Journal: Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex

Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex
By Larry Niven*

Things of the form (*text*) are footnotes in the original text.
He's faster than a speeding bullet. He's more powerful than a locomotive. He's
able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Why can't he get a girl?
At the ripe old age of thirty-one (*Superman first appeared in Action Comics,
June 1938*), Kal-El (alias Superman, alias Clark Kent) is still unmarried.
Almost certainly he is still a virgin. This is a serious matter. The species
itself is in danger!
An unwed Superman is a mobile Superman. Thus it has been alleged that those who
chronicle the Man of Steel's adventures are responsible for his condition. But
the cartoonists are not to blame.
Nor is Superman handicapped by psychological problems.
Granted that the poor oaf is not entirely sane. How could he be? He is an
orphan, a refugee, and an alien. His homeland no longer exists in any form, save
for gigatons upon gigatons of dangerous, prettily colored rocks.
As a child and young adult, Kal-El must have been hard put to find an adequate
father-figure. What human could control his antisocial behavior? What human
would dare try to punish him? His actual, highly social behavior during this
period indicates an inhuman self-restraint.
What wonder if Superman drifted gradually into schizophrenia? Torn between his
human and kryptonian identities, he chose to be both, keeping his split
personalities rigidly separate. A psychotic desperation is evident in his
defense of his "secret identity."
But Superman's sex problems are strictly physiological, and quite real.
The purpose of this article is to point out some medical drawbacks to being a
kryptonian among human beings, and to suggest possible solutions. The kryptonian
humanoid must not be allowed to go the way of the pterodactyl and the passenger
pigeon.

I
What turns on a kryptonian?
Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. His humanoid frame is doubtless the
result of parallel evolution, as the marsupials of Australia resemble their
mammalian counterparts. A specific niche in the ecology calls for a certain
shape, a certain size, certain capabilities, certain eating habits.
Be not deceived by appearances. Superman is no relative to homo sapiens.
What arouses Kal-El's mating urge? Did kryptonian women carry some subtle mating
cue at appropriate times of the year? Whatever it is, Lois Lane probably didn't
have it. We may speculate that she smells wrong, less like a kryptonian woman
than like a terrestrial monkey. A mating between Superman and Lois Lane would
feel like sodomy-and would be, or course, by church and common law.

II
Assume a mating between Superman and a human woman designated LL for
convenience.
Either Superman has gone completely schizo and believes himself to be Clark
Kent; or he knows what he's doing, but no longer gives a damn. Thirty-one years
is a long time. For Superman it has been even longer. He has X-ray vision; he
knows just what he's missing. (*One should not think of Superman as a Peeping
Tom. A biological ability must be used. As a child Superman may never have known
that things had surfaces, until he learned to suppress his X-ray vision. If
millions of people tend shamelessly to wear clothing with no lead in the weave,
that is hardly Superman's fault.*)
The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual
intercourse show that orgasm resembles "a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack."
One loses control over one's muscles.
Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened
concrete, accidentally. What would he to to the woman in his arms during what
amounts to an epileptic fit?

III
Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to
achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with
kryptonian muscles.
Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously
ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.

IV
Lastly, he'd blow off the top of her head.
Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other
forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a
kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El's semen would emerge
with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet. (*One can imagine that the
Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy's puberty. And
why did Lana Lang never notice that?*)
In view of the foregoing, normal sex is impossible between LL and Superman.
Artificial insemination may give us better results.

V
First we must collect the semen. The globules will emerge at transsonic speeds.
Superman must first ejaculate, then fly frantically after the stuff to catch it
in a test tube. We assume that he is on the Moon, both for privacy and to
prevent the semen from exploding into vapor on hitting the air at such speeds.
He can catch the semen, of course, before it evaporates in vacuum. He's faster
than a speeding bullet.
But can he keep it?
All known forms of kryptonian life have superpowers. The same must hold true of
living kryptonian sperm. We may reasonably assume that kryptonian sperm are
vulnerable only to starvation and to green kryptonite; that they can
travel
  with
equal ease through water, air, vacuum, glass, brick, boiling steel, solid steel,
liquid helium, or the core of a star; and that they are capable of translight
velocities.
What kind of a test tube will hold such beasties?
Kryptonian sperm and their unusual powers will give us further trouble. For the
moment we will assume (because we must) that they tend to stay in the seminal
fluid, which tends to stay in a simple glass tube. Thus Superman and LL can
perform artificial insemination.
At least there will be another generation of kryptonians.
Or will there?

VI
A ripened but unfertilized egg leaves LL's ovary, begins its voyage down her
Fallopian tube.
Some time later, tens of millions of sperm, released from a test tube, begin
their own voyage up LL's Fallopian tube.
The magic moment approaches...
Can human breed with kryptonian? Do we even use the same genetic code? On the
face of it, LL could more easily breed with an ear of corn than with Kal-El. But
coincidence does happen. If the genes match...
One sperm arrives before the others. It penetrates the egg, forms a lump on it's
surface, the cell wall now thickens to prevent other sperm From entering. Within
the now-fertilized egg, changes take place...
And ten million kryptonian sperm arrive slightly late.
Were they human sperm, they would be out of luck. But these tiny blind things
are more powerful than a locomotive. A thickened cell wall won't stop them. They
will *all* enter the egg, obliterating it entirely in an orgy of microscopic
gang rape. So much for artificial insemination.
But LL's problems are just beginning.

VII
Within her body there are still tens of millions of frustrated kryptonian sperm.
The single egg is now too diffuse to be a target. The sperm scatter.
They scatter without regard to what is in their path. They leave curved
channels, microscopically small. Presently all will have found their way to the
open air.
That leaves LL with several million microscopic perforations all leading deep
into her abdomen. Most of the channels will intersect one or more loops of
intestine.
Peritonitis is inevitable. LL becomes desperately ill.
Meanwhile, tens of millions of sperm swarm in the air over Metropolis.

VIII
This is more serious than it looks.
Consider: these sperm are virtually indestructible. Within days or weeks they
will die for lack of nourishment. Meanwhile they cannot be affected by heat,
cold, vacuum, toxins, or anything short of green kryptonite. (*And other forms
of kryptonite. For instance, there are chunks of red kryptonite that make giants
of kryptonians. Imagine ten million earthworm size spermatozoa swarming over a
Metropolis beach, diving to fertilize the beach balls... but I digress.*) There
they are, minuscule but dangerous; for each has supernormal powers.
Metropolis is shaken by tiny sonic booms. Wormholes, charred by meteoric heat,
sprout magically in all kinds of things: plate glass, masonry, antique ceramics,
electric mixers, wood, household pets, and citizens. Some of the sperm will
crack lightspeed. The Metropolis night comes alive with a network of narrow,
eerie blue lines of Cherenkov radiation.
And women whom Superman has never met find themselves in a delicate condition.
Consider: LL won't get pregnant because there were too many of the blind
mindless beasts. But whenever one sperm approaches an unfertilized human egg in
its panic flight, it will attack.
How close is close enough? A few centimeters? Are sperm attracted by chemical
cues? It seems likely. Metropolis had a population of millions; and kryptonian
sperm could
travel
  a long and crooked path, billions of miles, before it gives
up and dies.
Several thousand blessed events seem not unlikely. (*If the pubescent Superboy
plays with himself, we have the same problem over Smallville.*)
Several thousand lawsuits would follow. Not that Superman can't afford to pay.
There's a trick where you squeeze a lump of coal into its allotropic diamond
form...

IX
The above analysis gives us part of the answer. In our experiment in artificial
insemination, we must use a single sperm. This presents no difficulty. Superman
may use his microscopic vision and a pair of tiny tweezers to pluck a sperm from
the swarm.

X
In its eagerness the single sperm may crash through LL's abdomen at transsonic
speeds, wreaking havoc. Is there any way to slow it down?
There is. We can expose it to gold kryptonite.
Gold kryptonite, we remember, robs a kryptonian of all of his supernormal
powers, permanently. Were we to expose Superman himself to gold kryptonite, we
would solve all his sex problems, but he would be Clark Kent forever. We may
regard this solution as somewhat drastic.
But we can expose the test tube of seminal fluid to gold kryptonite, then use
standard techniques for artificial insemination.
By any of these methods we can get LL pregnant, without killing her. Are we out
of the woods yet?

XI
Though exposed to gold kryptonite, the sperm still carries kryptonian genes. If
these are recessive, then LL carries a developing human foetus. There will be no
more Supermen; but at least we need not worry about the mother's health.
But if some or all of the kryptonian genes are dominant...
Can the infant use his X-ray vision before birth? After all, with such a power
he can probably see through his own closed eyelids. That would leave LL sterile.
If the kid starts using heat vision, things get even worse.
But when he starts to kick, it's all over. He will kick his way out into open
air, killing himself and his mother.

XII
Is there a solution?
There are several. Each has drawbacks.
We can make LL wear a kryptonite (*For our purposes, all forms of kryptonite are
available in unlimited quantities. It has been estimated, form the startling
tonnage of kryptonite fallen to Earth since the explosion of Krypton, that the
planet must have outweighed our entire solar system. Doubtless the "planet"
Krypton was a cooling black dwarf star, one of a binary pair, the other member
being a red giant.*) belt around her waist. But too little kryptonite may allow
the child to damage her, while too much may damage or kill the child.
Intermediate amounts may do both! And there is no safe way to experiment.
A better solution is to find a host-mother.
We have not yet considered the existence of a Supergirl. (*She can't mate with
Superman because she's his first cousin. And only a cad would suggest
differently.*) She could carry the child without harm. But Supergirl has a
secret identity, and her secret identity is no more married than Supergirl
herself. If she turned up pregnant, she would probably be thrown out of school.
A better solution may be to implant the growing foetus in Superman himself.
There are places in a man's abdomen where a foetus could draw adequate
nourishment, growing as a parasite, and where it would not cause undue harm to
surrounding organs. Presumably Clark Kent can take a leave of absence more
easily than Supergirl's schoolgirl alter ego.
When the time comes, the child would be removed by Caesarian section. It would
have to be removed early, but there would be no problem with incubators as long
as it was fed. I leave the problem of cutting through Superman's invulnerable
skin as an exercise for the alert reader.
The mind boggles at the image of a pregnant Superman cruising the skies of
Metropolis. Batman would refuse to be seen with him' strange new jokes would
circulate the prisons...and the race of Krypton would be safe at last.

Reprinted from All the Myriad Ways © 1971 by Larry Niven.

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In existence since December 1, 1994; last modified Tue Aug 31 19:33:10 PDT 1999