I had some problems with the details. Ada says that she is a “professional masochist.” She is more like a “professional murder victim.” I’m no expert, but I didn’t think that death was necessarily part of S&M fantasy. Surely there are people who fantasize about killing/being killed for sexual pleasure, but I didn’t think it was typical. I would think there would be a far larger number of clients who would want to injure and abuse a professional masochist as part of their fantasy, but not kill her. However, the nature of Ada’s cloned body/memory device seemed to require that she die at the end of each session.

This story started out as what appeared to be a classic thought experiment (”What if masochists didn’t need to fear permanent physical harm from activity in scene?”). It moved away from that question to interrogate claims of masochism as not only a sexuality, but a way of vivifying life. I thought the story was interesting in the first, and fell flat in the latter, not because the second question shouldn’t be asked in a story (and perhaps given this answer), but because the writing became (IMO) strained and forced in order to create the desired answer.

I thought the story was extremely strong until we hit the point where she went to Antonio’s mansion and he started speaking what seemed to me to have been the subtext of the story. When a character starts cackling things like “You and I are two halves” and “you and I are pure!” — he shouldn’t be *right*.

I think the story could have done with a touch more ambiguity. If Vylar’s intent was to convince me of what appears to be the story’s thesis — that masochism is about feeling the vibrancy of life — I’m not sure that putting the words in a maniac’s mouth, and then having them play out so uncomplicatedly in the story, was the best way to do that. I’m told (first in dialogue, and then in exposition) that the character feels unalive because of her lack of pain, and I see that her actions address that need, but I don’t ever really see her feeling it. Consequently, I don’t really believe it. It feels inserted and authorial. I am not convinced it is a possibly real response, at least not in the text as I’m given it. It gave me the sense that Vy had stacked the deck on this one, that she was going to tell me her point instead of showing it.

Vy & I were both on a panel at the most recent Wiscon about writing political fiction, which we both do and are both proud of doing. In general, I quite adore Vylar’s political fiction, but this one fell flat for me, because I felt it didn’t leave enough space for me as a reader.

My first impression was that the basic set up would not work. That is, if there were a professional masochist service that people (men only?) could use to get out their aggressive impulses and kill someone “safely” the clients would eventually find that unsatisfying and go on to permanently killing non-consenting victims. Especially if the victims’ last words tended to be things like “make sure you return the device to the company when you’re done”. I would imagine that that sort of remark would kind of spoil the fantasy.

I also notice that the company mentioned has an almost slavery ring going…the women (and men?) who are the masochists are doomed to die in 3 months unless they get a replacement body…which almost no one can afford without working for the company. Quite appart from the addiction aspect (the masochists get addicted to the adrenaline rush of getting killed and don’t want to quit because then that would be unsatisfied). I was sort of annoyed that these aspects never got explicitly explored. Or maybe I’m just obsessed with companies as evil.

Your thoughts?