I read a novel back in the '80s that I’ve been trying to locate; unfortunately I’m hazy on the details. Up until a few minutes ago I would have sworn that the author was Philip K. Dick, but a search on Amazon isn’t giving me anything familiar.
Here’s what I remember:
-it was science fiction.
-it was surprisingly graphic in terms of sex scenes.
-it involved weird aliens.
-it may have been titled “Blown”, but perhaps not.
-one of the female aliens had a sort of snake-type creature living in her hoo-ha, and after it bites one of the characters, he grabs the thing and pulls it out resulting in the female literally falling to pieces. :eek:
Vague enough for you? This ring a bell for anyone?
Thanks in advance!
Sounds like a dream I had after too much Tabasco.
That is Blown, by Philip Jose Farmer.
Image of the Beast by Philip Jose Farmer; Blown is a shorter story incorporated into it. The snake thing is the reincarnated Gilles de Rais ( sp ).
Bingo!! Thank you, Der Trihs and pinkfreud!
I’ve been going nuts the past couple of hours trying to figure it out.
I need to nitpick a bit, because this has one of the more convoluted publishing histories in sf.
There are three books in what Farmer called his Exorcism Trilogy:
1 The Image of the Beast (1968)
2 Blown or Sketches Among the Ruins of My Mind (1968)
3 Traitor to the Living (1973)
The Image of the Beast and Blown were each published by Essex House as separate paperback novels in 1968. In 1979 Playboy Press combined them into a single paperback titled just Image of the Beast, although the cover states “Two Underground Classics IMAGE OF THE BEAST and BLOWN Now Available in One Unexpurgated Volume.”
This went through several printings. Berkley reissued the combined edition in 1985, so this may be the book the OP was thinking of.
The third book, Traitor to the Living, was originally a Ballantine paperback in 1973, but Tor put out its paperback edition in 1985 so for a brief - and I think only - period in 1985, all three books were easily available in official American releases simultaneously.
The Essex House paperbacks were legendarily rare before the Internet. A copy of Image of the Beast still runs a minimum of $100; Blown several times that.
Of course, any author who names his protagonist Herald Childe deserves some obscurity. 
I must have had a copy of this edition, as I read it in '80 or '81. I also seem to recall something like that on the cover. I don’t think I ever read the third book though…
