I admire Zane. She is another Horacetta Alger. She is poised to become the next African American billionaire. She saw a niche and capitalized on it, namely she was the first to ca$h in on the fact that women like smut, too. (Okay, "erotica;" it's only smut (or better yet, porn) when men indulge.) And not just any ol' erotica, that “Harlequin heavy breathing-bodice-ripper-he made me swoon” stuff, we're talking—well, we can't talk about it here, but… You know what I mean.Female acquaintances who have read Zane are of two schools: those who say, "Just give her the damn Nobel in Literature now!" and those who smile politely and say, "She has a vivid imagination." Which brings us to Another Time, Another Place (Strebor Books); billed as "a treat for the adventurous soul" that "…brings whole new worlds to life." While not exactly/specifically SF, some of the stories do touch on elements of the fantastic while serving up generous portions of… Well, you know…Rique Johnson's "Mirrored Lives" tells the story of two women seeking freedom, both sexual and personal, as their lives take different trajectories. It’s strongly reminiscent of Gwyneth Paltrow's movie Sliding Doors and that Star Trek episode where the two aliens trying to steal the Enterprise’s dilithium crystals were really the same guy from different dimensions or something except one of them was crazy. (All I really remember from that episode was Janet MacLachlan in that Starfleet minidress.)We come to more traditional SF territory with Dwayne D. Birch’s “The Goddess of Desire,” a tale of pretty-much nonstop lovemaking among ancient Egyptian gods. But the remaining three novellas are pretty conventional. Shawan Lewis' "For the Good Times" is set during the era of the Vietnam War, when the protagonist looses one true love but finds another. Janice N. Adams’ “A Twisted State of Mind” is a slightly confusing tale of a secret affair with an ending that is supposed to be a Twilight Zone-like twist but is ultimately unsatisfying. And finally, there’s Zane’s titular story, about true love that was predestined—but delayed—with an ending reminiscent of… Disney's Aida.The back cover promised a story about "a future where technology has reshaped the meaning and making of love" and I was expecting something along the lines of Nalo Hopkinson's excellent "Ganger (Ball Lightning)", anthologized in the first volume of Dark Matters and in The Best American Erotica 2002. But if it was there, I missed it, unless the technology they were talking about was express elevators. You had to be there.And that’s the main problem with Another Time, Another Place. Perhaps the book was mis-marketed, but the SF content is minimal and somewhat derivative. Erotica fans probably won’t be disappointed, but for SF purists, you might come away feeling that some things should be left to the professionals.
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