Is science fiction as a genre, really just about humanity's desire to have crazy hot alien sex?

Probably because it’s strange and exotic as you say, and besides, who doesnt like tentacles?

I will need a list of movies you have been watching to really “tell” you.

What’s the difference between alien sex and bestiality, does it have to do with the intellect of the participants?

Animals can’t really consent.

So you’re saying if an animal could give the “thumbs up” it would be cool to screw? I’m not too sure I agree with that one.

That’s not what I’m saying.

Does Boba Fett count as an alien? He’s not from Earth.
I’d totally hit that.

Sure why not, though the intent is geared more toward the less human looking aliens.

So like Oola? Yeah. I’d probably go lesbian for her if I ran into the Star Wars universe.

Some science fiction such as that of Robert A Heinlein, has a fair amount of sexual content but it typically involves humans with other humans.

Ursula K.LeGuin’s Science fiction, “The Other Side of Midnight” postulates a world where all individuals are of the same gender (Neither male or female)

There asr so many examples of excellent science fiction literature where there is no sexual activity between humans and aliens.

Perhaps your observation applies more to movies than to published science fiction literature.

To add to your list of examples, the entire series of Torchwood is primarily about alien sex. However, most aliens of the traditional science fiction variety are extremely ugly, having been created before “I wonder what’s out there” became “Whatever’s out there, let’s have SEX with it! Yeah!”

@rangerr I don’t consider myself racist at all (speciesist maybe?), but there’s something about a green vagina that just seems fundamentally unappealing to me—you’d really go down on a Twi’lek?

@gorillapaws I never said I’d go down on her.

To me iIt’s not about the fact that they’re aliens, it’s precisely that they’re really not that alien afterall.
All the aliens that are considered sexy in science fiction are much more human-ish than the average alien, if you take a look at the whole picture.

You’ll never see anyone jerk off to vogon porn. Ok, maybe somebody (I learned to avoid absolutes when it comes to sexual preferences), but definitively not most science fiction fans. And that’s precisely it, it’s exotic, but not as much as it could actually be.

Also it makes sense in science fiction, afterall in most of its settings the human race has finally started living as a single race, and that drastically reduces the “exoticness” of human partners, therefore the attraction to the exotic ends up pointing to something else.

@gorillapaws I sure enough would. But i do have some standards, Twi’leks i would do, Na’vi i would do, i wouldn’t do a vogon or a bith though…

As for it being “borderline bestiality” i’d have to ask you why would that be a problem, we’re talking about sentient beings who can express consent, who’re you to tell them who they chan have sex with as long as consent is expressed?

Thanks for the Galaxy Quest mention…. I love that film. & in answer to your Q, yes, pretty much. How often are alien women butt-ugly, & even when it does happen someone still taps-it.

Alien sex is way over rated and you will quickly get tired of having to change the sheets after every session…slimy buggers.

C3po fucking the arse off Obi Wan.“Oh dear I seem to have rusted my mainspring master Kanobi“Obi wan,oh behave!!

I don’t think that’s really what it’s all about. It’s certainly an element, though. For example, in The Fifth Element, the scantily-bandaged Leeloo certainly caused some minor excitement in the nether regions. Or, maybe it was just my own personal attraction to Milla Jovovich in any form. Can’t really say that I’d be into tentacles at all.

@Rufus_T_Firefly For just a second there I thought you typed testicles!

@Cloverfield – Was that a mental Freudian slip maybe?

@Rufus_T_Firefly Hah, I seriously hope not :)

There is certainly a sub-genre in science fiction where sex is a significant theme, maybe even the dominant theme. This is true both of movies and books. However, that does not do justice to the genre as a whole.

In most science fiction books alien sex does not even come up. For example, E.E. Smith’s classic Lensman and Skylark space opera series are crawling with every kind of alien imaginable, from feline-type humanoids much like the Avatar characters to methane breathing creatures that would make an octopus look attractive. The only sex which is even implied is strictly between members of the same species.

Probably sex is more of a them in movies because it is a visual and ultimately more simplistic medium, but even there many examples of science fiction have nothing to do with alien sex: Time Cop, Rollerball (the original with James Caan; I never saw the awful remake), the original Planet of the Apes (again, didn’t see the stupid remake). 2001, A Space Odyssey, Day of the Dolphin, etc, etc.

@Dr_Lawrence: you mean The Left Hand of Darkness, not The Other Side of Midnight.

Ria777 and DrLawrence

I was wondering about that myself. The “Other Side of Midnight” sounds vaguely familiar somehow, but I don’t connect it with Ursula LeGuin. I do remember “The Left Hand of Darkness”. Interestingly, even though sexual identity is the primary theme of the book, the protaganist, who is a normal Earthman, never “does it” with his friend even though s/he can switch from male to female anatomy as the occasion may require. So that was a science fiction book about sex with no sex! I always thought LeGuin was kind of squeamish about the sex act itself and had difficulty portraying romantic relationships.

No, Science Fiction is a means of exploring the themes that interest us using alien societies. It is, in a word, sociology.

The first part of your detail section has to do with sexist and racist attitudes of white men and wanting to fetishize women of races and ethnicities that they, themselves, linked to animality and otherness. The second part of your detail section addresses the sci-fi genre which is a bit more complex that plain old sexism because in so many instances the genre (at least lately) takes us out of those notions.

Of course the meeting an alien culture trope is merely an analogue for colonizing and cultural appropriation. You might have good, sensitive colonizers (an apology for raping the Indians and such), or you might have them invade and take over, just like so many other colonists on this world.

Rape, of course, is not about sex, but violence. So raping an alien woman (even if it is supposedly voluntary), is part of the effort to subdue the aliens and take over.

Much male fantasy is the work of the powerless guys who imagine what it would be like to have power and be popular. Have you ever seen Gardner Dozois? QED. But seriously, he’s a good writer and I shouldn’t pick on him. But you get the idea.

Yes, I mean to say “The Left Hand of Darkness!”
My memory problems play ironic tricks on me!
The Other Side of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon, is a book I have never read as it turns out.

It focuses on two women: the first is Noelle Page, who is exploited by alien men throughout her life; the second is Catherine Alexander, whose father had big dreams he was never able to fulfil and who is embarrassed about the fact that she is a—n alien- virgin.

@wundayatta Agreed – the same argument goes to explain why so many more white people get ‘abducted by aliens’ and have ‘probing experiences’ – I had a professor who once argued it was because they all felt a subconscious shame about colonialism and imperialism.

@Captain Fantasy – YES that is exactly what I’ve always been hoping for… out driving along a desolute country road, beam of light sucks me up into a flying saucer where some really, really hot three breasted alien with a long wet tongue can ravish me. drops me back off at my car, totally exhausted by all the orgasms she made me have. this was a funny question, thanks. lol