Science Fiction Day 2023: LGBTQ+ Sci-Fi Recommendations from the students and faculty of the Science Fiction Studies Program in Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

Welcome to our annual Science Fiction Day deep dive into the most interesting work in the genre, as recommended by the stellar faculty and students of the Science Fiction Studies program in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. This year, we are highlighting science fiction with LGBTQ+ themes. From a teenage outsider destined to save the universe to a spacefaring captain inhabited by an ancient ghost, these stories explore themes familiar to many in the queer and trans communities, such as alienation and the weight of cultural expectations. They offer a diversity of representation often lacking in mainstream fiction. In these recommendations, you’ll discover the passion our students and scholars have for the genre — which has done much to influence today’s technology and technologists — and the importance of recovering and celebrating the diverse voices who played such an integral role in its founding.

We begin with Regents’ Professor Lisa Yaszek, who takes us on a journey into cultural history with a fascinating origin story linking science fiction and the gay rights movement.

Note: Where possible, we have provided links to materials available through the Georgia Tech Library.

'A rich tradition'

LGBTQ+ speculative storytelling

Lisa Yaszek, Regents’ Professor | School of Literature, Media, and Communication

There’s an old cliché that science fiction is — or at least originally was — all about “straight white boys and their toys.” But as digital technologies give us increasing access to the historical science fiction archive, we learn this just isn’t true. In fact, we find that queer and trans people, especially queer and trans women, have long gravitated to science fiction as a narrative form that quite literally gives voice to all kinds of people — including those who seem to be alien or even alienated by others. This tradition extends back to the 1940s when Jim Kepner and Tigrina, the pen name of writer Edythe Eyde, came out to their friends in the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society. They then used what they had learned about fan-based community building and fanzine production to create the first American LGBTQ+ publications. Kepner helped establish the first nationally distributed gay magazine, ONE. The refusal by what was then known as the U.S. Post Office Department to deliver the magazine on account of obscenity kicked off a legal battle that led the 1958 Supreme Court to declare that what we would now call LGBTQ+ news materials were indeed protected by the First Amendment.

Around the same time, Tigrina founded Vice Versa — the earliest known U.S. periodical published expressly for lesbians. Eventually, she went on to write for The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian news magazine, and in 2010 was inducted into the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association’s Hall of Fame.

While Kepner often brought gay friends to science fiction events, it was Tigrina who wrote some of the earliest examples of queer speculative fiction. An amateur poet who gained notoriety in the science fiction community for her interest in the occult, Tigrina was part of a larger mid-century literary movement in which women and other politically progressive artists used fantastic female beings, including the witch and the vampire, to protest the conservative scientific, social, and sexual politics of midcentury America. 

This is especially apparent in her poems “Defiance” and “Affinity,” both published in 1945. “Defiance” tells the tale of a modern-day magician who chafes under the laws imposed by the “pious lot” of her family and community, quietly celebrating her ancestral connections to the witches of Salem and all those who are supposedly condemned to Hell for defying the status quo. After all, as Tigrina reminds readers, in contrast to her own paranoid and hate-filled world, at least “the Devil loves his own.”

Meanwhile, “Affinity” follows the adventures of a lonely vampire whose life is transformed upon discovering another who shares her “secret joys and dark delights.” Together, the speaker imagines that she and her beloved will bring back ‘forbidden arts” and transform the world because “flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, thou art/My shadow, twin, and living counterpart.” You can learn more about Jim Kepner and Tigrina at the ONE National Archives.

'17776'

Val Barnhart, 2nd-year Literature, Media, and Communication student

17776 is a beautiful piece dealing with climate change, space travel, and the continuity of humanity — all centered around bizarre football games. This work gets deep into the questions of what it means to be human and feel human things, even if you aren’t human yourself. Plus, one of the main characters is nonbinary, which I don’t see nearly enough of in media! Despite being a mostly light-hearted story, it’s brought me to tears every time I’ve revisited it, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

"A Snow, A Flood, A Fire"

Max Butterfield, 4th-year Aerospace Engineering student & assistant editor of Hivemind Issue 2.1 [The Anthropocene]

The camera high up in the opposite corner of the room was watching, I knew, its clever algorithms ready to alert my supervisor the second its analysis of my bearing caught me going “inattentive, distracted, unpleasant, inactive” or anything else the company handbook warned against.

"A Snow, A Flood, A Fire" by Jamie Berrout is a short story about a trans woman, Garza, who has just been denied a uterine transplant due to a lack of money. Garza works as a security guard at a museum with a boss who hates her and an autonomous security system always watching. The story does a good job of showing the challenges someone in Garza’s situation can face. In the end, Garza joins a group of vandals and uses the feared security system to get one over on the museum she despises.

"As the Crow Flies"

Terra Gasque, Ph.D. student | School of Literature, Media, and Communication

Come on, love bugs, and settle down near me. It’s nearly twilight and you know what that means. Don’t worry, the grass ain’t too damp. Y’all are covered in mud anyway! A little more on your overalls won’t hurt and I’ve got a yarn to weave. Ha, that’s what I thought! Lay on down.

“As the Crow Flies," a short story by LMC graduate Jess Lewis, MSDM 2016, captures the apprehension, worry, and ultimate joy of transitioning outside the binary gender norms as a non-binary individual. Lewis’ authorial voice, an Appalachian new weird mutation, combines in a haunting mix of folk, fantasy, and local wisdom into a comforting guide who takes the reader through the tumultuous transition contained within.

The story tells of Parley’s exploration of gender through the assistance of local wise person Zaza culminating in Parely’s transformation into something more than both human and beast. Something that forever lives in the stars and provides a spark of hope for those, like Parely, who wonder “what if” there is more than just the way they were born.

The ending of “As the Crow Flies” remains my favorite emotional, artistic renderings of the pleasurable otherness that comes from unsticking oneself from the traditional gender lines. The joyfulness of Lewis’ near-future utopian work rings of solarpunk, and sits squarely in a unique space that explores the pure joyfulness that comes from Non-Binary transition and self-exploration.

'Ninefox Gambit'

Amanda Weiss, Assistant Professor | School of Modern Languages

This Locus Award-winning grimdark space opera by Yoon Ha Lee follows Captain Kel Cheris, a soldier who must capture a fortress with the help of a 400-year-old ghost general named Shuos Jedao. Jedao is a revenant whose immortal consciousness has been “anchored” to Cheris for military use, trapping him in her mind. In an interview with the blog The Book Smugglers, author Lee discusses how Jedao inadvertently became a way for him to explore his own experiences as a trans man. Lee writes, “part of writing Jedao was the experience of being trapped and having no way out – and yet, even though there’s no magic fairytale solution for me in real life, the experience was freeing as well. Jedao finds a way out, and he does it with his most dangerous weapon, words. That will have to be my way out too.”