A Defense of the Social Contracts

Title:	A Defense of the Social Contracts
Genre:	Sci Fi
Mediums:	Acrylic
For Sale:	NFS
Views:	181
Posted:	2/11/2026
Status:	Published

Projects:

In 1993 I was commmissioned by Science Fiction Age Magazine to do an illustration for the Martha Soukup Story, " A Defense of the Social Contacts" . The story was quite simple in nature, a future where your sexual prefences had to be established by law early on and you had to adhere to that by signing a legal document. Unfortunately, in this story, the main protagonist is not quite happy with her male partner' s choices. Its more complicated than this and I won' t go on. I labored over the illustration for weeks, doing various sketches that were not quite right for the story. Finally we settled on this version with some very elaborate detailing I wanted to put in to give the scene more mystery and drama. Soukup went on to win a Nebula in 1994 for this short story in which I did the illustration. I found out about second hand and was very happy to hear this, though no mention of me. lol. Later when I did meet Soukup at some SF event, she told me that she was not altogether happy with my illustation telling me that if she had known I was going to put two men in the bed scene she would have written her story to include it as gay men. I was of course taken aback by this, since the two people I put in the bed where indeed a woman and a Man. I could not show the woman' s breasts so I disguised it with shadow per the editors' request. Anyway, I was mystified since most people who look at the illustation do see a man and a woman. This painting sold at the ConFrancisco World Con around 1993 to Harlan Ellison. It remained in his collection until it sold again via Heritage Auctions twice. It is in a collection down in Florida currently.