Re: [UUPoly-L] Rimmer

["Michael Rios" <earthfather@cfnc.us>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: uupoly-l-bounces+earthfather=cfnc.us@uupa.org 
> [mailto:uupoly-l-bounces+earthfather=cfnc.us@uupa.org] On 
> Behalf Of Kit Peters

> 
> So at the KC poly munch yesterday, someone brought up a 
> fellow named Rimmer and a book called "The Herod Experiment" 
> as another seminal poly work of fiction, like many of 
> Heinlein's novels.  Has anyone read this book, and if so, 
> what did they think of it?

The title is "The Harrad Experiment"-- the setting was at a radical college,
and Rimmer created the name by combining the first syllables of Harvard and
Radcliffe.

A lot of people liked it.  I read in in 1967, I think, and while the sexual
dynamics were titillating (for that time), I felt the character development
was poor.  There are six people in each dormitory pod, and each person has a
sexual relationship with each of the members of the opposite sex.  The story
is told by switching first person accounts among the six.  But it struck me
that the "voice" of each person was nearly identical to al the others.  At
one point, he has one of the characters thinking that having sex with one of
the women was somehow the same as having sex with the others.  Even with the
limited experience I had at the time, I knew that (for me, at least),
different sexual partners have vastly different styles, and the
personalities of each person and my relationship to them varied dramatically
from each other.  I could never imagine losing track of who I was making
love with at the time.
  
I appreciated that *someone* had written about the kind of relationships
that I was having, but felt that it was a fairly superficial job; the author
seemed to have very little insight into the real dynamics of multiple
intimate relationships.  At the time, I wondered if the author had ever had
multiple loversl; I've since learned that he did have an open relationship.
In any case, I found the concepts intriguing, but the characters and
relationships among them to be lacking.  If it weren't for the radical
sexual dynamics, this book would have been very forgettable.

It also annoyed me that the foreward is fictional; it was written as if it
were an actual forward to a non-fiction book.  At the time, with no Internet
or other good way of tracking down further information, it was confusing as
to whether there was any reality to it or not.

As it is, I think that it is still worth reading, as much as being a seminal
work in the history of polyamoric thought, rather than any insight into
polyamory that might be gained from the story.  

Michael Rios