Female sex workers in SF

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Characters whose work explicitly involves sexual behavior or sexual performance. Includes people who provide sexual services for money or professionally, e.g., whores, prostitutes, streetwalkers, escorts, callgirls; sex performers; and people who do sexual performance for money or professionally, e.g., strippers, actors, lapdancers, nude or pinup girl models, etc.

See also List of non-female sex workers in SF

List of works

• Brian W. Aldiss. "Lambeth Blossom" in Strange Bedfellows: Sex and Science Fiction, edited by Thomas N. Scortia (1972). © 1967.
• Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale. Forced prostitution by the handmaids; and houses of ill-repute secretly provided for the bigwigs.

• Lois McMaster Bujold. Vorkosigan books. LPSTs on Beta Colony (Licensed Practical Sexual Therapists)

• Jacqueline Carey. Kushiel's Dart (2001) & sequels
• Jayge Carr. Leviathan's Deep (1979). Not a major theme, but there are definitely whores -- they're male. The society isn't primarily capitalist, so it may be that they are fulfilling religious service more than for money.

• Melissa Kwasny. Modern Daughters and the Outlaw West (Spinsters Book, San Francisco, 1990). A small Wyoming town is infested with quirky lesbians, ghosts, and politics. One of the ghosts -- a leading town-mother -- was the town madame / hooker.

• Mercedes Lackey. One of the Gryphon books have a sex-worker (Amberdrake, a "kestra'chern") as a protagonist; these particular sex-workers are respected in society, and are combination therapist / sex therapist / masseur, and are of both sexes. Examples of that profession crop up in other of her later Valdemar works. This is also one of the rare examples of a male sex worker in SF.

• Donna McMahon. Dance of Knives (2002) (major character was previously a sex worker; sex workers are common in the society)

• Charles Oberndorf. Sheltered Lives (1992). After the spread of "hives," a deadly STD, the government sets up shop with licensed sexual service workers.
• J. Neil Schulman. The Rainbow Cadenza. All women are required to spend several years in "the Service" - prostitution.

• Sarah Waters. Tipping the Velvet (It's not fantasy/sf, but readers of fantasy might well like it; the London of the early 20th century is pratically fantastic. This is a lesbian picaresque novel & well worth reading.)
• Joss Whedon. "Firefly" (character of Inara is a Companion, a registered multi-talented professional who at least sometimes includes sex in her services; she is regularly described as a whore by major character Mal; in episode "Heart of Gold", a former Companion is now a madame of a house of prostitution)
• Gene Wolfe. Free Live Free

• "Alias"
  • episode 2x11 (#35) "Phase One" Sydney undercover as an escort
  • episode 2x21 (#43) "Second Double" Sydney undercover as a dominatrix

• "Battlestar Galactica (1978)"
  • Cassiopeia was a "socialator", basically a courtesan or call-girl

• "Heroes - Niki Sanders (played by Ali Larter) was an online performance sex worker