GLBTQ Fantasy/Science Fiction Novels?

June 27, 2019 10:20 AM

So with only a few days left in Pride Month, would anyone want interested in some fanfare posts on fantasy/SF featuring GLBTQ protagonists? Mainly I want to do posts on Dreadnaught: Nemesis and Dreadnaught: Sovereign. Other books I've read recently include Fire Logic The Murderbot Diaries Daughter of Mystery Does anyone else have any recommendations?
posted by happyroach (11 comments total)

So Tor had a free download of four GLBTQ novellas - The Black Tides of Heaven, A Taste of Honey, Passing Strange, and The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion, and all of them were good and very different from each other. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who picked up the download, so there might be enough people reading to have a good discussion, too.

Right now I'm reading Record of a Spaceborn Few and probably don't have a time to try to read anything else this weekend, but I'd definitely be up for talking about the first two Wayfarer's books. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is definitely queer, and you can make a case for Closed and Common Orbit in its discussion of body dysphoria and species with nonbinary gender.

I'm planning posts on Revenant Gun (Machineries of the Empire #3) and Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries #4) for the hugo awards posts, but if anyone wants to post before I get around to it, it's not a big deal, I'll just add a tag on the post date.
posted by dinty_moore at 11:36 AM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

I just discovered Caitlin R Kiernan and am totally loving her work. Her short story Bradbury Weather just swept me away.
posted by miss-lapin at 1:38 PM on June 27, 2019 [2 favorites]

Yes, please do!
posted by overglow at 5:51 PM on June 27, 2019

I also just went back and put a glbtq tag on stuff I've already posted that's relevant to make earlier queer content easier to find.
posted by dinty_moore at 6:30 PM on June 27, 2019

I made a post for Caitlin R Kiernan's latest anthology with a tag.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:36 PM on June 27, 2019 [3 favorites]

A Closed and Common Orbit is a wonderful book that like All Systems Red, has a person not desiring to adhere to gender or social norms. The solution Lovelace comes up with is very different than Murderbot's, but the important thing is THEY choose what's right for them.
posted by happyroach at 8:09 PM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

Jacqueline Koyanagi's Ascension.
posted by MartinWisse at 6:04 AM on July 2, 2019 [2 favorites]

Alice Payne Arrives and Alice Payne Rides by Kate Heartfield are fun queer time travel hijinks
Karen Memory and Stone Mad (books 1 and 2 of a series) by Elizabeth Bear are fun queer western/steampunk hijinks
City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders is just freaking visionary
All of Ann Leckie's books but especially the Imperial Radch series. And The Raven Tower is fantastic fantasy.
Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion has the informal alternate title "Lesbians In Space", although you should avoid it if you don't like body horror. Bel Dame Apocrypha books are great gritty adventure books, although the queerness is a bit incidental.
The Ruin of Angels by Max Gladstone - I like all the books I've read in this series but as far as I recall this is the only queer one
River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey has people who are queer, and genderqueer, and also there are hippopotamuses in the Louisiana swamp
Autonomous by Annalee Newitz is about pharmaceutical piracy with a wide variety of types of queer folx
posted by smartyboots at 9:13 PM on July 10, 2019 [2 favorites]

Autonomous also has a nonbinary being who gets mistaken for female but ends up not correcting them because it's easier in the long run, which is not something that is usually shown in fiction.
posted by dinty_moore at 8:41 AM on July 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

The Ruin of Angels is one of the best novels I've ever read, period. Earlier novels in the series are queer too, one with a trans woman main character who is also in The Ruin of Angels.
posted by overglow at 1:39 PM on July 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

A Memory called Empire was a great sci-fi novel with a fun queer romance subplot, if anyone ever finds this thread again.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:50 PM on March 3, 2021