Best American Erotica 1994

Bright, editor of the Herotica series, has gathered here a vibrant collection of 20 erotic stories from books and magazines published over the past year. At times tender and at others startling, these stories are anything but boy-meets-girl scenarios. They explore a varied spectrum of sexual sensibilities from gay to straight to transsexual to gender-neutral extraterrestrial. Many of the stories serve to remind readers of the humor inherent in human sexuality, such as the satirical beer commercial incarnated in Mark Butler's ``Cool and Clean and Crisp.'' The exhilarating ``Sweating Profusely in Merida: A Memoir'' by Carol Queen leaves the reader exhausted right along with the narrator, but the most disturbing tale, ``None of the Above,'' is also the most arousing, in which Bernadette Lynn Bosky takes the sex-with-a-stranger motif to a highly imaginative extreme as her futuristic heroine has an orgy with body-morphed humans and genderless aliens. Although no two stories are alike, the one thing they do share is their portrayal of pure, uninhibited libidos that compel and excite the reader whatever his or her sexual identity. (Nov.)