On November 25, 1998, the memberships of the USS Harvey Milk and the Voyager Visibility Project (offshoots of the lesbian and gay sf group, the Gaylaxians) issued a call for a boycott of the then soon-to-be-releasedStar Trek: Insurrection. After nearly two decades of lobbying the producers of the variousStar Trekshows and movies for the inclusion of a lesbian or gay character¹ in a cast intended to represent all types of humans (including a variety of racial and ethnic types, as well as both sexes²) and quite a miscellany of aliens, the groupʹs membership has finally, it seems,...

The golden age of queer sf is 20. Or maybe it was the 1970s. Or perhaps it was in France. Itʹs all relative, like the notion of ʹqueerʹ itself.

My golden age began in Scotland, when I was 20. My girlfriend and I were sleeping on a friend’s floor, travelling about a bit, absorbing life – and lots of hash. A woman handed me a book, saying, ʹI hear yeez like the wee aliens and shite. Have ye read any with gur-uls before?ʹ I have a vague memory of glancing at a blue-ish cover before returning to the serious business...

In her 1985 essay ʹThe Virginity of Astronautsʹ, Vivian Sobchack argues that science fiction film has persistently refused to deal with human eroticism, exiling sexuality to the extent that it manifests only as unconscious pathology. The classic icons of the genre – monsters and mutants, alien invasion and possession, technological mastery or impotence – emerge in her analysis as neurotic symptoms, materializations of the forces of repression that lurk beneath the antiseptic surfaces of its futuristic sets and the Ken-doll banality of its space-jockey heroes. Her study is devoted largely to classic sf films of the 1950s, and one wonders...

It comes down to this: in a world where so many of us are unable to find a home, a place which is both materially and affectively livable, should we not all be able, at the very least, to find a home amongst the seemingly infinite planes of the imagination? And where else are such imaginative worlds to be found – the air breathable, the water potable, the crops edible, the houses built, and the furniture waiting to be rearranged – if not in science fiction? And if what is making our lives unlivable in the present has to do...

In common with most of his work, Samuel Delanyʹs science fiction novelTrouble on Triton(1976) is subscribed with a tag providing the geographical and temporal co-ordinates of its composition – in this case, ʹLondon, Nov. ʹ73–July ʹ74ʹ. Asked in an interview whether this particular tag has ʹsome organic significanceʹ, Delany replies: ʹItʹs been my contention for some time that science fiction is not about the future. It works by setting up a dialogue with the here-and-now, a dialogue as intricate and rich as the writer can make itʹ (ʹSecondSFSInterviewʹ 343–44).¹ In this essay, I want...

Even though literary cyberpunk is ʹa product of the Eighties milieuʹ (Sterling x), it still continues to exert a cultural impact, as evidenced by ongoing critical attention, popularity, and dissemination of its motifs.¹ The key figure in cyberpunk lore is William Gibson and its key texts are Gibson’s first trilogy,Neuromancer(1984),Count Zero(1986), andMona Lisa Overdrive(1988).² In spite of its popularity, however, there have also been significant critiques of Gibsonʹs fiction in particular and of cyberpunk in general. Nicola Nixon, in her influential feminist essay ʹCyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys Satisfied?ʹ...

In his recent cultural history of the genre, Roger Luckhurst astutely describes the project of science fiction as ʹspeculation on the diverse results of the conjuncture of technology and subjectivityʹ (222). In the past two decades or so, Anglo-American sf has undertaken this kind of speculative project in the most literal of ways – the concretization of metaphor being a particularly favoured sf strategy – whether exploring the impact of technoculture on the human subject as such in its many cyborg stories or attempting to trace the ontological features of our artificial progeny in stories about robots and other forms...

Working on the fantastic in the arts means occasional trips to strange (imaginary) places. The science fiction erotica published by Cecilia Tan, and the ʹpleasureʹ of researching queer science fiction pornography, took my experience to a new level. Tucked away on back shelves of independent science fiction bookstores and alternative erotica shops, these books are intended to be consumed in bed or while stretched out on the living room couch during an afternoon alone at home. They evoke a flushed reading satisfaction and a slight sense of guilt because they decadently provide nothing but pleasure. Reading them for ʹresearchʹ earns...

Sexual themes are quite common in science fiction, demonstrated for instance in the many entries in sf dictionaries and encyclopaedias and in the many anthologies that revolve around speculative sexuality.¹ Interestingly, sexual representations in sf stories often suggest a certain level of sadism, or at least of cruelty. From the impossibility of sexual encounters between the mutually alien bodies of human beings and Others (for example, in Octavia Butlerʹs ʹBloodchildʹ [1984]) to the mindʹs entrapment in a machine that prevents any sexually induced exultation (for example, in Anne McCaffreyʹsThe Ship Who Sang[1961]); from psychologically painful mutations (as in...

Nalo Hopkinson, a Jamaican-born Canadian author, has become in less than a decade a critically acclaimed novelist of speculative/science fiction and an original voice in the critical and political debates about speculative fiction, feminism, and afro-futurism. For her three novels,Brown Girl in the Ring(1998),Midnight Robber(2000),The Salt Roads(2003), for her collection of short fiction,Skin Folk(2001), and for her three edited anthologies, she has received wide critical recognition, including winning the Locus First Novel Award, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and...

ʹQueering natureʹ seems an appropriate theme for enquiries into sexuality in science fiction, especially from the perspective of feminist and queer theories. While it may not immediately suggest an overt comment on sexualities, it is inarguable that ʹnatureʹ as well as ʹcultureʹ is heavily implicated in our understandings and performances of sexuality.¹ Indeed, just as our constructions of sexuality (and the strictures of normative heterosexism) infuse every aspect of our culture/s, so too do sexualized assumptions underpin our constructions of ʹnatureʹ. And further, the ways we think about ‘nature’ impact upon and constrain our notions of sexuality. Wendy Pearson observes...

Must any future order, whether on Mars or elsewhere, recapitulate a racialized heteronormativity? Can we imagine a peaceful and just society only as the outcome of a reproductive order that requires a firmly rooted hierarchy of racial and sexual identities? Are we to assume that an ideology combining white supremacy with patriarchy must serve as the limit condition of any viable future? Do the new races imagined in science fiction simply recreate the habits of dominance and submission that structure current social realities? These are my guiding questions as I consider whether it is possible to ʹqueerʹ the utopian subgenre...