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Back
when I was a music major, I didn't have a lot of time to read,
so it was a rare treat when I found the Mercedes Lackey book
that kept me awake all night because I just had to get to
the end.
The title
was Magic's Pawn, and it wasn't until afterwards that
I realized that there was more to that book than a good story.
It was the characters and their relationship to each other
that really kept me going. There was Vanyel, a young man struggling
to find his place in the world and the person he loved was...a
boy. Imagine that. He loved and lost and fell in love again,
and all of it written with such tact and sympathy that for
the first time, I really understood the meaning of a gay relationship.
When
I read that book, something just clicked, and I know I'm not
the only one who has experienced this. Some fifteen percent
of queer folk find out what it means to be queer through the
written word, and considering that fewer people are reading
these days, that's a significant percentage. Looking back
on it, I like to blame Mercedes Lackey for the fact that all
my own books and stories have gay protagonists. It's no wonder
I write what I do. I write the books I want to read, and inevitably
they turn out to have themes that reflect what's important
to me. But in my quest to discover more science fiction and
fantasy (SF/F) books with LGBT themes, I began to wonder when
they started appearing and from where did they come.
 One
of science fiction's most popular tropes is that of the Other.
Think first contact stories where humans meet aliens and have
to figure out how to deal with them. For the humans, the Other
is the unknown quantity—are they friendly, will they
annihilate the planet, or will they just enslave everyone?
In fantasy, it could be the knight/prince/magician from a
distant land, another race, or a pauper as viewed by a king.
Whatever
the genre, people are often afraid of the Other. It comments
on our values and our very selves. We define ourselves by
our relation to other people, and by doing, so we also define
the Other. In genre fiction, the Other could be used as a
contrast, such as Elves and Orcs compared to men in J.R.R.
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Or the Other could
be a consummate threat like Sauron, willing to wipe out entire
races for the sake of his goal.
In our
own society, the Other could be someone of a different culture,
religion, or sexuality—someone who causes us to question
our own values and place in society. Writing science fiction
and fantasy is a way to make the differences more palatable.
Genre fiction is important to the LGBT community because we
can often identify with the Other. So often, we're raised
outside our own culture and have to contend with those that
see us as the Other, and we are therefore misunderstood, shunned,
and denied rights taken for granted by heterosexual people.
Science fiction and fantasy gives us the window into the way
our lives as queer folk could be and, for queer authors, a
way to voice the dreams and frustrations they have with our
own society.
In his
essay "Homosexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy," James
D. Reimer suggests that using a distant future or alien culture
to portray an aspect of homosexuality may be less threatening
to the reader than if it were presented as an issue in the
reader's own society. Looking at how LGBT SF/F evolved, it
seems to be true.
While
traces of homosexuality can be found as far back as Beowulf,
modern homosexual literature begins with Oscar Wilde and his
longtime partner who coined the phrase "The love that dare
not speak its name." Science fiction and fantasy took a far
different route to introduce LGBT content. In the 1950s, explicit
sex—never mind homosexuality—was taboo in science
fiction. The audience SF targeted was young, technically-minded
men, so the stories were more about gadgets and spaceships
and adventure rather than the characters. Philip José
Farmer ignored that taboo and made one of the most important
contributions to SF literature with his 1952 novella The
Lovers, which became the first published story to feature
an explicit human/alien relationship. The next year, Theodore
Sturgeon broke ground with his short story "The World Well
Lost," which is sympathetic to the plight of two homosexual
aliens fleeing the restrictions of their home planet.
 Samuel
R. Delany, an openly gay SF writer, had to contend with the
same societal restrictions in his work. In his early novels,
like Nova, two of his characters are generally assumed
to be gay because of the amount of time they spend in each
other's company, but it's never stated openly. In his 1967
Nebula award-winning short story, "Aye, and Gomorrah . . ."
Delany uses the idea of the Other to reflect his own search
for what it meant to be gay, black, and a science fiction
writer. In it, the unnamed narrator is a spacer, neutered
at a young age so as to be able to withstand working in space.
The contrast comes in the form of a "frelk," a person who
is sexually attracted to the neuter. While it's an acknowledged
desire, she hates herself for it. The most telling line in
the story is, "If spacers had never been, then we could not
be . . . the way we are." She defines herself by the presence
of the Other—in this case, the neutered spacer.
Once
Delany published Dahlgren in the 1970s, the civil rights
movement was in full swing and no subject was too taboo or
graphic as long as it served the purpose of his work. His
most infamous novel, Hogg, was published some thirty
years after he wrote it in the late '60's. It's not SF, and
certainly not for anyone faint of heart or stomach due to
the violent and graphic content, but every bit of it deserves
to be there and illuminates a fascinating cast of characters,
both queer and straight.
Marion
Zimmer Bradley is better known for her Mists of Avalon
series, but it's her SF series set on Darkover that made a
difference to the LGBT community. In an age where homosexuality
was still not openly discussed, MZB (as her fans fondly call
her) dealt with LGBT issues directly. In 1971, her book The
World Wreckers featured a chieri, a non-human that
can be either sex or neuter "as the occasion warrants." Heritage
of Hastur came out in 1975, and was among the first novel
to feature a hero, Regis Hastur, who was also gay. MZB's other
books feature other LGBT characters, such as the Renunciates
who could be heterosexual, lesbian, or even neuter. They were
important personally to many gays and lesbians, both because
of her inclusion of them in her worlds and the way she treated
them with respect and sympathy. They were no longer the Other.
The 1980's
brought a new generation of writers, among them Melissa Scott,
and another way to look at the state of LGBT society by using
social allegory. In Shadow Man, Scott uses a "third"
sex as the Other to represent issues gays and lesbians face
in our own society. Due to the effects of faster-than-light
travel, mankind now has five sexes (male, female, and three
variations of hermaphrodite) and nine sexual orientations,
and has accepted those differences—except on the planet
Hara. Warreven is a hermaphrodite on Hara, and is forced to
choose to be either male or female despite the obvious anatomical
differences and is expected to have a heterosexual lifestyle.
After being granted a political office he didn't want, Warreven
becomes embroiled in the civil rights issues of his world,
fighting for the right to be recognized as the sex he is and
for the right to be with the partner he loves—another
hermaphrodite.
 Nicola
Griffith also embodies another ideal of LGBT SF/F, one started
by MZB. Unlike mainstream LGBT fiction, where characters seem
to be so often preoccupied with the coming-out process and
what it means to be gay, those events—while sometimes
present—are often superseded by other issues in SF. Griffith's
later books, The Blue Place, Stay, and Always
feature a lesbian protagonist named Aud, and her story conflicts
have little or nothing to do with her sexuality. Aud doesn't
think about being a dyke and she doesn't have issues with
it. She likes women, and it's the way she is. That's all there
is to it. Instead, she's dealing with conflicts any hetero
character might have, such as grief from losing someone she
loved dearly and being pulled back into her role as a protector
and crime-solver.
Starting
in the 90s, Lynn Flewelling gained a devoted following among
teens and adults with Alec and Seregil, the gay protagonists
of her Night Runner series. The fan art on her website
is a tribute to how much readers love her characters. She's
also written the gender-bending Tamir trilogy, in which
a young queen-to-be is disguised as a boy for her own safety.
Flewelling, like Mercedes Lackey, has helped to make gay protagonists
more common and accepted in fantasy.
Richard
Bowes added to the genre in 2000 with his beautifully-written
Minions of the Moon, an urban fantasy which details
Kevin Grierson's struggles with his Shadow. It's the mix of
gritty reality along with the touch of fantasy that make this
book stand out. It's also a sign that the trope of the Other
need no longer be used; readers are now able and willing to
read about LGBT subjects in SF/F, even when it takes place
very close to home, as Bowes' does.
And of
course, this evolution doesn't even begin to touch e-books,
or Japanese boy's love (a non-graphic male/male relationship)
and yaoi (graphic male/male love) manga, all of which feature
copious amounts of LGBT relationships, both chaste and not.
Nor does it include YA SF/F books by authors such as Holly
Black that include gay characters, but trust me—they're
out there, and they all deserve a look.
So what
might the future hold for LGBT SF/F? Most likely a mixture
of what has come before along with influences from elsewhere
in the world, such as novelizations of Japanese manga, more
allegories and Others as new concerns arise in the LGBT community,
more gay and lesbian heroes where their sexuality isn't an
issue. Rest assured, the future is in capable hands with authors
such as Nalo Hopkinson, Anne Harris, Steven Harper and Elizabeth
Bear, who all recently put out works with positive portrayals
of queer folk.
As for
me, I'm grateful and honored to be a part of the SF/F community,
especially now that we can openly recognize LGBT love and
dare to speak its name.
(October,
2007)
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