So I’ve been learning a lot about the publishing industry over the past six months or so. From what I gather, one of the major problems most authors have when trying to sell their books is determining what genre they’re writing. And trust me, there are a lot of them, some of which you’ve likely never heard of. Is it urban fantasy? Or paranormal romance? Romantic suspense? Mid-grade? The list goes on and gets rather specific. Even more difficult is when your novel crosses genres. I start out writing science fiction, but toss in a few sex scenes and suddenly the categorization blurs. I can now add a /erotica to that science fiction classification.

I thought I had better pick up a few novels that called themselves scifi/erotica, just to make sure. It absolutely was for necessary career research. Totally. Incidentally, if there are any accountants out there who can tell me if the cost of my porn novels could be a tax write-off, drop me a line.

So anyway, I thought I might pass along my findings to you, on the off chance you occasionally turn away from your electronic sexual stimulation to the old skool paper variety. I’ve chosen these three not for their particularly stellar literary quality but rather because they follow a common theme: SEX WITH ALIENS!

Go on. Admit you’re intrigued.

The first novel in this research exercise I found referenced in io9’s Ten of the Kinkiest SciFi Books You’ll Ever Read article. Before I picked up this book, I worried over whether there was too much sex in my little creation. When I read The Velderet by Cecilia Tan, I wondered if there was enough. Apparently, portions of her novel appeared as a serial in Taste of Latex magazine, which makes the sex-in-every-chapter thing a little more understandable. It chronicles a culture that has created and mandated an equality of status among all of its citizens in all aspects of their lives, and two of those citizens who harbor secret desires to be sexually dominated. When the sexually and socially hierarchical aliens come a-conquering, Merin and Kobi save the day by bending over and taking one for the team. The aliens are humanoid, of course, with one noticeable difference: the males can enlarge their cocks at will. Now, all three of these books are written by women, and presumably mostly for women, but whose fantasy is that, really? The idea that social equality can sometimes be taken a little too far is an interesting one, and Ms. Tan explores it with a nuanced zeal. Plus, the sex is hella hot.

Daughters of Terra by Theolyn Boese at least presents a somewhat plausible explanation for the similarities between her alien and human characters: the aliens were originally from Earth – sea beings taken by their gods to another world thousands of years ago, only to return now to find women who might make suitable mates, their own females having been rendered infertile by plague. Did you catch that sea beings thing? Yep, they’re mermaids. Or mermen. Whatever. Our main character, Theadora, finds herself taken captive and is told she’s been genetically modified to bear the children of the two men who have claimed her as their wife. Surprisingly, she doesn’t freak out about this as much as you might think. Because she’s into mermaids! Or mermen. Whatever. The story is actually very poignant in parts, and I raced through it, which says something since I am not a very fast reader. But you’ll have to read it yourself to find out how Ms. Boese handles the whole how-do-mermen-fuck conundrum that plagues the fantasies of so many.

Finally we come to my favorite of the three, both for its sheer ludicrousness and for its wild sex scenes that had me reaching for my special drawer again and again: Interstellar Service and Discipline: Victorious Star. Morgan Hawke’s tale of galactic military bondage and erotic discipline is sizzling like bacon on a skillet and the alien? The alien.. OMFG, the alien HAS. TWO. COCKS. Honestly, I don’t know if there’s anything else I can say about this book that won’t be trumped by that. It is an amazing piece of work.

So now you know what I’ve been curling up in bed with at night over the past few months. But just in case you come looking to me for your masturbation inspiration (because obviously there’s no other source on the interwebs) and can’t bear the two to three day Amazon shipping wait, here’s a little something to tide you over.