Queering SF: Readings

The essays contained in Queering SF provide an introduction to some of the shades of queer in SF writing. SF is not a monolith. Queer SF is not, either. Writers of queer SF approach it in a variety of ways, with a variety of end goals. The essays here aim to introduce readers to a wide range of writers and texts, some familiar, some unfamiliar.

These essays demonstrate some of the ways in which queer SF pushes at the very generic norms of SF. The idea of SF, the characteristics of SF, the content of SF have all been shaped (a) in a particular place and time, and (b) in one's own reading experience. Many of these writers want to challenge what SF looks like and does.

Finally, Queering SF points to some of these newly imagined futures, to a way to spend some time in differently imagined societies and families, and to think about the ways in which we would like to see that in our own reality.

Advance Praise

“Queering SF takes readers on a tour of science fiction’s imaginings and reimaginings of gender and sexuality, from the tentative explorations of the early twentieth century to the burgeoning diverse visions of the twenty-first. To read this book is to be transported into an ideal college classroom, where stories and novels are carefully contextualized, generously critiqued, and expansively engaged as contributions to the projects of queer, feminist, intersectional social transformation. Calvin's accessible, friendly style and deep knowledge of both SF and queer studies make this an essential read for anyone interested in exploring the queerness of science fiction and the science-fictionality of queerness.”

—Alexis Lothian author of Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility

Ritch Calvin is an associate professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at SUNY Stony Brook. In 2016, he published Feminist Epistemology and Feminist Science Fiction: Four Modes (Palgrave). He has published essays in Extrapolation, Femspec, Science Fiction Film and Television, Science Fiction Studies, New York Review of Science Fiction, and SFRA Review. He edited Judith Merril's The Merril Theory of Lit'ry Criticism, which Aqueduct published in its Heirloom Book series in 2016. He has been a juror for the Philip K. Dick and James Tiptree (Otherwise) awards and served on the executive board of the Science Fiction Research Association for six years.