Trina Robbins adapted “The Woman Who Loved the Moon” for Marvel’s Epic magazine. I didn’t care for the adaptation, but I thought it was interesting that Marvel was willing to tackle that material more than 20 years ago.

There were many abortive attempts by publishers to handle high-end SF and Fantasy comic/GN material in the 1980’s.

I think her Tornor novels were recently republished in an omnibus. Time to go see–especially now that my bookshelves are already groaning under their loads . . .

I promised not to buy more than one book a month until I have finished what I have…comics don’t count.

And BTW, I can’t get enough of Tanith Lee who also doesn’t publish much anymore. She just doesn’t sell as well as she should.

Anyway, here’s an interview with Lynn. She was a big influence on my work, but hasn’t published much:

http://www.locusmag.com/1997/Issues/10/Lynn.html

Mary Renault: Yep. Got a shelf full/

You know, my parents did try to teach me about sex, but I imperiously announced that I knew all about it because I had read the encyclopedia. My parent’s relief was palpable.

Many years later, I admitted that I had been terrified of getting pregnant on a cross country family trip because I shared a bed with my brother. I was ten years old.

I thought my folks were going to split a gut laughing at me.

My mother received a very benighted education on sex–which is to say, none at all. She therefore made sure I had all my questions answered, so I knew how things worked by the time I was ten. The fun part came when I was in high school, and a good friend confessed she and her boyfriend were having sex. (We were 15.) Her mother’s idea of birth control was to stand on one’s head after the act, then to pee. My response, when my friend told me this, was, “That’s great. So what are you going to name the baby?” She stopped speaking to me. She also dropped out that semester because, surprise! she was pregnant. 🙁

I love the last panel, where Seren and Liana saunter off hand in hand like two kids who’ve just declared themselves best friends for life. It’s sweet.

I remember the first gay love scene I read was in a book by Elizabeth Lynn. The only thing I was sure of was that the two guys kissed. I was kind of fuzzy on everything else. The description was no more explicit than “They cleaned up with wisps of grass,” and I had no idea what that referred to. I assumed they got sweaty.

But I remembered thinking that kissing was better than fighting, and the romance between Rieken and D’mer was born.

I filled in the details later.

Good lord, I remember lines from books I haven’t read in 20 years. “The Dancers of Arun” was the title. It had a Michael Whelan cover. Quite pretty.

I do remember in junior high reading “adult” science fiction and being amused by one scene of foreplay (it was written to be amusing), and shared it with some girlfriends, and they got all gee-whiz-giggly about it. More in the Beavis & Butthead way of “Heh heh heh he said ‘penis’!” My reaction to their reaction was “Ew. Weird. Last time I share that with you.”