The TikTok alien porn book delivers

Don’t trust anything on the internet — until Mashable tries it first. Welcome to the Hype Test, where we review viral trends and tell you what’s really worth millions of likes.

At first, a lot of folks started reading the aliens-with-a-breeding-kink porn book currently going viral on TikTok as a joke.

Then, after several sex scenes with a hot, seven-foot-tall horned blue alien simp endowed with a massive schlong and tongue ribbed for her pleasure, well, we weren’t laughing at Ice Planet Barbarians anymore. At some point between devouring the first book in a single day, then immediately moving on to the next installment of the 22-book erotica series, that ironic laughter turned into a primal moan.

Credit: COURTESTY OF RUBY DIXON, COVER ART BY KATI WILDE

Now, before the pearl-clutching begins, let’s be honest: You’re at least a little bit curious. After all, you clicked on this article, didn’t you?

While initially released in 2015, Ruby Dixon’s self-published adult sci-fi romance didn’t get the glow up of a lifetime until May of 2021. It came from an unexpected source. BookTok, a corner of the social media app that’s home to the bookish, shot the niche extraterrestrial thirst trap straight to the top of various Kindle bestsellers lists with memes and videos of fans forcing friends and significant others to read it. Since the book is free with Kindle Unlimited, there wasn’t much to lose. Even if it didn’t turn out to be your thing, at least you’d get more of the in-jokes about Ice Planet Barbarians that were flooding #BookTok.

It isn’t the first time #BookTok, with its 16.6 billion views (and counting), proved itself a force to be reckoned with in the publishing world. Since the pandemic hit, this dedicated subgroup has given multiple genre romance books, like A Court of Thorns and Roses, unprecedented boosts in sales years after their releases. For a more in-depth analysis on the overall phenomenon, be sure to check out Slate’s awesome ICYMI podcast episode, which alerted me to it.

Admittedly, even I, a proud kinkster who’s specifically written about why it’s OK to be horny for the Shape of Water fish monster, was ready to disregard this particular thirsty internet trend as “just not my thing.” I, who owed my middle school sexual awakening to smutty Harry Potter fanfiction and the 18+ Anita Blake Vampire Hunter book series (in which the protagonist is cursed with a disease that requires her to have sex every few hours) thought Ice Planet Barbarians was a step too far for me.

But for your sake, dear reader — or so I told myself — I needed to test whether #IcePlanetBarbarians was really worth the hype of 44.3 million TikTok views. So I called every local bookstore in my LA neighborhood, blushing furiously as I asked each hipster if they stocked Ice Planet Barbarians, before quickly assuring them it was “for work” and “a TikTok thing” when they’d answer with a distressingly confused, “No.” As one TikTok from a Barnes & Noble in California made clear, even the big chain stores have been hesitant to stock this book, despite “everyone and their mother” asking for it.

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As unconventional (perhaps even repulsive) as the idea of fucking an alien sounds at first blush, I’ve gotta say that the erotic fantasy Dixon sets up is far more satisfying, giving, loving, and consent-conscious than most of the sex I’ve had with IRL human men. That’s as much a testament to Dixon as it is an indictment on Earth’s cis heterosexual males, though.

The first Ice Planet Barbarians book follows Georgie, a 22-year-old Floridian who gets abducted in her sleep along with a dozen other girls only to be treated as less than cattle by a crew of intergalactic sex traffickers (or smugglers — it’s not clear what they’re being sold for). But when something goes wrong and the cargo spaceship they’re caged in suddenly crash lands on an icy planet with two suns, the women are faced with a whole new set of terrifying unknowns.

Unlike the cargo ship, though, the ice planet isn’t all bad.

He’s basically the definition of submissive and breedable, a lovable extraterrestrial Stage Five Clinger.

Sure, the lack of food, shelter, and clothes, along with ceaseless blizzards and nightmare-fuel creatures trying to eat them isn’t great. But when Georgie braves the woods in search of help only to immediately get captured in a hunter’s trap, things seem to go from bad to worse to then extremely horny real fast. One of those aforementioned sexy, tall, blue-horned aliens releases her and, far from wanting to eat her alive, appears only interested in eating her out and protecting her from danger at all costs.

As we learn later, it’s because this virile alien himbo named Vektal wants nothing more than to please, protect, and mate with her for life in interspecies couple bliss. He’s basically the definition of submissive and breedable, a lovable extraterrestrial Stage Five Clinger eager to do whatever the hell Georgie needs to be safe and happy, no questions asked. Oh and did I mention his Sakh alien species have schlongs that come equipped with a nob for clitoral stimulation, essentially rendering their anatomy the rabbit vibrator of humanoid cocks?

I dunno, call me crazy, but that all sounds like a much better conclusion to an ordeal than most of my Tinder dates.

Listen, I know every social convention — from kink-shame to literary snobbery to the misogynistic disregard for everything women enjoy — tells you that you should feel guilty, ashamed, or weird for liking a book like this. But reading Ice Planet Barbarians was one of the most unadulteratedly delightful, sweet, funny, and arousing gifts I’ve given myself in recent months.

It isn’t just the wildly titillating fantastical sex scenes, either. This is, in the parlance of fanfiction, the Porn With Some Plot category of smut. Dixon’s plots are actually pretty compelling sci-fi on their own, with the added layers of romance and humor (and porn) expanding the scope of a genre that too often gatekeeps more feminine interests and sensibilities.

I found myself laughing as much as lusting. The POV eventually splits, switching between the two lovers’ perspectives and creating a hilarious juxtaposition between this average, everyday Florida girl and her self-serious extraterrestrial barbarian perpetually swooning over how many babies he wants to make with her because she’s a precious gift sent from the gods.

Honestly, as illicitly kinky as the premise sounds, their relationship is rather wholesome and uplifting. If a girl from Florida and a literal alien barbarian can find enough common ground to make each other cum multiple times, then maybe two humans from the same country with differing political ideologies can learn to find some common ground too (LOL who am I kidding? That’s an even less believable fantasy).

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On the whole, Ice Planet Barbarians is a testament to just how true the concept of “don’t knock it till you’ve tried it” really is when it comes to sexual desire. I for one had never previously considered how, in a consensual sexual situation with an alien, both parties would have to patiently explore and discover one another’s foreign anatomies and, er, “mating” customs.

There’s something incredibly sweet about a 20-something human woman teaching a hulking hunter alien what a kiss is. Georgie and Vektal take time just touching one other non-sexually, too, learning through the other’s responses what parts of the body and types of sensations bring them the most pleasure (it’s kinda like what mindful sex encourages you to do). It’s a lot nicer than the typical response one gets from the average real-life human male, who often treats the vagina like some sort of foreign alien anatomy he doesn’t even wanna bother learning how to please.

As odd or otherworldly as Ice Planet Barbarians seems on the surface, what the fantasy is really exploring is actually a very normal female desire: Sex with a committed partner who’s very emotionally attuned to your needs and more concerned with your pleasure than their own. That sexual dynamic shouldn’t feel so foreign or fantastical, but unfortunately too many of us earthlings with vaginas, it does.

Vektal isn’t just sexy because he’s super tall, strong, protective, and biologically obsessed with Georgie’s pussy. He’s also a male who wasn’t raised in a culture that treats vaginas like they’re disgusting abominations.

The fantastical erotica that mainstream culture deems “normal” versus “weird” is pretty bafflingly arbitrary.

There’s even one TikTok that semi-ironically posits a take on Ice Planet Barbarians as subversive feminist literature because the alien men “exist only for the sexual pleasure of women.” I’m not sure if a gender-binary role-reversal of women treating men like dehumanized sexual objects really counts as “feminist” (and it isn’t what happens in the book, in my opinion). But it’s still a valid sentiment, which is that we rarely get to imagine many scenarios where our pleasure comes first. Certainly, this is not a series at all interested in being part of any highfalutin literary category. As Dixon’s literary agent told CNN, “This is literally a sci-fi book written for the female gaze. So what if it’s not highbrow literature? Women can rage against the patriarchy in their real lives, and then read about a fun fantasy world and be smart and complex enough to know the difference.”

Ice Planet Barbarians‘ approach to the breeding kink does get off on creating a fantasy world in which the female anatomy is highly valued as a beautiful, life-giving miracle. And that’s just a really nice change of pace from how IRL patriarchy devalues, disregards, and stigmatizes female genitalia and pregnancy.

In the end, the fact that we’re so scandalized by Ice Planet Barbarians says a lot more about our culture than it does about the author or readers who enjoy it. The fantastical erotica that mainstream culture deems “normal” versus “weird” is pretty bafflingly arbitrary when you think about it.

Explain to me why, for example, it’s more acceptable in pop culture to get off to the fantasy of a 150-year-old vampire — who watches his underage love interest sleep (at first without her consent) — in a relationship where the main source of sexual tension is his uncontrollable urge to slit her throat and drink her blood until she’s lifeless. I’m not trying to shame Twilight fans, who are also part of another wholesome TikTok subcommunity. But it’s more than a little hypocritical to treat fantasizing about sex with a consent-conscious humanoid alien equipped with a dual stimulation cock as “weirder” than fantasizing about sex with a sparkly homicidal vampire virgin who leaves his partner covered in bruises post-coitus.

But what I really love about Ice Planet Barbarians and the beautifully bizarre TikTok community that’s sprung up around it is just how unconcerned everyone is with justifying their pleasure to the skeptical and judgmental.

The series doesn’t need to have High Brow Literary Feminist Morals, because there is also inherent value to a thing that brings this much harmless fun and joy to a lot of women (though there are plenty of fans who aren’t women, too). It’s a book that at times almost seems to intentionally avoid seeking the approval of literary snobs or the typical (often male) sci-fi genre fans, or even the bookstore owners who begrudgingly stock it while quietly turning their noses up at anyone who buys it.

BookTok is a community that feels no guilt for its pleasures. But Ice Planet Barbarians remains the kind of title you need to give yourself permission to pick up. I, for one, will be holding my head high the next time I return to Barnes & Noble and ask for the second book with the sexy blue alien on the cover.