Great title - but a novelette only likely to interest the literary acheaologists amongst us. Temple was a pioneer of British sci fi from the war period until the Seventies. He mixed with the best but never really rose above the level of supporting player. His best-known novel was Four-Sided Triangle, which I reveiwed earlier on this blog.
To me, Temple is interesting purely because he is a bystander, observer of what the better-known were up to. Fleshpots is basically a take on Psychedelic sci fi of, most notably, Michael Moorcock. Temple has ingenuity but a distinctly prosaic imagination, so the result is basically pulp detective noir in space. Ray Garner of the Sidereal Intelligence Service is ordered to the distant planet of Montefore to find SIS source Dr Lowry who has disappeared into the titular fleshpots.
A classic example of period sci fi - the galaxy has intergalactic travel but still uses telephone landlines. Interestingly, Temple's take on the travel element is that it has been made available to earthlings by the otensibly friendly Dorians of a far distant planet. Temple is a bureaucracy man and, typically, the Dorians retain a measure of control: earth travellers can only go one way on the instant relocator; the other half of a round trip has to be by conventional spaceship. Dr Lowry, a prominent scientist, was sent into space to try and figure out how the quick version works.
Despite mixing with aliens (and doing more exotic things to alien females in Sansato) human intelligence agents still favour racial stereotypes. Thus Garner's contact on Montefore is the very Italian Arnoldo (Arnie) Monicelli, who drinks Italian wine and favours long lunches. Garner is American and therefore a whisky man.
So Garner plunges into the fleshpots and meets the Satos, the Montefore version of geishas. Their sexual specialities are various: one is invisible, another is literally electric, a third a humanoid cat complete with claws. The one who leads Garner to the truth is Vygynia, an autistic waif whom both Lowry and Monicelli have taken under their wing, the Italian in a paternalistic, protective way, the not-so-good doctor probably not.
It's all good fun with plenty of betrayals and red herrings. I've no idea why this NEL edition is 'specially abridged' but having done my research on Four-Sided Triangle I'm betting there is another, very different version out there somewhere.
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