When I was young gay man, there never seemed to be enough science-fiction novels for me to read, with Frank Herbert’s Dune and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation remaining my classic favorites. As I have matured I have found myself with quite a varied taste in literature. I just finished reading “American Theocracy – The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century”.
Of course I have attempted to avoid review or discussion outside of the current TyRain theme – which basically is the enjoyment and sharing of enticingly good looking nude men and gay life. That is why, when someone wrote to me here at TyRain and suggested a science-fiction story about young gay love… I could not resist reading it – and in a few days I will write a detailed favorable review of Stealing Some Time.
As a genre, gay science fiction seems rather rare. I do have a personal favorite. I can not recall the first time that I ever read the novel Chrome – but it must have been at least 25 years ago. A story so well told that it hauntingly has stayed in my mind over these past decades. Chrome and Vortex are in love. One of them is a robot. It is in this future tyranny that it is death to love a robot. As Chrome falls in love, he begins to question if he is human or a robot.
In fact, when I first came online in 1994, before the WWW was popular, communication was via BBS (Bulletin board system) – generally a computer hooked up to 6 or 10 phone lines. In those days you needed a “handle”. My first was “irish”, second was “spitfire”, and then I become known as “chrome”, named after that novel and the main character. I still continue to use “chrome” over these past 18 years for some email.
As a fun side comment, recently it was news that Netscape would no longer be updated and supported. It was wonderful years ago, before Microsoft even knew that there was a need to create Internet Explorer – and I still had the 3-floppy disk set that I purchased for 30 bucks. Don’t ask – I sold the original box and disks on EBay last year to a collector.
Over time, with my various relocations, I lost my yellowed and well-read paperback copy of Chrome. An Internet friend in 2001, knowing why I had named myself “chrome”, sent me one of the out-of-print books as a surprise birthday gift. It now rests displayed encased in plastic on my bookshelf.
The person that wrote Chrome in 1978 is just as interesting as the story.
George Nader was an actor and the movie studio, in the mid-1950s, heard that a scandal newspaper was prepared to publish details about a rumor - George Nader was having a gay affair with Rock Hudson.
Interesting gay tidbit – one of George Nader’s companions was Mark Miller who would later become Rock Hudson’s personal secretary.
Via Amazon, as I write this, there are 21 copies of Chrome available. Please purchase via my link and I will earn, I think, a whopping .04% commission – oh but please continue to shop – for I will earn commission for everything purchased during that Amazon visit – don’t you really want a Blu-Ray DVD player (laugh).
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