A Journey Round My Skull joined Feuilleton and Arthur Magazine in posting a slew of new covers and illustrations from the beguilling German magazine. Here are a few of our favorites, and you absolutely must check out the rest over at the individual sites.

And then in a further paroxysm of art-inspired debauchery, AJRMS sponsored a contest to create bookplates similar to the Orchideengarten style, and the results are fantastic. I would never dare steal a book from your library if it bore one of these insignia. Here are a few of the best, but they're all worth checking out.

Though there are probably precedents for the dragon sex fetish in the pages of kinky horror pulp Weird Tales, I think it's safe to say the phenomenon was popularized by McCaffrey and her Pern novels. These books, published starting in the late 1960s and continuing into the present, focus on a civilization of humans who evolved from the crew of a spaceship of colonists who landed on planet Pern. Using biotechnology, the humans genetically modify the local firelizards to be giant, flying steeds that the "renewable air force" rides. The genemodded dragons also have psychic links with their riders, which forms when the dragons are hatched and select humans "impress" themselves onto the creatures.

Dragonriders aren't warriors; they are protectors. Pern experiences a seasonal weather pattern called "threadfall," where deadly spores from a neighboring star fall to the planet, destroying everything in their paths. Unless, of course, the dragons can zoom around and burn the threads before they hit the ground. Guided by their trusty humans, the dragons protect all the people of Pern from the terrible thread.

They also have sex. And when dragons have sex, their riders - in constant psychic connection with their mounts - have sex too. This means a lot of "whoa I didn't want to have sex with you but now that our dragons are having sex damn let's do it" kinds of stuff. In addition, the most common types of dragons, the blues and greens, only get impressed by gay boys (and occasionally straight girls). So: Lots of gay psychic dragon sex. This strange scenario has meant that Pern's large and talkative fandom has spent many years debating the sexuality of dragons in discussion forums and at conventions like the Weyrfest at Dragon*Con.

In her infamous essay on Pern's renewable airforce, McCaffrey responded to fan speculation by talking a little about how dragon/human sexuality works:

In the Beginning of Dragonriders of Pern™, females rode green or gold. Males rode blue, brown or bronze. (I made it easier for myself in the beginning by remembering that Boys impressed Brown, Bronze or Blue, and Girls impressed Gold and Green.)

Since greens are females and tend to be 'loving', they mated with any dragon they fancied. When not enough girls elected to stand on the Hatching Grounds after the first disastrous Plague, males with feminine personalities Impressed green dragons. Blue riders, not to mince words, tended to be gay with masculine temperaments. Browns, who were not so inclined to mate with a green's rider, made an arrangement so that two pairs of riders were involved in a green's mating.

The dragons act in the way they were bio-genetically designed . . . While the main and most important application of the [telepathy-enhancing substance] Mentasynth was to increase mental function and innate empathy in the 'dragons,' a secondary use was to allow the newly hatched young dragon recognize the most suitable symbiotic partner. At hatching, the dragon recognizes by the sweat pheromones the appropriate sexual partner. Therefore the dragonet, just out of its shell, would approach only the male or female candidates exuding the proper pheromones for its basic sex type.

The green dragons are particularly sensitive not only to the mental empathy of possible candidates but also to pheromones.

McCaffrey's dragon sex scenario is probably the most highly developed in the world of science fiction, but it's not an aberration. Jane Yolen's young adult Dragon Pit series explores the dragon reproductive cycle in great detail, and the psychic human-dragon bond does involve romance. Similarly, Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series explores dragon sexuality and romance. Main character Eragon's dragon Saphira is the last female dragon alive, so the issue of mating and reproduction is unavoidable for her. There is even a psychic dragon sex subplot in the recent Captain Marvel Annihilation series.

Several years ago, dragon sex became one of the most hotly-debated topics at the book-oriented World Fantasy Convention when a publisher handed out excerpts of Janine Cross' Touched by Venom, the first book in her intense, harrowing Dragon Temple Saga. The excerpt, which describes a dragon-keepers' ritual on an alien planet, includes a scene where young adepts are beaten with dragon-venom laced whips. Because the venom has aphrodisiac properties, the result is a bizarre parade where young dragon-keepers are marched through the streets covered in blood and brandishing giant erections. Unfortunately, it wasn't the greatest excerpt to hand out: Con-goers found it laughable when they read it outside the context of the rest of the series, which is about a peasant revolt in an oppressive monarchy.

So why does dragon sex inspire such passionate debate? Why, indeed, does dragon sex even happen at all in science fiction?

There is one obvious answer, which is that dragons represent sex because they are enormous, fiery, beautiful, uncontrollable creatures of fantasy. The urge to have sex is one of those giant, burning desires that is particularly difficult to slay. It's also an urge that is fueled by our fantasies. So there's a kind of no-duh analysis of dragon sex, which is nevertheless true, that says simply that dragons are metaphors for sexual desire. This certainly explains the zillions of pages of Otherkin slashfic on the internet.

But of course everything is always more complicated than that.

Let's consider the role that dragon sex plays in books like Yolen's series or Pern - both of which have large young adult audiences. In his book Killing Monsters, comic book writer Gerard Jones talks about why kids are drawn to stories about monsters. He says it's because kids identify with what it's like to exist in a world ruled by the whims of giant creatures and megapowerful humanoids. Though Jones focuses on why kids like to watch monsters engage in violence, I think a similar thing might be said for why young adults might also be fascinated by giant creatures having sex. Sex belongs to the exotic world of adults. It's something that young adults are aware of, possibly in internet-enhanced detail, but it's also not something most of them are experiencing firsthand. So it makes a certain amount of sense that young people might identify with characters for whom sex is something they're connected to mentally, via the acts of creatures more powerful than themselves.

Philip Pullman explores this idea in young adult trilogy His Dark Materials too. When his young adult characters finally have sex at the end of the series, they begin by petting each other's animal daemons. These daemons follow every person around, acting as external representations of their feelings and desires. The same way McCaffrey's characters sometimes express the sexual feelings of their dragons. In both cases, the smaller creatures act out the desires of larger ones.

Dragons are a simple metaphor for sexual desire, and they may also evoke the way young adults feel about sex. But those assertions still don't entirely explain way dragons function in the venom cock scenario from Janine Cross' Dragon Temple Saga.

I would suggest that the dragons in Cross' novels are something like the worms in Dune. Cross' dragons don't have much of a psychic connection to their riders - they are more like animals, and so to the extent that they communicate telepathically it's not much of a conversation. Not only do these dragons provide a drug that fuels a thriving black market economy (like Spice but less useful), but their eggs are a major source of nourishment to the people of the kingdom. And the fastest way to get around is by riding a flying dragon. So dragons are a cornerstone of the kingdom's economy, crucial for food and transport. That's why Cross depicts dragons as being hoarded by the ultra-rich. A major part of the peasant revolt involves redistributing access to the dragons.

Cross is doing something tricky with her dragon sex. She's talking about those uncontrollable, giant forces that I mentioned earlier in connection with Jones' book. But instead of her dragons standing in for adult sexual relationships, they stand in for the often-abusive relationships between aristocrats and peasants. She uses weird scenes of these dragons jabbing their venom-laced tongues deep inside our heroine's special spot to show us how peasants are debased by their aristocratic overlords. At the same time, the peasants are made complicit in their degradation because they crave the high they get from the dragon venom. So Cross' dragons stand in for the overwhelming desire people have for power over each other. Power that gives them the right to enslave, rape, and rule over other people.

Of course, sometimes a dragon is just a dragon. But dragons and sex often go together in science fiction because it's an inherently metaphorical genre. SF stories about fantastical monsters are often fables that contain messages about our own world. A perfect alloy of beauty and violence, the dragon is an enduring figure for the power of sexual desire - and for the way power often finds its most brutal expression in sexual acts.

Top image by Boris Vallejo. Fan art from Dragonchoice.

Over at the blog ArtOrder, a group of concept designers spent the past week coming up with designs that fit the theme. I'm already in love with the idea of Earthquake Dragon, which is such an evocative phrase. Does it mean a dragon who causes earthquakes? Who is somehow the physical embodiment of an earthquake? Or who is magically linked with earthquakes, and so is perhaps summoned by them? The artists in this gallery have come up with their own interpretations, and they're all brilliant. Get more information on the artists, as well as dozens more images, at ArtOrder.

The magazine's artwork ranged from representations of medieval woodcuts to the work of masters of the macabre such as Gustav Dore or Tony Johannot. Two issues of the magazine were devoted to detective stories, and one to erotic stories of cuckolds, but the rest of the time, it was all fantasy stories, including pedestrian German originals as well as fantastic reprints from abroad. A Journey Round My Skull has a terrific collection of the magazine's covers, a few of which are here. Click over there to check out the rest.

Outlander co-writer/producer Dirk Blackman posted on his blog that the movie is adding some more cities to its run this weekend. It's not clear how many of the cities from its opening weekend it's sticking around in, but if you live in one of these places, your Viking ship is in:
1. Mobile-Pensacola , AL
2. Knoxville, TN
3. Huntsville-Decatur, Fl
4. Greensboro-H. Point-W. Salem , NC
5. Dothan, AL
6. Cleveland , OH
7. Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY
And yes, it's hitting Huntsville-Decatur, but New York City or Los Angeles. The WTF continues!

"Ancient Superbeasts" from Reign of Fire
As you can see in our clip of the trailer from Reign of Fire, above, this movie looked really good in principle. A futuristic world invaded by dragons who squirt really cool fire, Matthew McConaughey is bald, Christian Bale is scruffy and sarcastic, the world is in ruins, and everybody is hiding out in bunkers. There's even a hint that there might be a dragons vs. helicopters moment. Unfortunately, it was about as goofy as Doomsday, but without all the ninjas and race cars and punk rock cannibals from Glasgow. Plus, the helicopters never fought the dragons, the way they did in D-War. Still, you take what you can get. This is the only movie you will ever see that combines dragon-slaying with crumbling, futuristic, post-apocalyptic London. Many points given just for trying.

Ghidorah AKA Monster Zero
Of course, Godzilla is probably the original science fiction dragon. The Big G squirts fire, is seriously spiny, and comes into town to stomp the shit out of everything (a very dragon move). He's also some kind of "ancient creature from beneath the sea" re-awakened by human meddling (in this case, atomic tests). But if you want to go full-on scifi dragon, you have to wait until Ghidorah the three-headed monster enters the popular kaiju franchise. Ghidorah comes from space (even you non-Japanese speakers can recognize the word "UFO" in that headline in the trailer for Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah above). Like most good dragons, Ghidorah has a breath weapon (lightning), golden scales, and giant leathery wings. In case you were still wondering about his scifi bonafides, he later becomes MECHA Ghidorah, complete with cyber head and body armor (kaijugasm!!!).

"Psychic Friends" from Dragonriders of Pern series
Anne McCaffrey's classic Dragon Riders of Pern book series is about the civilization created by of a bunch of humans on an alien planet called Pern. It's hinted that long ago, the humans colonized Pern and never left. Dragons, complete with fire-breathing and psychic powers, are their companion species on Pern. In fact, dragons are necessary to its ecosystem, which is invaded every 200 years by killer "thread," spores from space that consume everything in their path. Only the dragons can kill the spore with their firey breath. Human riders of the dragons lead the charge against thread, and also form special psychic bonds with their mounts. The society on Pern is pretty medieval, with dragons serving as the main technology.

"Heroin Bulls" in the Dragon Temple Saga Trilogy
Janine Cross' harrowing, revisionist homage to the Pern series is the Dragon Temple Saga, about an alien planet strongly divided up along racial and nationalist lines. Dragons are the cornerstone of the economy: they provide transportation via flight, and food via their tasty eggs. Their venom is also the source of a powerful drug that many people on the planet are secretly addicted to. Our hero is a woman whose mother comes from the outcast "piebald" race on the planet, and she has to fight poverty and slavery to finally earn the right to be a dragon master. Along the way, she has amazing battles and, um, some sexytime with dragons. Not for the faint of heart, this series will rip your brain out and make you feel strange for weeks afterwards.

Old Lace in Runaways
In the comic book series Runaways, created and mostly written by Brian K. Vaughan, a group of teenagers discover their parents are supervillains and decide to run away to form their own group that seeks great justice. At one point, the purple-haired nerd Runaway named Gertrude discovers that her time-traveling parents have stashed a psychic dinosaur/dragon to take care of her. She names it Old Lace, and it always answers her mental call.

The T-Rex in Jurassic Park
No list of scifi dragons would be complete without a nod to Jurassic Park, whose resurrected dinosaurs are basically dragons for the genetic engineering age. Excellent as a book, fun as a movie, Jurassic Park is about what happens when a wealthy entertainment entrepreneur decides it would be a really awesome idea to recreate dinosaurs from DNA found preserved in amber. They dinos are supposed to be sterile, but unfortunately nature takes its course and soon the fun Jurassic Park island is overrun with deadly creatures, fresh from the petri dish. Some of the dinos are clearly just dinos, but when the T-Rex arrives with his deadly stomping and long teeth, you know you've got a Genomic Age dragon on your hands.