Elvis M. “Elf” Sternberg, born May 7, 1966, is a prolific American writer and a figure from early Usenet. He is best known as keeper of the alt.sex FAQ and as one of the highest-volume, widest-known erotica authors online. The work runs through science-fiction fan fiction, fights inside Usenet, and a huge original setting, the ringworld Pendor. On Pendor he writes kink, nonhuman partners, and relationships with artificial intelligences. The characters are adults: humanoids, robots, and AIs among them.
The Only Fair Game and the copyright fight
His best-known single piece is the erotic short story The Only Fair Game. It became famous, and for a while infamous, because it uses Larry Niven’s alien species, the Kzinti. The story speculates about homosexual relationships and BDSM practices among them, and Niven’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist. Sternberg has argued that the story is protected parody. Niven has maintained that it violates copyright. He did not pursue the case further, and the dispute is still talked about in science-fiction fandom. Niven discussed it in a Slashdot interview. For kink culture and fan-fiction history it is a landmark: even when the author calls the work transformative criticism, an explicit same-sex and SM reading of a copyrighted alien can still collide with the rights-holder.
Pendor’s society and its sky
The Journal Entries of Kennet R’yal Shardik is Sternberg’s long-running erotic series, set on the fictional ringworld Pendor. The body of work is the Pendorwright Projects. Pendor rotates around the star Pin. Day and night are simulated by a ring of shadow blocks, 292 day-and-night cycles in each Earth year. The system also includes the planet Pandora, its moon Pindam, and the space station Parma. The entries are dense: exploration, sex, and social design, on a tight timeline, with humans, humanoid species, robots, and artificial intelligences.
From a pocket universe to the singularity
In an early Journal Entry, Kennet Shardik travels back in time and gives his AI, Fawn Destiniere, to a younger version of himself. After consulting Fawn, that younger Shardik creates Pendor in a pocket universe and lets it develop while he is in suspended animation. He and other AIs then design new species, including Centaurs, Dragons, Felinzi, and Tindals. Just before the first Centaur is born, Shardik delivers Fawn back into the past. On his return he dumps the databanks, so silicon-based and carbon-based inhabitants have to explore and learn without a full map. About 93 Pendorian years later the pocket universe opens and Pendor moves into our universe. A network of SDisks is built for transport, and exploration continues. At the end of the universe, Fawn keeps a base on Pindam through to the singularity and triggers a second Big Bang with the words “Let there be.” Pendor and its people are the backbone of one of the oldest and largest erotic science-fiction collections built inside a single original universe.
A regular on Usenet
Sternberg was a regular poster on Usenet, including alt.sex, rec.arts.sf.written, rec.arts.sf.composition, and alt.atheism. His name is on the Net.Legends FAQ, which is why he still shows up when people map early internet kink writing. FAQ keeper, high-volume erotica author, and a focus of argument in the science-fiction community: his site and the Pendorwright projects remain the main way into the Journal Entries.
