actually got to talk to her! At the time I first contacted her I was still working mostly as an illustrator, and doing the occasional short story on the side, but over the years that basically flipped so now I mostly write and only occasionally illustrate.
She was able to build worlds as well-written and stable as any mainstream science-fiction novel but was able to fill it with kinky stuff too without sacrificing the plot, and that’s basically been my goal. I sometimes think my books would sell just as well if I stopped obsessing over plot holes and just focused on the spanking scenes, but I like the details.
I don’t want to write books filled with mundane stories like “I love you, but we can’t be together for some random reason, so spank me a lot before I finally give in and we get married”. I want complicated plots, details, character development in fantasy or sci-fi settings and lots of graphic spanking and sex scenes. While my scenes are more graphic than hers were, I still do my best to give my books the stable balance of plot and action that I loved in her books.
The character developments were what kept me reading every page she wrote instead of just skipping to the hot stuff, and that’s my goal when I write.
If you like fantasy and science fiction you might want to look her up on Amazon. Just be aware that most of her books were mainstream so they put the story and plot first and the spankings references are slipped in here and there. If you aren’t interested in books without spanking you can skip The Blending, and Blending Enthroned series. They came after the mainstream kink purge and I don’t recall finding even any mentions in them. On the other hand, the ones that have lots of scenes, threats, and mentions would be: Agent of Spaceways series, The Terilian series, and Haughty Spirit.
That’s a long enough ramble about my love of science fiction for today, I think, but I’d love to hear about any authors you’ve found that combine spanking and sci-fi.
P.s. the featured image at the top is from Nasa’s archives which they’ve released into public domain with all rights. So, you can use them for promotions, blogs, book covers, alter them–whatever you want to do. There’s pictures in there that would go amazingly well with sci-fi stories. You should take a look.
Musings of a Chaotic Mind 