By Martine Duplessis

What could be a more classic fantasy than a love slave? There's a long history of android-human love and sex in sci-fi books and film, but the web has its own special contributions to make to this world, bringing us visual as well as prose-inspired fantasy. A whole sub-culture devoted to engineered humanoids specially designed to cater to a human's every whim.

Visit http://www.gynoid.com to check out The Gynoid Gallery. What is a gynoid, you may ask? It's a word that comes from "combining gyn or gyne and oid" to mean resembling a woman. Think female android -- Priss in Bladerunner for example.The Gallery provides an encyclopedia of gynoid occurrence in film and television for your viewing pleasure; photos from such titles as Fembots in Las Vegas, Torture Garden, and The Tin Girl.

Over on http://208.214.31.26, The Female Android Cornucopia, provides more adult-oriented visuals. Dedicated to "lovely female androids, cyborgs, robots, amd gynoids," this site includes fiction and links as well as sections on movies/tv, art, artists and photos. The photos are the most interesting part of the site, but unfortunately the over-all lack of descriptive titles makes it difficult to navigate. The fiction is enticing, with titles like "Electric Destiny," "Vengeance of the Slave," "The Robo-Cover," and my personal favorite, "The Makeover."

Fantasy artist Sorayama Hajime's work may be seen at his official home page at http://www.imagingoz.com/sorak2.com. He's the renowned illustrator of "The Gynoids," "Sexy Robot," and "Pin-Up." View some of his images by following the art/products link. This site is slow, so only the daring will click on animations ...

For the real deal with sexually explicit photos, retouched to show woman merged with machine, head over to the Scotland-based site at http://www.brigadoon.com/~tmg/droid/main.htm. This is the only site I could find that offered a look at realistically depicted women, only with a few wires and patch panels exposed. Follow The Android Sexual Mechanics lab link to browse a gallery of photos captioned with things like "Andrea comes with removable limbs for better storage," and "extra body parts always available." There's also a membership link that doesn't go anywhere but, oh well.

For the overtly fake look, check out the mannequin lover's home page: The Art of the Mannequin at http://www.pathcom.com/~bond/homepage.htm. These are real mannequins, the variety of which you may see at Nordstrom's or Meier and Frank. This site is comprehensive and includes resources (where to get mannequins), a link to alt.sex.fetish.robots and an ASFR FAQ.

No discussion of droids would be complete without a mention of realdoll (http://www.realdoll.com). Discussed in this column last month, the latest dish on realdoll is that Howard Stern has purchased one; he claims he will be introducing his realdoll to a "parade of celebrated guests" like The Ramones and William Shatner. What will they say? But the whole droid scene, at least on the net, is heterosexual male fantasy fodder: no male droids appear with exaggerated body parts on pages that lovingly extol their virtues and cinematic pedigree. Theories, anyone?

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