True, Aye, And Gomorrah is by no means a recent story: it has been published in 1967 in that amazing anthology (Dangerous Visions) that I have reviewed a while ago, and that is a recommended reading for anybody looking for SF short stories far better than many novels. But it was a story that created a lot of controversies at the time it came out, and even now many readers would find it disturbing. 
In the display of the sex-neutered Spacers – astronauts that have been genetically modified in order to survive in outer space’s extreme conditions – and in their somehow perverse interactions with the humans that cherished and seek them out nonetheless, there’s something incredibly touching and sad, written in Samuel Delany’s unique style.
“I want you because you can’t want me. That’s the pleasure. If someone really had a sexual reaction to . . . us, we’d be scared away. I wonder how many people there were before there were you, waiting for your creation. We’re necrophiles. I’m sure grave robbing has fallen off since you started going up. But you don’t understand . . .” She paused. “If you did, then I wouldn’t be scuffing leaves now and trying to think from whom I could borrow sixty lira.” She stepped over the knuckles of a root that had cracked the pavement. “And that, incidentally, is the going rate in Istanbul.”
A reading you won’t forget, but not an easy one, and something that raises serious questions about human nature. Aye, and Gomorrah won, unsurprisingly, the 1967 Nebula Award for best short story.
Thanks for this recommendation! Always looking for sci fi to read that I’m not familiar with. Cinda
Thanks, Cinda. Delany is definitively an author you want to have a look at. 🙂
Hello, Stephen. Thank you for reminding me of Delany. I haven’t read him in way too long, and this one never. I’ll pull Dangerous Visions down off the shelf
Definitively worth a reading, Paula!