Queers Against Empire narrative media recs
Brought on by a conversation with @revolutionaryjo. Recs written by me or my nerd-ass wonderful wife @ritterssport
Special note! LITERALLY NONE OF THIS IS YA YOUâRE WELCOME
This it it folx - the show that sparked this post, because weâre watching it several years late! Anyway, outsiders fight âCivilizationâ because they all know itâs bullshit.Â
Queerness: 10/10. Excellent heterobaiting.
Tone: horny and angry, executive produced by michael bay
Ancillary Justice, et al -Â
A space opera about revenge and personhood, in a world where the language of the empire only has one pronoun and itâs âshe.â Only book to ever win the trio of major SFF awards. Has excellent audiobooks too, but can be confusing at first in audio format - itâs ok - push through it!
Queerness: 9/10 - well, thereâs not recognized gender so itâs all queer. the nuclear family as we understand it is not a recognized unit - families are organized along other lines.
Anti-empire: like 15/10. Truly.
Tone: starts serious and is full of emotions, but also a goddamn romp by the 2nd book
A space sitcom about revenge and personhood. Ft. extremely relatable protag who just wants to watch tv and not think about all this god damn it but oh no starts to care. Also has an excellent audiobook.
Queerness: 5/10 - Protag is ace but protag is a robot, so only half-counting that. Not romance focused in any way, which is nice. Multi-gender poly relationships are the norm in-world, and basically all of the non-robot supporting cast is in the above.
Anti-empire: 7/10 - the dominant power structure of the setting is a corporate oligarchy and the characters are fighting it. very much emphasizing the military industrial complex.
Tone: more explicitly a goddamn romp
A low-fantasy novel about a country that has under invasion and conquest for a decade, following a handful of characters trying to craft a future that doesnât destroy either the country (or its values of hospitality and openness) or lead to endless war. Has a good audiobook.
Queerness: 10/10 - Thereâs only one (1) straight relationship in the large ensemble cast, all the main protagonists are gay, about 80% of every mentioned character is gay, and the normal family structure is multiple-adults-in various-relationships-often-poly-with-each-other. Also, unlike almost every other fantasy book that claims âoh men and women are equal and donât have rigid gender rolesâ, this one actually backs it up.
Anti-empire: 9/10 - All about resisting conquest and building a path to peace. One of the main characters is the last surviving member of an indigenous peopleÂ
Tone: heavy my dude but hopeful
The Traitor Baru Cormorant -Â
One of the few where thereâs an audiobook, but I havenât read it. I couldnât read it because it made my wife too sad! But hereâs her pitch - I actually could not believe that a white man wrote this book and kept flipping to the back jacket to double-check. Lesbian mathematical savant resolves to bring down the empire that colonized her country from within, but maybe sheâs too good at the âfrom withinâ part.Â
Queerness: 8/10 - lesbian protag, but itâs written by a straight man, so itâs a plot point (not in a weird way) not a sensibility
Anti-empire: 10/10 - vivid depictions of the tactics and campaigns of empire; protagâs whole drive is towards bringing down the empire.
Tone: more tragic than this bitch can handle, but mad respect
âPostcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasyâ: itâs right there in the subtitle! A collection of short stories by authors of color. Most of them arenât queer, but there are couple in there.Â
A CLASSIC. Space diplomat arrives to persuade a mono-gendered society to join the federation, but has a hard time Understanding them and becomes embroiled in local politics. Said embroiling includes FALLING IN LOVE* (*look. I suppose some people could read this and not think Genly Ai falls in love. theyâre wrong though.) Good audiobook exists.
Queerness: 6 - Itâs Complicated TM. One-gender society = no concept of gender roles = totally different concept of sexuality. I personally do not find Le Guinâs writing on gender and sexuality particularly dated in anything more than terminology and the grain she was writing against, but I suppose some people might.
Anti-empire: 7 - more anti-nationalist than anything else, but it is Agreed Upon By All that imperialism is bad.
Tone: old sci fi with Something To Say
Trouble and Her Friends -Â
Trouble was one of the best hackers in the game, but sheâs been retired for yearsâuntil someone starts going by her old handle on the Net, putting the government on her tail, which means she has to track this upstart down, and stop them. Which also means she has to ask her ex-girlfriend for help.
Queerness: 10/10 - the lesbian network is real, and sometimes itâs made up of cyberpunk hackers.
Anti-empire: FIGHT THE MAN
Tone: old-school cyberpunk, but old-school cyberpunk that wasnât written by a man who thinks his self-insert is the coolest thing since sliced bread.
I canât really give a good summary of this one because I remember it like a dream. Broad strokes, the main character is a âcameraââa reporter with implants that mean everything she sees, hears or feels can be immediately broadcast to millionsâinvestigating a government-led coverup of a series of massacres. Spectacular worldbuilding, plenty of feelings. Written by a long-time intersex activist and very cool person.
Tone: Sad and weird and dreamlike. Complicated ending.
The Strange Case of Starship Iris -Â
Unproblematic Firefly. very cute, funny, and free!Â
Queerness: 10/10 - all over the acronym, including trans and nb characters! hooray! Special shoutout for having both an alien and a human nb character.
Anti-empire: 9/10 - anti-prison, anti-endless war
Tone: your friends who like fanfic and found family and arenât afraid to sing in public put on a podcast.
Janelle MonĂĄeâs entire ouvre, but especially Dirty Computer.
Details: nothing the average tumblr user doesnât already know? Go watch Dirty Computer.
Another classic. If you hadnât heard of it before 2016, you probably heard about it after for its prescient use of âmake America great againâ as a fascist slogan.
Queerness: less than Iâd like
Anti-empire: donât remember well enough to rate. more focused on some other things, but itâs there.
Gay pacifism in the face of WWI. Partly on here because youâve almost certainly not read it, since it was only recently re-printed by a small feminist publisher. Shoutout to their Categories: buried somewhere towards the end is âMen (books about)â and âMen (books by)â.
Queerness: 10/10 - explicitly gay (both male and female gay protagonists, even!) in 1918
Anti-empire: falls into another genre of - hey, you got your gay awakening in my socialism! you got your socialism in my gay awakening! (see also: Pride (2014) and the end of Tipping the Velvet)
Tone: it was written in 1918
Gay Easter Rising historical fiction. Gorgeous prose, referentially dense.Â
Anti-empire: fuck the English in particular.Â
Tone: ow ow ow my poor gay irish catholic heart
Ritterssport says: I canât believe maybe my favorite âgirl dresses up as a boy to go fightâ book was written by a straight man.
Tone: Hijinks With Thinks, like all of Discworld. Only the lesbians get any romance.
Putting this on the honorable mentions list only because neither of us have read the sequels, which Iâm pretty sure would 100% put it on the list proper.
Queerness: 8/10 - queer sensibility and main characters, trans author
Anti-empire: donât remember well enough to put a number on it
Tone: Moral complexity! Mathematical complexity! May bend your brain a bit!
PLEASE add to this list! I want more! One rule: not YA! I am an adult and I am so tired of stories about little baby children please I am so tired!
Also, <3 if you read/listen to/watch some of these because of this and like them, Iâm 100% down to chat about them!
Edit: I hope yâall like this, because tumblr mobile fucked up the formatting so badly I had to redo it 3 times. whoops.
