More Engines of Progress

A little while back in a post on media technology I mused a bit about audio erotica. Well, this past Friday I managed to get a bit more concrete experience with the format.

Picture this, if you will. In the cold, pre-dawn darkness a battered, schmutzy commuter train grinds its way across one of North America’s grittier industrial landscapes. The train is full of morose-looking men and women on their way to a day’s toil in Metropolis. Some doze fitfully, some clutch styrofoam cups of coffee, some scowl at that morning’s Wall Street Journal. You can tell just by looking at them that every last one of them would really rather be somewhere else.

Except for one man, who blogs in his spare time under the name of Faustus. Faustus is grinning from ear to ear. Why? Because on Faustus’s hip there rests a media-playing BlackBerry, wired to Faustus by a small set of headphones. And if you could hear inside the buds resting snugly in Faustus’s ears, you could hear something like this:

I activated the Amatory Capacitors, and a crackling noise filled the air. It joined in pleasing counterpoint to the Vibratorium’s hum and Mrs. Hargreaves’ groans and gasps as my Ontological Engine woke to life, powered by the trickle of Vital Energies she was emitting.

Yes, indeed. Circlet Press, since 1992 the world’s leading (arguably, world’s only) exclusive purveyor of science fiction and fantasy erotica, has entered the podcast era by putting out a four-part MP3 version of Vinnie Tesla’s story “The Ontological Engine, or, The Modern Leda.” (You can have a lot of fun just mining that title for sly references. The story appeared earlier in the Circlet anthology Up for Grabs: Exploring the Worlds of Gender, edited by Lauren P. Burka.) Mad science, flagellation, Victorians Gone Wild, sex machines, erotically-inquisitive monsters, and the power of female orgasm harnessed to questionable purposes. Seriously, what’s not to love here?

To be sure, it does do a lot with the whole Mad Science thing, which discerning ErosBlog readers have perhaps noticed is somewhat up my alley.

And perhaps most attractive of all, the first part of four is available for free (mp3 download here with the remaining four parts available for a very modest outlay. If audio erotica or steampunk erotica or Mad Scientists are your thing (or if you just hate your commute and need to liven it up a bit, maybe?), you owe it to yourself to have a look.