Dwelling in Probabilities

LGBT Science Fiction and Fantasy Before 1970

While portrayals of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) characters didn't become relatively common in science fiction, fantasy or horror until after the early successes of the Gay Liberation Movement in the 1970s, that didn't mean that there was no depiction of homosexuality in these genres before then. Of course, most of those early LGBT characters were depicted in coded terms, their identity only hinted at. Homosexuality was illegal nearly everywhere in the world and could carry severe legal and social consequences if it was discovered. Characters portrayed their same sex interest with a significant glance, a passing comment or a bit too much interest in another character, an interest that often turned villainous or fatal.
 

Early science fiction and fantasy writers who experienced what one of Oscar Wilde's lovers called "the love that dared not speak its name" and wrote fiction about it paid dearly for it. William Beckford, the gay author of the Orientalist fantasy The History of Caliph Vathek (1786), began his life as one of the richest men in England and ended as a bankrupt disgrace in France. A century later, Wilde himself, author of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), The Canterville Ghost and assorted fairy tales, would be imprisoned on sodomy charges and end his life a broken man.
 

In contrast, Sheridan Lefanu was able to write about a lesbian vampire in the classic vampire tale "Carmilla" (1872) to praise and acclaim, but Lefanu was heterosexual (as far as is currently known) and the lesbian relationship in his story is equated with death and destruction. Villains and monsters had no need to be subtle about their desires.

It would be another fifty years before bisexual author Virginia Woolf paved the way for   subsequent positive portrayals of LGBT characters with her time travelling fantasy novel Orlando in 1928. In Woolf's novel, Orlando changes genders from male to female, then chooses to present as male for much of the rest of her/his four hundred year long life. Both men and women are attracted to her/him on multiple levels, making it a groundbreaking work for SF/F, though it is generally classified as literary fiction.
 

Author Olaf Stapledon's superhuman protagonist John Wainwright in Odd John (1936), also has positive relationships with both men and women before embracing asexuality. This was one of the most positive portrayals of a queer character to appear during and shortly after World War II.
 

The negative portrayals, unsurprisingly, outnumbered the positive ones and, during the War, generally equated homosexuality with Nazism. One of the better-known examples, Katharine Burdekin's alternate history about the Thousand Year Reich, Swastika Night (1937), is a vision of a Nazi society built around homosexuality and misogyny. Another alternate history, Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here (1935) touches on some of the same themes, linking homosexuality to Nazi totalitarianism.
 

The 1940s were, unsurprisingly, a bleak period for positive portrayals, corresponding with the overall attitude amongst pulp fiction editors and society at large that a character was better off dead than gay. Readers looking to find less dire fates for LGBT characters had to wait until the early 1950s when horror author Shirley Jackson included several sympathetic female characters who can be easily read as lesbians or bisexuals in such novels as Hangsaman (1951) and The Haunting of Hill House (1959). Theodore Sturgeon cast a ray of hope with his classic story "The World Well Lost" (1953) in Universe, about two aliens in love and the intolerance they face. It is considered to be the first openly sympathetic depiction of homosexuality in science fiction.

The later 1950s and 60s ushered in more positive portrayals of LGBT characters by such famous names as Fritz Leiber, Theodore Sturgeon, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Edgar Pangborn and Robert Heinlein. The dramatic social changes of the 1960s impacted the science fiction and fantasy genres as they did everything else, inspiring a new generation of writers as well as creating new audiences. The decade also saw the early publications of the first openly gay and lesbian genre authors of the modern period, including Samuel Delany, Joanna Russ and Thomas Disch.

Their stories and novels, as well as those of other progressive writers in the field, paved the way for new perspectives on sexuality and gender in science fiction, fantasy and horror. If you're interested in learning more about the early years of LGBT SF/F, I recommend the excellent reference book Uranian Worlds: A Guide to Alternative Sexuality in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, edited by Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo (G.K. Hall & Co, 1990) which covers the topic through 1989.

Some recommended reading:

A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn (1954)

"Mr. Wilde's Second Chance" by Joanna Russ (1966)

"Aye, and Gomorrah" by Samuel Delany (1967)

"The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar" by Fritz Leiber (1968)

Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig (1969)

       

Catherine Lundoff lives in Minneapolis with her wife, two cats and a huge number of unfinished projects. She writes, edits, toils in IT and is currently on the brink of a grand new adventure. Follow her on Twitter at @clundoff or via her website at www.catherinelundoff.com.

 

by Catherine Lundoff

The dawn of the 21st century brought massive changes to the publishing industry, fueled in part by a surge in epublishing. More efficient and portable e-readers enabled readers to access an increasing number of ebook publications, fueling ebook sales. Larger print publishers, many of which were unprepared for the shift, responded by consolidating or closing their doors. There were additional impacts to brick-and-mortar stores as well as to print distribution of books and magazines. Many authors responded to these changes by releasing their own books in a variety of formats, sometimes by starting their own small and medium-sized presses.

Alongside the shifting landscape of publishing, there were significant changes in the visibility and legal status of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. LGBT people and their allies pushed for, and in many cases, won recognition of their relationships, equal employment protection, the opportunity to serve openly in the military and other opportunities that they had been heretofore barred from. This increased visibility was reflected in science fiction and fantasy fandom as well as published works, genre TV, comics and elsewhere.

The LGBT book awards founded in the previous decade such as the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards, the Queer Horror Awards and the Lambda Awards came into their own during this decade, highlighting works that featured positive portrayals of LGBT characters and bringing queer-themed work to a much broader audience. There were also new awards such as the Goldie Awards for lesbian literature, which launched in 2005 and included a speculative fiction category.

A number of writers who were considered to be literary fiction authors crossed into science fiction to publish novels with LGBT protagonists in the 2000s. Among these were Michael Chabon with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) and Jim Grimsley with Kirith Kirin (2000) and The Ordinary (2004). Other writers who straddled the dotted line between literary and science fictional work during this decade included Octavia Butler, whose novel Fledgling (2007) featured a bisexual vampire and Finnish author Johanna Sinisalo whose novel Not Before Sundown (2000) featured a gay protagonist who temporarily adopts an injured troll. The English translation of the novel, Troll: A Love Story, won a Tiptree Award in 2004.

The decade also saw a substantial growth in the number of writers of color crafting stories with LGBT protagonists. Author Malinda Lo achieved critical acclaim with Ash (2009), her retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian protagonist. Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads (2003) featured three female protagonists of African descent, one lesbian, one bisexual and one heterosexual, in three different time periods. Karin Lowachee won a Spectrum Award for her science fiction novel Cagebird (2005), which featured a gay protagonist. Craig Gidney’s speculative fiction collection Sea, Swallow Me (2008), featured a number of gay protagonists who were also people of color.

There was also greater visibility of writers from different countries (in addition to those mentioned above) writing LGBT SFF than in previous decades. Hal Duncan (Scotland) saw his first novel, Vellum, published in 2005 and its sequel Ink, in 2007; Vellum and Ink were a fantasy series about a war between Heaven and Hell and featured several gay protagonists in an ensemble cast. L-J Baker (New Zealand) was the author of Lady Knight (2007), a romantic fantasy novel about a lesbian knight and Adijan and Her Genie (2008), an Arabian Nights-style fantasy with a lesbian protagonist. Sarah Hull (United Kingdom) won a Tiptree Award for her novel, The Carhullan Army (2007), a dystopian science fiction novel with a lesbian protagonist. Hiromi Goto (Canada) also won a Tiptree for her novel, The Kappa Child (2001), which featured a queer female protagonist who may or may not be pregnant with a kappa baby.

There were several TV shows which had a significant impact on LGBT SFF, one of which was Xena: Warrior Princess. As the series wound toward its final episode in 2001, the previously subtextual romantic relationship between Xena and Gabrielle become more textual, though never quite consummated on screen. The show inspired several online fanfiction and activist communities, which in turn gave rise to a number of lesbian-focused publishing companies. Several of these companies began publishing paranormal and romantic science fiction along with other genres. Of these, Bold Strokes Books, founded in 2004, is the largest and best known; over the course of the decade, they published romantic lesbian fantasies and science fiction by authors such as Gun Brooke, Cate Culpepper and Jane Fletcher.

Xena fandom also contributed to the birth of a new organization. The Golden Crown Literary Society was created in 2004 to promote the reading and writing of lesbian fiction, including speculative fiction and paranormal romance. It hosts an annual conference where awards are given to books published in the previous year (see link in Resources at the end of Part 2 of this post) and fantasy author Jewelle Gomez has been one of the guests of honor.

The Queer Horror Awards spanned work in different mediums from 1998-2006. These awards were given to such works as the TV show Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, which featured several LGBT characters in the course of the series; Bending the Landscape: Horror, the final installment of the trilogy of anthologies edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel; and the Queer Fear anthologies, edited by Michael Rowe. Queer Fear Vols. 1 (2000) and II (2002) included gay horror stories by such authors as Thomas Roche, Gemma Files, Poppy Z. Brite and Michael Thomas Ford.

This post got so big that we split it into 2 parts. Please check out the second part to learn more about LGBT science fiction and fantasy from 2000-2010. The resource list is at the end of Part 2. Thanks for reading!

Catherine Lundoff is a former archaeologist, former grad student and former bookstore owner turned professional computer geek and award-winning author and editor. She is a transplanted Brooklynite who now lives in Minneapolis with her wife and the two cats which own them. Silver Moon (Lethe Press, 2012) is her latest book and “Medium Méchanique” in Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam (2013) and “The Light Fantastic” in Luna Station Quarterly (2013) are her latest stories. Visit her online at her website www.catherinelundoff.com, facebook and Twitter as @CLundoff.

 

by Catherine Lundoff

The 1970s, famed as an era of free love, political protests and hallucinogen-fueled utopias, gave way to the era of punk and New Wave, AIDS, and the politics of Reagan and Thatcher in the more conservative 1980s. And science fiction, fantasy and horror followed suit, with hard-edged military science fiction, dystopian visions, anti-hero sword and sorcery, vampires and of course, cyberpunk. None of these, on the face of it, seemed any more LGBT-friendly than the sfnal works of the previous decade, yet the number of portrayals of LGBT characters more than quadrupled.

This was due in large part to greater visibility and increased social acceptance of LGBT people. In addition to LGBT characters, there were also more out lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans authors in the genre than ever been before. Delany, Russ, Disch and Lynn were joined by Melissa Scott, Geoff Ryman, Rachel Pollack, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, David Gerrold, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Jewelle Gomez, Jeffrey McMahan and others.

Fantasies with LGBT protagonists included the last book in Elizabeth Lynn’s Chronicles of Tornor series, The Northern Girl (1980), as well as Samuel Delany’s sword and sorcery series, The Tales of Nevèrÿon, which were released in multiple volumes over the course of the decade. The Silverglass series by J.F. Rivkin: Silverglass (1986), Web of Wind (1987), Witch of Rhostshyl (1989) and Mistress of Ambiguities (1991) featured a bisexual swordswoman and a lesbian witch in a series of swashbuckling adventures. Writers S. M. Stirling, Shirley Meier and Karen Wehrstein collaborated on the post-apocalyptic fantasy series The Fifth Millennium, which included The Snow Brother (1985), The Sharpest Edge (1986), The Cage (1989), Shadow’s Daughter (1991) and Shadow’s Son (1991) and featured two bisexual women warriors as protagonists and partners.

Ellen Kushner and Mercedes Lackey created very different gay protagonists in Swordspoint and Magic’s Pawn, both published in 1989. Lackey’s novel takes a more traditional fantasy route in the first volume of the Herald Mage series, creating a coming out story focused on a young gay magic user with psychic abilities. In contrast, the influential fantasy Swordspoint depicts established lovers, a swordsman and a young scholar, caught up in political intrigue in a European-style city that never existed.

Joanna Russ, Storm Constantine and Delia Sherman were amongst the authors who created stories and characters dealing with gender liminality and how alternative genders are perceived by others. Joanna Russ’ story “The Mystery of the Young Gentleman” (1982) features a protagonist who presents as a young gay man, but is, in fact, not as he seems, traveling with his teenaged female protégée, who is something else entirely. Storm Constantine’s Wraeththu books, which begin with The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit (1987) is focused on a telepathic intersex species that presents as male. Delia Sherman’s Through a Brazen Mirror (1989) is based on the ballad “The Famous Flower of Serving Men” and features a protagonist compelled to disguise herself as a man and hide at the king’s court. Complications ensue when the king and the ladies of the court fall in love with the man he appears to be.

The decade also saw a series of new interpretations of vampire legends, often interpreted as a response to the AIDS epidemic. Anne Rice’s popular Vampire Lestat novels and related works with their queer supernatural creatures were the best known, but writers like Jewelle Gomez were also creating their own takes on the tales. Gomez’ African-American lesbian vampire, Gilda, appeared in a number of her early short stories. Author Jeffrey McMahan introduced his gay vampire, Andrew Lyall, in several stories that appeared in his collection Somewhere in the Night (1989) and again in his novel, Vampires Anonymous (1991). Author Jody Scott featured a bisexual vampire who falls in love with a highly memorable alien in her novel I, Vampire (1984).

The Gomez and McMahan stories appeared in a small number of LGBT science fiction, fantasy and horror titles released by such LGBT presses as Alyson Press and Firebrand Books. Alyson also published the anthology Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Eric Garber, Camilla Decarnin and Lynn Paleo (1986). Naiad Press published Katherine Forrest’s lesbian science fiction novel Daughters of the Coral Dawn (1984) and her mystery and science fiction collection, Swords and Dreams (1987). Meanwhile, in the UK, Onlywomen Press published Carolyn Forbes’ lesbian science fiction collection The Needle on Full (1985) and Anna Livia’s lesbian SF novel, Bulldozer Rising (1987).

The LGBT presses primarily marketed books to the gay and lesbian communities, generally through specialty gay and lesbian bookstores. As a result, some of these books and authors never achieved recognition in larger science fiction and fantasy fandom. In contrast, authors Melissa Scott and Geoff Ryman, achieved mainstream success and won a number of awards for their portrayals of LGBT characters. Scott’s novels of the decade: A Choice of Destinies (1986), The Kindly Ones (1987), the Silence Leigh series and Armor of Light (1988), co-written with Scott’s then partner, Lisa Barnett, all feature queer protagonists ranging from Alexander the Great to starship pilots and Christopher Marlowe. Ryman had several novels and short stories out during the decade, of which his Campbell-winning The Child Garden (1989) features a lesbian protagonist

I’ve been focusing on LGBT portrayals in books above but wanted to end by mentioning a couple of works in other mediums. The Hunger (1983) is a horror film staring Catherine Deneuve as an immortal vampire and David Bowie and Susan Sarandon as her lovers. Love it or hate it, it remains one of the most glamorous vampire films with LGBT protagonists ever made. Also worth watching is Born in Flames (1983), in which filmmaker Lizzie Borden creates a documentary about a feminist/queer/people of color revolution that never was.

I also wanted to put in a plug for Mike W. Barr and Brian Boland’s limited series from DC Comics, Camelot 3000 (1982-1985). Camelot is about the return of King Arthur and his knights in the year 3000 when Earth is threatened by an alien invasion, led by Morgan Le Fay and Mordred. Arthur’s knight, Tristan, is reincarnated as a woman, as is Isolde, and one of the subplots focuses on their relationship and conflicts, making it one of the first positive portrayals of a lesbian relationship in mainstream comics.

This is, of course, a high level overview, and some aspects of what we now associate with the science fiction and fantasy of the 1980s didn’t include LGBT protagonists until the 1990s. Early cyberpunk, for example, is remarkable for its absence of LGBT characters. Overall, the decade saw a remarkable growth spike in depictions, positive and negative, of LGBT characters in SF/F/H and for reasons of space and time, I haven’t touched on secondary characters or short fiction or fan fiction or characters who were incidentally bisexual, however positive the portrayal. For those interested in reading more, here are some resources and references:

• Uranian Worlds: A Guide to Alternative Sexuality in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror by Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo
• Wikipedia LGBT Themes in Speculative Fiction
• Mary Anne Mohanraj – Alternative Sexualities and Identities in Fantasy and SF Booklist
• Lambda Sci_Fi Recommended Reading List