I have been reading smut, which is to say I have been considering the socio-economic implications of a depressed fiat monetary system encountering an advanced, space-faring civilization that is still–somehow–building its economy based on barter. (Specifically, product x in exchange for women.)

The primary plot thread is, of course, the romantic, but in general, I find all kinds of bits and pieces that I’d like somebody to expound upon, and other paths I could see the story taking.

It’s a good exercise in how you twist a story one way, and it falls into one genre, but it could easily be something else entirely, if you took it a different direction… or, you know… if you added another 600 pages to what you have there.

My inner geek girl always wants to know what exactly is wrong with these alien men. So… uhm… you’re offering the opportunity to travel the stars… and you don’t have an immediate deluge of willing candidates? Did you try asking around at ComicCon?

Are we talking halitosis, or more like… intergalactic quantum crawl space filled with dead bodies?

How exactly did all the women on your own planet get dead?

Oh, yeah. That’s right. “Plague.”

Are you sure you’re not  an asymptomatic carrier? Put on your damn face mask, Martian Mallon.

Careful, girls. If you swing a right at “dead” you’ll get to “infertile” and live out your lives in The Handmaid’s Tale in Space.

Forced to leave your family on Earth…? Hmmm. Very interesting. Seems like there might be some kind of story there, too. Maybe not so much forced, as hopping the first interstellar spaceship out of town.

Or… what if your devious cousin signed you up just to get you out of the way?

And then, there is the matter of the babies. Eventually, those kids are going to be born, and be raised between two drastically different cultures.

And what if the maturation cycle is significantly different than one or the other of the parents is expecting? Her: Eighteen years, and off to college. Him: Eighteen weeks from hatchling to being kicked off the side of a sheer rockface.

Oh, there are so many possibilities!