Infiltration Intensifies!

 Once more, I dive into ‘Reactor’ magazine to get an idea of what is coming up in the world of science fiction, and once more, find that fantasy worlds and imagined alien societies for daring heroes and heroines to negotiate takes a back seat to …. this:

Even in the earliest stages of editing the anthology Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, I knew the book would open with an epigraph from the late queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia—where he argues that “the future is queerness’s domain.” Or, put another way: something about queerness is always “not yet here.”

Really? It seems to be omnipresent, these days! Gone are the days I’d make a trip up to ‘Forbidden Planet’ in London to peruse the latest imports, mostly selecting titles by the quality of the artwork on the front cover (a dragon or alien big cat on the cover being a sure clue I’d like it!), secure in the knowledge that they were mostly written to enthrall the reader and sell copies, rather than push some personal sexual agenda. 

Speculative fiction, too, is grounded in thinking about what has been, what is not, and what could be. In sf, we imagine our way into other worlds and other futures! Given that, I think there’s a natural connection between queer/trans life and culture and speculative fiction itself—it’s in those horizons of possibility.

Relentless propaganda is what it is - I'm old enough to remember when sci-fi was a beacon of hope, written by people whose desire was to entertain, not proselytise.