To Love Like Venus

Alita, a whiz at helping AI extract marketable trends from human sex behavior datasets, tries her hand at love.

Alita Melusine is the embodiment of desire. Her appetite for pleasure drives much of her twenties and is deliciously displayed in her roller-disco dancing, a niche retro craze in Manhattan's 2050s-itself a scene of gentrified cyberpunk. That her heart remains untouched by Eros's arrow is one of the many attributes Jean loves about her. Yet her aged Casanova-like mentor is also the first to point out Alita's greatest flaw: Though Alita is a whiz at making sense of datasets detailing the sexual habits of the city at her job assisting artificial intelligence, she's less certain of her own personal life. Despite what Jean tells her, she's always believed that somewhere in relationships there is room for love. Now she's ready to try this theory out, despite Jean's objections-no matter what the cost. So when she pairs with the winsome Kaveh, she finds herself on uncharted roads-and facing the rabid objections of Kaveh's mother, Claire, who disapproves of Alita and her shameless flaunting of selfhood in the roller-disco rink. When the latest superstorm hits the city, Alita's world begins to unravel. Jean's imprint on her life is more than she realized-as is, unfortunately, Claire's. On an island where life is lived in a rave of niche fantasy, in the midst of a surrender to environmental collapse, Alita must put together the pieces of her mosaic to confront the woman she really is-and learn what it means to love like the storms of Venus.

To Love Like Venus is a literary glimpse into a near future of tech-fueled human sexuality, environmental decay, and soft cyberpunk.

After delighting readers and reviewers with Event Horizon: Stories of No Turning Back, 2022 Chautauqua Janus Prize winner Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos returns, this time with a debut novel following some of its characters. This book requires a trip to Venus, which means immense heat, crushing pressure, and the risk of getting burned. Did we mention this is the planet of love?

Cover by Baris Sehri and Interior Design by Lewelin Polanco, The Cosmic Lion.