Gay spirual wrer Toby Johnson tells about his favore gay science fictn novels
Contents:
THE BT GAY SCIENCE FICTN NOVEL EVER
* history of gay science fiction *
While portrayals of lbian, gay, bisexual or transgenr (LGBT) characters didn’t bee relatively mon science fictn, fantasy or horror until after the early succs of the Gay Liberatn Movement the 1970s, that didn’t mean that there was “no there there, ” to borrow a phrase om Gert Ste. Homosexualy was illegal nearly everywhere the world and uld rry severe legal and social nsequenc if was disvered.
William Beckford, the gay thor of the Orientalist fantasy The History of Caliph Vathek (1786), began his life as one of the richt men England and end as a bankpt disgrace France. The negative portrayals, unsurprisgly, outnumbered the posive on and, durg the War, generally equated homosexualy wh Nazism. One of the better-known exampl, Kathare Burk’s alternate history about the Thoand Year Reich, Swastika Night (1937), is a visn of a Nazi society built around homosexualy and misogyny.
Another alternate history, Sclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here (1935) touch on some of the same them, lkg homosexualy to Nazi totalarianism. The 1940s were, unsurprisgly, a bleak perd for posive portrayals, rrpondg wh the overall attu amongst pulp fictn edors and society at large that a character was better off ad than gay. It is nsired to be the first openly sympathetic pictn of homosexualy science fictn.
GAY HISTORIL FICTN BOOKS
The also saw the early publitns of the first openly gay and lbian genre thors of the morn perd, cludg Samuel Delany, Joanna Rs and Thomas Disch. Valanurt Books le of classic Gay Horror reprts –.