![]() ![]() So thus far, these editors and I are on the same page. (Just one example: in Tanya Huff’s Sing the Four Quarters, the king has disowned his sister, not because she loves women, but because she declined a diplomatic alliance with a nice princess and went off to join the bards.) ![]() ![]() I particularly enjoy it when the existence of queer characters is not the point. I wholeheartedly agree, and it’s one of the reasons I love reading fantasy and SF by authors who’ve noticed this. The editors assert the need for lesbian and gay characters to be seen in worlds where previously only “(presumed) heterosexuals” appeared: “We all need to see representations of ourselves in the world, whether that world is real or not.” (p. They define this fantastic fiction as extranormal. They go on to distinguish science fiction-events that haven’t happened -from fantastic fiction-”something in the story could not really have happened” (p. Griffith and Pagel begin on solid ground by picking up Samuel Delaney’s definition of speculative fiction as containing “events that contravene reality” (p. Sadly, the editors undo that positive message in their introduction. Many of them exercise that privilege of fantasy that is most welcome to me as a queer reader: the existence of a queer character is not the unusual part. One of these is Bending the Landscape: Fantasy, edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel. ![]() In some cases, the authors’ notes gave me pause. Recently I’ve been privileged to encounter some excellent tales about LGBTIQQ* characters. ![]()
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