Not a top 10, but yet a list

More than 12 years ago, for my Ph.D. dissertation in semiotics, I built my own list of women's queer SF. Not really a top 10, but a list of 9 narratives based on what I had read back then, and what I thought would be a representative selection. More specifically, I was working on narratives (novels and short stories) written by women and featuring a sexualised encounter between a human character (a character living in a world based on two genetically dominant genders, male and female) and a character not pertaining to such a system (a mutant, an alien, etc.). I had chosen to focus on the period I defined as "between the New Wave and the Cyberpunk", so that explains why I had to omit too ancient or too recent yet relevant texts. Submitting my dissertation in a French (Québec) university, I also thought important to include fictions originally published in French.

Anyway, here is my list:

• Octavia Butler, "Bloodchild"
• Pat Cadigan, "Pretty Boy Crossover"
• Jaygee Carr, Leviathan's Deep
• Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
• Christine Renard, "Les Narcisses poussent le soir" ["Narcissuses grow at night" (my translation)]
• Esther Rochon, Coquillage [The Shell]
• Joanna Russ, "What did you do during the revolution, Grandma?"
• James Tiptree, Jr, "Your Haploid Heart"
• Élisabeth Vonarburg, "Dans la fosse" ["In the Pit"]

I'm not sure if my list would be the same if I was writing the same dissertation today, but those sure were great and rich narratives.

The dissertation (in French) Je pense or je suis: Discours et identité dans la SF côté femmes: Entre la New Wave et le cyberpunk [I Think or I Am: Discourse and Identity in SF on the Women's Side: Between the New Wave and the Cyberpunk] is available through the Université du Québec à Montreal library.

Sylvie Berard

queer movie medievalisms

Anyone know anything about this book??

Nicola Griffith

We've been Amazon Ranked ... and then some!

With all the buzz about Amazon sales rankings being removed from lesbian and gay books in the name of avoiding "adult" content, I thought I had better check out QU. Typed in "queer universes" in the search box and got 5 pages of results with the word "universe" in their title -- but none with the word "queer." No QU. Disturbing. Typed in my own name, wondering whether I would have personally been Amazon Ranked because of my middle name (what would that do to Gay Talese, I wonder?). Got some of my essays (nice that Amazon.com can make a profit out of selling my work, but doesn't have to pay me royalties), but, again, no QU. Typed in Veronica's name. Ditto. No QU anywhere.

Then I tried a few keywords, like "sexuality and science fiction." Still no QU. Finally I went to Amazon.ca, where -- at least for the moment -- a title search on Queer Universes still actually produces a result. I then copied the ISBN into Amazon.com. Bingo! There's our book. From that page all the links worked -- I could get to my own name, to Veronia's and Joan's, and back to the book. Closed the browser, re-opened it and tried the search under "queer universes" again. Disturbingly, no book.

So clearly this is not just about ranking. It's about making actual books disappear. As an academic book -- a category that many folks consider dry by definition -- I don't really think it could be condemned for "adult" content. What gives the lie to this, in any case, is that Amazon has left up the links and rankings for dildoes, vibrators, anal plugs, as well as for straight sex manuals, such as The Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex.

I think a strongly worded email is on its way, not to mention a head's up to both Liverpool University Press and to the University of Chicago Press, which is QU's distributor in the US.

By the way, the ranking on Amazon.ca has disappeared, but at least the book still exists. All things considered, I'm with Nicola on this. It's despicable beyond belief.

What about film?

It's easy to make a list of queer sf. Of course, there'll be some variation, depending on how the list-maker defines both 'queer' and 'sf'.... Erm, that is, so long as we're talking about novels and short stories. What about film, though?

Is sf cinema behind the times, off in another universe, or so heteronormative (sorry, I mean that it's stuck thinking about things only from the perspective of a very cliched version of heterosexuality) as to be almost impervious to queer readings?


Not that there aren't some exceptions. Jackie Stacey has a great article on queer kinship in Gattaca, Roz Kaveney reads Independence Day's main theme as anxiety about male bonding leading to homosexual panic, Vivian Sobchak has done some work on the creepy representation of sexuality in AI, Mark Bould and Greg Tuck have looked at sexuality in Japanese sf films. The fact that I can list individual pieces of criticism off the top of my head is an indication of its dearth. SF cinema just doesn't seem very queer, so most of the critical options revolve, one way or another, around unpacking the heterosexism and/or homophobia and/or gender normativity (women must be girls and men must be manly), which while useful can get a bit tedious after a while.

So, here's a question. If you had to write about sf film from a queer perspective (any sort of queer perspective) what would you pick and where would your critical stance take you?

Top Ten Queer SF Novels

Ok, some caveats. First of all, my list only includes books written in English. I expect Sylvie may have quite a few suggestions for French-language sf. Then again, I'm interpreting sf quite broadly -- but only so broadly as to encompass works which would qualify (or have qualified) for the Tiptree Award.

Anyway, here's my top ten -- but I might change my mind at any minute:

1. Samuel R. Delany, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (I admit this may seem an odd choice, but I love this book)
2. Joanna Russ, The Female Man
3. Nicola Griffith, Ammonite
4. Hiromi Goto, The Kappa Child
5. Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden
6. Eleanor Arnason, Ring of Swords
7. Maureen McHugh, China Mountain Zhang
8. Melissa Scott, Trouble and Her Friends
9. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
10. Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber

Actually, there were so many entries that I might have chosen that this list, like all such, is really quite arbitrary. It was hard to leave off Kelley Eskridge's Solitaire and Candas Jane Dorsey's Paradigm of Earth. I could also easily have added more books by given authors -- lots of Delany, Ryman's Air, Griffith's Slow River, Scott's Shadow Man, and so on. And lets not even get started on novellas and short stories.

Queer Universes Wordle

I saw this on Nicola's blog and thought it was cool, so I made one for the first three pages of the introduction. The larger the word, the more often it occurs in the text.

What I am up to...

In her last post, Wendy asked : “What about the rest of you?”

Well, the rest of me is waiting for the release of Of Wind and Sand, the (forever delayed) English version of my novel Terre des Autres. It was supposed to be released in the fall, then winter, and now Edge’s website says April. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Meanwhile, if you check the Edge link below, you’ll be able to read the first chapter (really, the prologue) of the novel.

The best part of me is on sabbatical this year, which means that I’m writing. Fiction, theory, and a textbook. And reading. And pondering. And working late at night!

In the last months of 2008, I prepared a French version of the research on which I had based my paper published in Queer Universes. It’s not really a translation, more of an updated version of a work in progress. The French title is “Sexualité, échange de pouvoir et science-fiction: Une étude SMiotique de quelques textes de science-fiction québécoise” “Sexuality, power exchange and science fiction: An SMiotic study of a few pieces of québec science fiction”] and the article has been published in Voix plurielles.

I have also been writing fiction, and my novel Sagapolis (working title) has been sent to the publisher a few weeks ago. They have just told me they were finished reading it (yep, they are quick!), but they have not commented it yet. Wish me good luck!

Right now, my main concern is the paper that I will be presenting this summer at the Colloque de Cerisy (France) on science fiction. The theme of the conference is Comment rêver la science-fiction à présent? [How to dream science fiction today?], and my paper (of course, I should say), will be on Élisabeth Vonarburg’s fiction.

And that’s all for now, folks.


Terre des Autres on Alire’s website: http://alire.com/Romans/TerredesAutres.html

Of Wind and Sand on Edge’s website: http://www.edgewebsite.com/books/ofwindandsand/ws-catalog.html

“Sexualité, échange de pouvoir et science-fiction : Une étude SMiotique de quelques textes de science-fiction québécoise” in Voix plurielles : http://www.brocku.ca/cfra/voixplurielles05-02/index.html

The Cerisy conference Comment rêver la science-fiction à présent?: http://www.ccic-cerisy.asso.fr/sciencefiction09.html