Farmer has written three different works called "The Lovers." ("The Lovers" [1952], story, expanded into a novel [1961], revised and republished, [1979]. Sequels: "Moth and Rust" [1953], story, rewritten and retitled as A Woman a Day [1960], novel, retitled The Day of Timestop [1968], and Timestop! [1973]; "Rastignac the Devil" [1954], story.)

The two alleged sequels to The Lovers are disappointing. The different versions of "Moth and Rust" are not sequels at all, but spy stories of the future, set in the same repressive society of The Lovers. "Rastignac the Devil" is a kind of "prequel," for its protagonist is the man who becomes the father of Jeannette, Hal's alien lover. Both stories are much more concerned with the nature of hypothetical new religions than with sexuality.

Of much more interest are those stories and novels which continue Farmer's exploration of human and alien sexuality. "The Captain's Daughter" (1953), for example, shows how fear of...