Talk:LGBT themes in speculative fiction

Useful for refs?

• http://www.androphile.org/
• hoboes.com
• [1]
• http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/77/pearson77.htm
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Homosexuality_in_speculative_fiction#Useful_for_refs.3F
• http://www.glbtq.com/literature/grimsley_j.html

Foundation: The International Review Of Science Fiction # 86 http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/sfnews2/03_may/review0503_22.shtml http://www.sfsite.com/06b/wa202.htm http://www.nicolagriffith.com/ http://www.strangehorizons.com/2003/20030929/griffith_interview.shtml

http://www.gaylaxicon2008.org/author.html http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20021111/interview.shtml http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/sfnews2/03_sept/review0903_30.shtml —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.169.58.98 (talk) 13:17, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Lesbian science fiction

Regarding the redirect of "lesbian science fiction" to "Homosexuality in speculative fiction": Things move on as they will, but I'd like to note that "lesbian science fiction" has a distinctive publishing history that is not currently reflected in the article, coming out of the women's movement in the 1970s. Naiad Press and a variety of other women's presses published SF (often fantasy). While the existence of women-only worlds is mentioned in the article, there's a real thematic difference between, say, Ammonite by Nicola Griffith and the more women's movement and lesbian romance novels published by Jane Fletcher, Jean Stewart, Naiad Press, Bella Books, and so on. (cross-posted on Talk:Lesbian science fiction) --Lquilter (talk) 13:55, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Feminist lesbian presses ARE in the article, with cites (that they didn't have before i merged and researched). As far as i could find out, Naiad/Bella books have only published one noteworthy SF author (K. Forrest, who mostly writes non-SF.)

If you have anything citable about the history of lesbian SF, it would be a great addition, especially something more than a list of authors/books (every example given at the moment has secondary sources discussing the works portrayal of homosexuality), but it isn't in the encylopedias of SF, fantasy, Homosexuality, or GLBTQ; nor in books specifically about gay SF (Uranian worlds / Queer Universes), which is the limit of my library. which source are you using for this? Unfortunately, all the arguments for a seperate article so far have been based on personal beliefs.

That lesbian SF is different from lesbian romance does not seem to indicate much except that SF is different from romance, did you mean something more specific? Looking at Bella books catalogues, it seems all the SF is romance with SF tropes thrown in, is that it? But none of the articles i read about lesbian presses mention any such thing, so it it OR from me.

Nicola Griffth's paragraph is being written right now (i've been waiting for an spam-blocked online interview with her to be white-listed, but seems it isn't going to happen) - she is no longer much interested in SF though, from what i've read, and her 2 SF books were not published by lesbian presses, were they?Yobmod (talk) 14:37, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I've made a sub article for single-gender worlds, and written paragraph here about Melissa Scott.

featured topic

We (echo...echo...) are now on our way to making a featured topic on this. I just got our first featured list (with the Lambda awards for SF/F/H), with 2 more from the Gaylactic awards on the way. I'm currently working on the gaylactic network / gaylaxicon / Spectrum award articles to get them to GA, then i think that should be enough. Any collaborators would be great!YobMod 11:16, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Ready
Homosexuality in SF
LGBT themes in comics
Lambda Literary Awards winners and nominees for science fiction, fantasy and horror
Gaylactic Spectrum Awards
Gaylactic Spectrum Award winners and nominees for best novel
Gaylactic Spectrum Award winners and nominees for best short fiction
Gaylactic Spectrum Award winners and nominees for best other work

Being Reviewed

Working on

• Gaylaxicon
  
• Gaylactic Network
  

Other

• LGBT themes in horror fiction
• LGBT themes in mythology
• Slash fiction
• List of LGBT-themed speculative fiction

Copyediting

I saw Yobmod's request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors and came over to give a hand. I've made a few minor changes for grammar and readability, but it's very well-written in general. I have one slightly larger suggestion to make: in the 20s-30s section it might be helpful to be a little more explicit about the dates to which "the end of their careers" and "as the demographics of the readership broadened" refer. Since this was a period of change it'd be nice to make it clearer exactly when during those twenty years the change began to show itself.

I've only made it as far as the Golden Era so far, but I'll get to the rest soon and let you know if I have any more thoughts. Best, Olaf Davis | Talk 14:04, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, i saw your improvments, but didn't connect them to my copyedit request (the backlog seems so long i thought i would have to go to FAC without one). Will the talk page get one of those boxes stating that the Guild was ere? Cool :-D. Many thanks! I'll look into the dates, i think the broadening demographics one should have something in the source.Yobmod (talk) 15:02, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, this is the first time I've responded to a request there. I'm not really involved in the Guild but just stumbled on it during a random walk through project space and thought your article sounded like it could be interesting, so tagging it as seen by 'a member' seems a little cheeky. Olaf Davis | Talk 18:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I've done some more copyediting. Some of it's correction of mistakes but some may just be a matter of personal preference - feel free to revert if you disagree. A few things I wasn't sure enough to change:

• I'm not sure if 'New wave' in the third sentence of that section should be capitalised
• "Russ is largely responsible for introducing radical lesbian feminism into science fiction; she has stated that being openly lesbian was bad for her career and sales." Putting these into one sentence seems a little odd to me since they're not directly related, but it's not that important.
• "In the 1990s, stories depicting alternative sexualities experienced a resurgence" - does that mean it had died out previously? When?

More to come soon! Olaf Davis | Talk 16:19, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Note, i am taking account of all these comments. Just holding off from making changes until copyediting is done :-). Mush appreciated!.Yobmod (talk) 16:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Comments in brackets?

{{cleanup}} added. Someone more familiar with this topic should either remove the comments in brackets throughout this article or fix what they are about. Makswel (talk) 05:35, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I moved the comments to here:

[isn't speculative fiction generic by definition?].

Depends on the definition, some people include magic realism and fabulism and fairy stories and mythology, hence here it is defined as "...and related genres". Also depends on the definition of genre, which can mean type of work.

[are sci fi and fantasy two genres, or a single genre of speculative fiction?]

Most critics say 2 genres, with horror as a a third. I can cite speculative fiction being used as a plural when refering to the genres that make it up.

[earlier, you use "society" to refer specifically to the mainstream of society - be consistent in this]

The earlier instance is in the lead, which is a condensed version of this. Society without a qualifier immplies mainsteam by default.

[group of what?] Group of people, this is implied by the comparison i think. It reflects the source, which doesn't specify people, just immplies it by comparison with the SF community.

[Some might argue that this criticism of soft SF is based on its scientific implausibility, and that scientifically rigorous fiction that included gender nonconformity might be accepted.]

Who would say? This criticism is sourced, and specifically mentions "gay SF" being part of what hard SF fans dislike about soft SF. I think any SF that explores sexuality would always be considered non-hard Sf by some, no matter how realistic the science eg. China Mountain Zhang.

[I assume it is demonstrably true that Pangborn was intending to covertly represent homosexuality.]

This comes directly from the source, which names Pangborn as an example of a early writer who had "close male friendships" but couldn't show more. He did write about gay characters at the end of his career though, and i thought he was gay, so it seems likely.

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Added rational at image page.Yobmod (talk) 09:23, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

UK/US English

I noticed a couple of edits going back and forth between regional spellings. In case anyone wants to know, this article is written in UK English throughout, but only because i wrote it and that's the English i was taught. I consider this to be an international subject (US, UK, Canadian, Australian works are included), so think there is not cultural claim for any regional dialect, but don't particularly care which it is written in. 'But if someone changes things to US spelling, it would be nice for them to apply this throughout the article, and to be around for the FAC if any question about US grammar come up. Oh, and please discuss on talk page first :-).Yobmod (talk) 13:08, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Retaining_the_existing_variety is a sensible guideline. If it's written in British English, there's no point in changing to another regional spelling. --Julle (talk) 23:44, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Caprica

The television series Caprica has a male character, Sam Adama, who is in a same-sex marriage, and a female character, Clarice Willow ("Sister Clarice") who is in a polyamorous marriage with four men and three women. If anyone can find solid references, this should be added to the Television section. TechBear | Talk | Contributions 17:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Why no Chrome?

I'm not equipped to write it in context, but I'm wondering why this article doesn't mention George Nader's Chrome (1978) ?? I'm adding it to the List of LGBT-themed speculative fiction, but maybe someone could flesh it out here. That book really blew my mind!! Friarslantern (talk) 00:24, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Where is "LGBT themes in fiction"?

Don't tell me we have an LGBT themes page in speculative fiction but nothing of the kind for fiction in general! Is there really nothing beyond the short LGBT Literature page? K. the Surveyor (talk) 06:11, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Speculative fiction is a mainstream genre that has long been open to non-mainstream concepts and social conventions. As such, the topic of LGBT-themed speculative fiction has been deemed sufficiently noteworthy for the Wikipedia. If you would like to create a parallel article that coveres LGBT themes in general fiction, which does not duplicate this or related articles. you are encouraged to do so. TechBear | Talk | Contributions 13:23, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I am not suggesting that the page is not notable. Obviously if it has been rated as a good article then the sources must be up to snuff at least for notability. I was just wondering if there was any analogue for fiction in general. Apparently there is none on Wikipedia and many people are very enthusiastic about specifically speculative fiction. K. the Surveyor (talk) 19:14, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

adolescent male readers

Does "adolescent male readers" mean "heterosexual adolescent male readers"? It seems like it must, in which case "heterosexual" should be added. Wakablogger2 (talk) 06:07, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, it seems that "Science fiction in particular has traditionally been a puritanical genre orientated toward a male readership" refers to "...a heterosexual male readership." Wakablogger2 (talk) 06:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Does the source, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, identify the readers as "hetrosexual"? Because if it doesn't, then Wikipedia can't either. Inserting such an adjective without backing from the source would be a violation of all three of Wikipeida's core policies (Verifiability, No original research, and Neutral point of view). —Farix (t | c) 14:39, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The source is actually The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction; the cited passage is actually talking about Analog Science Fiction and Fact, specifically, though I think the article is within its rights to extend this to the whole sf field, since the source does talk about the prudishness of the field in general. There is no implication of heterosexuality in the source -- the point seems to be that much of Analog's readership were young. I think it says "adolescent males" rather than "adolescents" because the readership was overwhelmingly male. Mike Christie (talk – library) 14:51, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Video Games

There are some games that feature homosexual relationships between females. Two examples are Mass Effect 2 and Fallout: New Vegas

trans and Bi exclusion

The history of this page relating principly to gay male speculative fiction seems very obvious. Lesbian fiction is much less represented whilst bi and trans fiction are relabled and represented as lesbian and gay. Trans and bi communities often present a challenge to the Lesbian and gay communities and this seems to be reflected in the way the page is written.

To take a single example in Buffy the vampire slayer a bisexual woman: Willow has a relationship with a lesbian woman: Tara. Yet this is written about as an exclusivly lesbian relationship despite her previous realtionships with men. Yes their are issues around people sexuality changing and in cannon willow carries on forming relationships with women e.g. kennedy however in fan fiction she is often portrayed as bisexual. Her sexual identity is contested and the article should reflect that. For a more literal. In written fiction there is "the door into" series by diane duane where all the characters are explicitly bisexual, the principle characters having multiple bisexual relationships between them.

As for trans, their are numerous trans characters from all kinds of speculative fiction, none of which have been mentioned. One classic example is the left hand of darkness - yes they are hermaphrodite i.e. intersex but their is strong intersection between intersex and trans. Another example are the works of John Varley who describes universes where body can be changed at will. In thedara house marion zimmer bradley writes about a woman who lives as a man. Transgender images abound in speculative fiction yet known of it seems to be represented in the article.

I am writing this in the hope that it will stimulate discussion of how we can make this article truly represent the LGBT communities in speculative fiction not just one aspect of it X-mass (talk) 11:12, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

opening

"Science fiction and fantasy have traditionally been puritanical genres"

File:Http://www.memes.at/faces/are you fucking kidding me.jpg

Rebuttal

Scifi and Fantasy have been THE go-to genre for EVERYTHING non-puritanical. Much of scifi in particular is basically written by hormones. 06:07, 4 October 2012 (UTC)~