Thursday, May 21, 2009

Isaac Asimov's Lost Story Of Sex And Telepathic Energy Beings

In 1955, Isaac Asimov wrote "The Portable Star", a story he considered so bad, so sexy, that he forbade it ever being collected or reprinted. For
fifty-four years, it has been forgotten. Until now.

"The Portable Star" is one of only two stories that Asimov refused to anthologize ("A Woman's Heart" being the other), and it is by far the more interesting of the two. For one thing, it's actually pretty good, albeit in a minor sort of way. The story follows the married couples Holden and Grace Brooks and Philip and Celestine Van Horne. Their interstellar vacation is interrupted when their hyperspace drive breaks down, forcing them to land on an uninhabitable, Venus-like planet to make repairs.

They soon find themselves trapped by telepathic energy beings that can control their emotions and prevent them from leaving. Most of the story is a quintessentially Asimov scientific mystery, as Philip has to figure out what would be so beyond the comprehension of these aliens that they would be scared away, giving him and his friends a chance to escape.

That's what's the story is about. But here's how it starts:

If space voyages are "romantic," Holden Brooks was certainly carrying on the tradition when he stepped into the cabin of his best friend's wife, with one straightforward objective in mind.

He did not signal. He merely opened the door and walked in. She was waiting for him as, somehow, he had known she would be, wearing a loose night garment. She held out her arms to him and they trembled slightly. Her dark hair fell below her shoulder, accenting the pale roundness of her face.

Her name was Celeste Van Horne and her husband sat in one corner of the room, idly pinching his ear-lobe.

Holden paid no attention to the husband's presence. He stepped directly to Celestine and placed his hands on her shoulders. She swayed toward him and they kissed violently, longingly, over and over again.

It goes on like that for a while, and then Holden tries to kill Philip in animalistic rage for trying to get in the way, just to complete the whole cuckolding-in-space theme. So like I said, it's your standard, perfectly decent 1950's Asimov short story, except with a sexy sex scene that reads like something out of a third-rate romance novel bolted onto the front of it. And I say that with the deepest respect and love for the Good Doctor – the man is easily my favorite science fiction author of all time. So how did this happen?
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