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fajrdrakoCute (and interesting) article here about gay-friendly SF by Annalee Newitz, which is worth looking at if only for the brilliant title: Science Fiction That Could Turn You Queer If Only For a Nanosecond.
Description of Torchwood: It will not only turn you a little queer, it will make you want to go to Cardiff. Which is really perverted.
Some of my favourite gay-themed SF and fantasy isn't mentioned: Samuel R. Delaney, Elizabeth Lynn, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Vonda McIntyre.
Thinking about this led me to this list that I didn't know about: The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards, "given to works of science fiction, fantasy and horror which explore gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender topics in a positive way." What a great source of reading recommendations.
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Date: 2008-06-28 03:23 am (UTC)Is that not one of the best lines ever? ..."It will not only turn you a little queer, it will make you want to go to Cardiff. Which is really perverted." Hee! (Hey, watch it, my ancestors were from there.)
Agreed, some of the good stuff was left out. How could someone think of doing a queer SF overview and leave out Bradley? And, along with McIntyre, John Varley? Any one of them could turn you queer for a lot longer than a nanosecond!
But what a great title, too. Makes me almost forget about the insipid cover story on Out magazine a year or more ago featuring Jamie Bamber, which talked vapidly about how there's nothing gay about sci fi. Excuse me, sci fi is how I first realized that het isn't all there actually is, despite what people around me wanted to think, and sci fi has sustained this flame in me ever since! (Age seven, in case there was a question.)
Didn't you like the description of Torchwood: all-bisexual, all the time characters. Hee!
Thank you -- you made my night!
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Date: 2008-06-28 01:22 pm (UTC)I believe my library has all of them - I put them on my library version of the wish list, since I'm not requesting anything till I know I can pick them up and/or return them.
How could someone think of doing a queer SF overview and leave out Bradley?
Seemed odd. Good or bad, she was there and she was popular.
Makes me almost forget about the insipid cover story on Out magazine a year or more ago featuring Jamie Bamber, which talked vapidly about how there's nothing gay about sci fi.
Silly article, but it had some great illustrations.
Didn't you like the description of Torchwood: all-bisexual, all the time characters.
How could I not love a show like that?
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Date: 2008-06-28 04:29 am (UTC)There's also Steve Stirling ... his lesbians can make me wish I were one, if only for a nanosecond, lookit all the attractive females they get! Of course six-foot blonde barbarian swordspersons (Shkai'ra mek Kermak'skin) and equally tall Black Coast Guard officers (with swords) are male fantasies. Dunno if I'd call him gay-friendly, he doesn't do male/male anywhere near so well.
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Date: 2008-06-28 05:23 pm (UTC)Have you read that? It sounded very strange to me, though sort of intriguingly so. Couldn't tell what I'd think of the book. That in itself made me a little curious.
I also thought that by talking about 'queer' issues, Newitz was lumping in a huge number of sex issues, gender issues, and orientation issues without distinction. Which is okay, of course.
Suddenly you make me want to read Steve Stirling, which I have not done. Can you recommend a title to start with? With, preferably, attractive lesbian females?
six-foot blonde barbarian swordspersons (Shkai'ra mek Kermak'skin)
I like the type, though I'm marginally happier if they're bi.
equally tall Black Coast Guard officers (with swords) are male fantasies
Sure, obviously Steve's. Not not necessarily excluded from being a female fantasy too, depending on individual tastes. I suspect they're not really my kink - as female swordspersons go, I prefer Ellen Kushner's Kate to Xena any day.
Dunno if I'd call him gay-friendly, he doesn't do male/male anywhere near so well.
Does he do male/male at all?
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Date: 2008-06-28 05:48 pm (UTC)As to Shkai'ra, she's quite happily and aggressively bi. You need to get hold of a set of the Fifth Millenium books by Stirling and Karen Wehrstein and Shirley Meier. You might find some or all of them at cons, on dealers' tables: Snow Brother, Shadow's Daughter, Saber and Shadow, The Sharpest Edge, The Cage, Shadow's Son, Lion's Heart, Lion's Soul. They are long out of print Baen paperbacks. If you do ebooks at all, I forget if you do or not, I have some of them on my harddrive.
The Coast Guard captain is the main protag of his Nantucket trilogy, starting with Island in the Sea of Time. She rescues a blonde Bronze Age British princess from a Fate Worser than Death, and falls for her hard.
As for male/male, well ... in Shadow's Son, Megan Whitlock's son, slave since he was an infant to the pedophilic Arkans, is an adolescent by the time his mother and her lover Shkai'ra rescue him from that slavery during the siege and fall of Arko, and quite homosexual. I don't know whether he is Steve's character or Shirley's, though.
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Date: 2008-06-28 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-28 07:41 pm (UTC)Inasmuch as the couple I lived with while in England (I refer to her as the Red Queen) apparently wound up in Cardiff, it would be decidedly perverted from my point of view. [And no, I don't believe in being masochistic, either.]
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Date: 2008-06-28 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 12:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 02:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 03:03 am (UTC)I have to admit: I loved that line.
It's a talent.