Conference noted::sf

Jealousy is not an aspect of the partner being attracted to others; it is
an aspect of the personality of the jealous.  Therefore, a love potion would
not affect it.
Tom

    Well, it might alieviate the jealousy by giving the potentially
    jealous partner the firm knowledge that the spouse CAN'T wander.
    
    This monogamy pill sounds a lot like the good ol' love potion of
    fantasy, at least in some of its versions, like the one in "Midsummer
    Night's Dream."  That one could be used more than once (as Puck
    did to the human characters) or simply cancelled (as Oberon did
    to Titania).  A reusable or erasable "monogamy" pill might therefore
    not result in permanent monogamy.  There could be a corresponding
    "divorce pill" that would erase the imprinting.  I can see the TV
    ad now:
    
    	"O God, she left me!  I'm so miserable without her!"
    
    	"Try Foreign Legion (tm), the deprinting pill guaranteed to
    	 make you forget that callous lover."
    
    Slipping these pills into people's drinks would be a new kind of
    crime, though I suppose it has some precedent in things like slipping
    people LSD.
    
    If the monogamy pill is NOT erasable, the whole situation becomes
    much more serious and I would be inclined to ban them.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

Somehow, at the present point of time, the idea of .0 strikes me as horribly
grotesque/disgesting/dehumanizing/*....

Jim.

re: .3
>Somehow, at the present point of time, the idea of .0 strikes me as horribly
>grotesque/disgesting/dehumanizing/*....

...in short, worthy of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", right? ;-)

from .0:
>So, as Theodore Sturgeon would say, ask the next question!  If we now 
>have drugs to control the (ahem) side-effects of sex, what about ones 
>that control sexual desire itself?  Enhance it?  Suppress it?  
>Redirect it?
...
>That's one possibility. Others?  Ramifications?

I read a story somewhere ( I think I have in _the_Omnibus_of_Science_Fiction, or
something like that) where a big-league scientist came up with a substance. He
had intended to create a regular sexual cylce in women to prevent their use of
"sexual attractiveness" to control men.  However, it backfired, producing a 
regular sex cycle in _men_.

I'll see if I can find the title. Guesses, anyone?
kevin

    Nit-picking, the pill is hormonal, not a drug as such.

    Re .5:
    
    It was Theodore Sturgeon's story: I read it as "Never Underestimate
    ..." which was a takeoff on the old _Ladies' Home Journal_ cartoon_ad-
    vertisement, which had as its theme "Never underestimate the power
    of a woman."  Supposedly, he included his chemical secretly in a
    thermonuclear test in the Pacific, which neatly dates the story.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    Sometimes the real world is as interesting as fiction.
    
    Reliable contraception gave women control over having children.
    This caused all sorts of pressure for having casual sex, without
    a corresponding info blitz on how to use contraception (so
    birth control causes more births!!! particularly among teens who
    are too embarassed to deal with the subject till too late).
    
    It also caused an epidemic of VD and now is helping spread AIDS.
    In the mean time, most of the major contraceptive methods turn out
    to be less than perfect, and in this era of a lawer on each hip,
    the drug companies (hormone companies?) start to drop the pill,
    the IUD, spermacidal creams, ...
    
    Research money for contraceptives is drying up in the U.S. No new
    contraceptive methods are being produced in the U.S. (full steam
    ahead in Europe tho - different legal procedures I guess).
    
    In short, back to diaphragms and condoms (both of which are so 
    clumsy that they don't get used as much as they could).
    
    So, it looks like the era of casual sex is soon to be over.
    
    BUT WAIT.  To combat the rise in teen pregnancy, high schools are
    starting to provide contraceptives and/or info.  Soon there will
    be a whole new generation starting the cycle over.  Well, I guess
    I'll grab a book while I am waiting.
    
    A detoxified SF junkie (but hand me a book and I'll fall off the wagon)
    Erg

     >(CONTRACEPTION) is helping spread AIDS. 
    
    True, but the BIG culprit is K-Y jelly. :-)
                                            ---
                                             2

    The question of drugs to trigger or enhance sexual desire brought
    back a memory of a really old SF story (I read it at least 25 years
    ago).
    
    The story was set in the context of a prolonged WW III where
    inter-service rivalries were threatening to upset the entire war
    effort.  The remedy inter-service sex (the term used, I recall was
    "dighting" or the verb "to dight", author's attemt to come up with
    a non-Anglo-Saxan transitive verb).  The members of the various
    military services disliked each other so strongly that drugs were
    required to permit them to "dight" successfully.
    
    Anyone remember the story or the author?

    Re .10:
    
    "Dight," FYI, is an old English word, popular in the Middle Ages,
    for copulation.  If the author's rationale was _not_ to find an
    Anglo-Saxon word for the act, he or she received a self-inflicted
    shot in the foot.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

	Re .10;
    
    Thnks for the FYI, Steve.  The author's rationale was mainly to
    find a transitive verb that wouldn't immediately trigger the censor's
    blue pencil.

    Did you know Censor Blue is a new Crayola crayon?  It came out 
    right after Urine Yellow.

    				The Iceman

I remember the story pretty well, considering I haven't read it in years. it
was told in the form of a psychiatric interview between a non-com who had an
assignation scheduled and a robot psychiatrist which was only
semi-functional. I beleive it was in Galaxy #5 or therabouts, and I think
the author was Theodore Sturgeon.

Don.

    Thanks for the reference.  I may even have a copy of Galaxy #5 around.
     I'll take a look.  Sturgeon is certainly a plausible possibility
    for the author.