Queers in SPAAAACE!

Hm, my male MC is bisexual, but it's not a main theme of the story, just kind of an incidental thing. In his society and at least one of the societies he's interacting with, it's not considered to be a big deal at all.

I suspect that there will be queerness in my science fiction story. It's aimed toward the younger end of the young adults, but I am definitely imagining one of the girls growing up queer. There's going to be no romance of any kind in, so it won't come up (I think, at least).

But represent! I love queer sci fi and sci fi that plays with the limits of social interaction.

It does not appear as if any will be showing up this year, but I did in my 2007 NaNo - A Midsummer's Night Dream ... IN SPACE!

"To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

2009-Brother Monkey, Brother Lion, Sister Crow
2009 -Bunnystar Galactica Psychic Bunnies IN SPACE

I really, really do not like heteronormality, so I've got inter-racial couples, gay couples, threesomes, moresomes, and everything in between. All in space. My Russian male is paired off with my American female (who is half-black, half-white and military with a PhD in biology and chemistry). My American male is paired with an Asian male, and the other Asian male is paired with the Russian female who has a husband and children at home and really wants to get pregnant in space.

NanoWrimo wins: 05, 06, 07, 08
Science Fiction Forum Moderator
ML for PA :: Elsewhere

I rarely plan it, but I always have at least one queer character.

Write what you know, right? ;)

{Wherever you go, there you are...}

None planned but inevitably there will be queer or other non mainstream sexualities in my novel.

Last year's wasn't planned but she was lesbian, her partner bi, and the main villain the member required to complete their relationship. *shrugs* Still don't know how it happened LOL

Location : Somewhere on the far side of crazy, past the dark side of the moon, and on my way to becoming comfortably numb.

Interested in Cannabis Law Reform in Australia? visit here : https://www.cannabisfacts.info/members/index.php and join in

My MC is asexual, but one of the other major supporting character is a gay man...and also one of the most deadly hired guns in deep space. I like breaking down stereotypes.

2004: A Memory Not Mine (55K)
2005: Double Edged (76K)
2008: Empire Farms (64K)
2009: No Asylum (goal: 100K)

Of course they'll be some in my novel. The man character is, after all, exploring the differing worlds of the Federation (that's the summary in the figurative nutshell, actually), so 'she' (fully gentically, anatomically, and all female, but that's bioengieering for you...;) ) is likely to meet some in the course of her epic journey.

2009 - Have Starship, Will Hitchike (Working Title)

Both the captain (Ty) and the pilot (Sam) of the transport ship are gay, and involved with each other. I love all the characters from this story, but those two are definitely my favorites. Mostly because they somehow magically ended up matching each other well in a way I couldn't really have planned - it's fun bouncing them off each other and seeing how they react differently to stressful situations, and having them just come right back together in the end, even if it's tough. Hell, when I decided at one point that the most logical conclusion in the future was that they'd eventually decide to break up (which I was a little distressed about at first, but quickly decided I liked), Ty promptly changed his personality so that wouldn't happen anymore (despite his being fairly well-defined already before that - he's been doing double-duty as my muse lately, so he can get away with pulling stuff like that). I don't think I could come up with another couple like this if I tried. Now if only they'd give me some plot. *hint hint wink nudge* C'mon guys, I can't even write a romance, let alone a full sci-fi epic, if you don't give me something to work with besides "we work as a couple".

I'm also suspicious about one of my other characters - I'm about 98% sure he's straight, but... He and Ty did fool around once waaaaaaay in the past out of boredom, but that's not the reason. Maybe it's just the proximity to the others, I dunno. Oh, and then there's one of the main antagonists in their lives: Sam's ex Mateo, who kind of redefines "crazy ex" - the solution to that problem requires an armed raid and a potentially deadly stand-off in the end. It's complicated. XD

...

Gaaah! I don't KNOW!

It reflects so poorly on my planning! And now that I've read this thread, how it influenced whatever decision I make is going to drive me crazy! Gaaah!

Although I can tell you, for certain, that there will be gay characters introduced, and the subject at least laterally considered, somewhere in the first thirty-eight chapters. I just don't know who, or how prominent. Right now, meaning "as of getting to this point in the post, and not actually while I was writing that previous sentence," (having been stricken by the scifi author's version of SRMD and neglecting my dear characters) I'm leaning towards both of my leads falling onto the bisexual spectrum, the male lead what they call demisexual and the female lead...well...not. Not "not" as in "the polar opposite", just...not. I really don't have a better way to say it.

And that's what I just pulled out of my ass! And I've run headlong into about a thousand clichés, but to hell with it...

The problem is, like I said before with scifi-author SRMD, this is not a love story. There is no "obligatory" romance. His love life is very firmly on the sidelines, especially in later chapter, and hers is way out in the bleachers, since she doesn't even really play a role in the first half. ("Male lead" and "female lead" are just a convenient split here; when the book begins, they're twenty-nine and eleven, so you're really not going to see any romance.)

My last two scifi entries were a very bland and plodding future history in 2002, when I was too young to really think about these things, and a...picaresque-ish...thing...in 2007. Basically, it was this kind of quasi-romantic relationship between two straight men...I hate to use words like "bromance," which seem to be mocking the idea that men have personhood not directly linked to women. They knew how they came off, and if I'd actually written more than a few little excerpts, I would have made it clear that no, I wouldn't shy away, if there actually were something I'd tell you, even though a large part of the novel's about their parting of ideals, the subsequent feelings of betrayal, and other pseudo-romantic things...if I had written the novel.

Of the other two, one had a very bisexual male lead, and the other I was kind of unsure about a major female character in the first half, but that's pretty much it...and neither got off the ground (seeing a pattern here?). Those won't really scifi, though...well...they were both futuristic, but there was no real focus on future technologies or principles making these things possible (other than "nuclear war really screws up society" and "crazed demagogues are interesting").

It could be interesting, though, to really think about how sexual politics might evolve in a scifi future...a standard coming out story that differs in the fact that attitudes have changed to the point of being unrecognizable. All-tolerance continuing the current progression tangentially and a dystopian return to 1960 seem lazy...one of the major themes I'm working with here. Just construct a plot around some conflict raised by some invented future paradigm.

Hmm. As far as I know, neither of the characters I've created yet are gay or bi. I really don't want a love story in this NaNo, but we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Queers? More than likely. Space? Nope, set purely on Earth.

Earth is in space.

The main characters in my novel are two women in a Lesbian partnership. It's not the driving issue of the story however; it is set in a future society where this is accepted and unremarkable.

Tom L Waters
Cuyamungue, New Mexico, USA

Hmmm. I have a gay couple, an asexual, a few hetero couples with degrees of monogamy varying from total monogamy to completely open, an interspecies couple and at least four MCs who are some degree of bisexual. (One of them the surviving half of a lesbian pair that was part of a sabotage mission gone wrong.) I'd say I have a pretty good spread here. :D

Won: 2004, 2007 (No WoW; WoW fanfic)
Epic Fail: 2005, 2006, 2008 (Curse you, WoW!)
2009: The Broken Legion
Goal: 60k by 11/20
Progress in Packing Up Apartment: -23%
Characters Shanked: Not enough!

Did someone say universe-hopping interspecies lesbians?

*holds up NaNo characters by the scruff of their necks*

Also considering writing a sex scene involving their sentient space ship/time machine/universe-hopping machine/thing. (Called the Cosmos Machine in-world).

Count my story in. I don't have a truly defined main character; rather, there are several very important characters. One of them happens to be gay. He is a bit of an emotional and mental trainwreck though, having survived a very dark past. He has been in love with his (male, and straight) best friend for years, though has never said anything in fear that it will somehow ruin something between them. There's totally a love triangle issue going on here. He also happens to be my favorite character, which is totally bad, since with several characters of importance, I'm afraid I'll focus on him too much.

Edit: I almost forgot! One of the other characters, a female, is bisexual, though it isn't much of an issue because she doesn't really have any current interest in other people.

Yes! (minus the space bit.)

I have a married gay couple who own the coffee shop my FMC hangs out at all the time. Given one of them is her brother, but none the less, its a rad coffee place. My AI's might end up developing sex drives at one point of another, but as of this moment, they are asexual.

Sexuality won't be what drives the plot ,subplots however, are totally open to that. I will probably have "queer" themes, but being queer won't be one of them. (I hope that made sense to everyone other than myself)

2009 stats:
Characters: 3.5
Plot: 0%
Most Tea Consumed in One Day: TBA
Best Word Count: TBA
Sanity Left: 89%

Oh yes! Everyone in my novel is queer, including a little tranny who's going to be a sort of guinea pig for another novel I have planned around an intersexed character -- specifically, how well can I handle using non-standard pronouns?

Alas, no romance or sex planned. I wrote erotica last year (and rewrote it in the "off season") so I really needed a break. But they will be in space! And there will be big explosions! And a neutron star! And science! WOOHOO!

Hahaha! You win the thread! Well done!

Are you writing hard SF or towards the fantasy scope (ie Star Trek)?

In zero gravity chiffon would float around, so the obvious 'tells' would be hard to handwave in a hard SF. And I'm guessing that putting lipstick on in zero g wouldn't be easy either...

Interplanetary lesbian, yay! I can't wait until the chapter where I get to rework Dido & Aeneas. With lesbians. In space.

My pilot and copilot are gay lovers, and my mechanic is pansexual. xD

Energy Drinks: 1
Cups of Tea: 2
Boxes of Cheezits: 2
Sleepovers: 4

SL: Thatch Feiri
Gaia: KillerQueen Bash

Mine's a gay (male) S/F romance. Kind of a subgenre of SF, or maybe the SF is a subgenre of romance. Whatever. The SF element is not incidental in the story though, it drives it. No spaceships, but questionable genetic and social engineering in a futuristic society.

Is it bad that I'm picturing Kirk, Spock, and Scotty here?

Awesome! I'm so glad to see there's others out there. It was starting to feel a bit lonely. And there just isn't enough good queer scifi.

I've got quite a few queers is my novel. The scientist wrongly accused of murder is a transexual. The investigators trying to clear her are a gay Black man and a gay Asian man and a couple. The big star of the superhero group the scientist created is an Irish lesbian woman whose partner is the sister of the Black male detective.

It should be a pretty soft sci-fi novel with some fantasy elements in terms of powers but nanites and spacetime considerations keeping it from getting too limp.

As a heterosexual writer, I do not have the knowledge to make my main characters homosexual; it would definitely require some research. However, I think as a writer in modern times, it would be a grave error to have NO characters who were homosexual.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"You are God in this universe you create, so act like one. BAM! There I said it."

Athlaos

One of my MCs is definitely bisexual with a preference for men. If he ends up with a partner (he probably will, he's a bit promiscuous, hehe) it will most likely be a man. Although, my plot isn't really heavily skewed towards romance, so the fact that he's bi will probably not be a massive plot point.

Random gay, lesbian and bisexual characters and couples will probably crop up, though, because I think/hope that in the future society will be much more diverse and accepting. My other three MCs, on the other hand, are heterosexual. (Every year I've done NaNo, my MCs have turned out to be gay or bi - I wanted to try something different!)

"I don’t care. I am me."
~ Valerie (V for Vendetta)

I see what you mean...to a certain extent. It'd probably help to put some of the lingo if they're, say, involved in the political side of it, but GLBT people are the same as hetero people, really, with the same kind of hopes and fears and nuances and quirks that everyone has.