Science Fiction Has Gotten A Little…Gay.

This is going to be another touchy subject so let’s all promise to be on our best behavior right out of the gate? If not, I’m prepared to throw down, if you know what I mean.

*smacks a riding crop menacingly into the palm of his hand*

Good. Now that we’re all reading the same book, let’s get on the same page by giving you a bit of my own background. I’ve lived in Oakland, CA for the past four years. Before that I lived in Minneapolis, MN. This is important because these two cities (If you include San Francisco into the conversation alongside Oakland) are like two super LGBT capitols of the world. So I come from a microcosmic world of LGBT acceptance.

This skews my perspective.

In addition, one of my sisters is dating another woman (Huzzah! I like women too, welcome to the club dear sister). I don’t really know if that makes her gay, or bi, or what… and honestly I don’t really care to define it. As long as she’s happy, I’m happy. Not everything needs a label.

I certainly don’t. I don’t want to be known as Anthony the straight guy. That’s so…restrictive and disingenuous and trying to fit me nice and neat into a box that most certainly cannot accommodate my girthy hips.

Sexuality falls along a spectrum. We’re all a little gay and we’re all a little straight. Accept that. Does that make you uncomfortable? Well, too bad. That’s your baggage, not mine.

But I will say this: If that previous assertion does make you a little uncomfortable, you should probably do some soul searching and figure out why that is because the world of tomorrow is coming and you’re falling behind the times. The rest of us aren’t gonna slow down and wait for you either.

So, in light of everything I just said, here’s what’s bothering me: Locus Magazine recently announced the shortlist for Best Sci-Fi and Best Fantasy book of 2014.

Best Sci-Fi

The Peripheral – William Gibson

Ancillary Sword – Ann Leckie

The Three-Body Problem – Cixin Liu

Lock In – John Scalzi

The Southern Reach Trilogy – Jeff Vandermeer

Best Fantasy

The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison

Steles of the Sky – Elizabeth Bear

City of Stairs – Robert Jackson Bennett

The Magician’s Land – Lev Grossman

The Mirror Empire – Kameron Hurley

I don’t know how many of these, if any, you’ve read, but I’ve read 8 of the 10 books (Excluding The Magician’s Land–cause I didn’t really enjoy the first book in this series–and Steles of the Sky) and I noticed something really interesting: they all have a gay character.

I’ll get to why that stuck out to me as being odd a little bit later, but I want to draw attention to some of the praise these books received:

“They fell in love at a university in Saypur, but Vo turned out to be gay (Shara suspects he liked her boyish figure.” – City of Stairs – Robert Jackson Bennett

“Annihilation has an Asian lead character, Authority a Latino and Acceptance has a gay man as protagonist.“ – Southern Reach Trilogy – Jeff Vandermeer

“One of the characters is gay, and it’s A Very Big Deal in the way his history is presented.” – The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison

“Those aren’t the reasons I’m falling so hard for this book. A big part of the reason is this: there are two characters, Jim Buchold and Rick Wisson, who are MARRIED. Yep. You got it. Two guys, married.“ – Lock In – John Scalzi

“This is also, it’s worth noting, a book as queer as the Bel Dame Apocrypha, if not queerer. The Mirror Empire‘s cultures all have multiple genders – three or five; and bisexuality is completely normalised and expected. The Dhai are a polyamorous society, where multiple-person marriages with all sorts of configurations of gender are shown without comment, and the men of Saiduan seem to be shared at their owner’s whims. Hurley has also included theOrlandoesque character of Taigan, who changes gender with the seasons; we see Taigan as both male and as an intersex individual in the novel, but presumably in future installments we’ll see her become female too.“ – The Mirror Empire – Kameron Hurley

“One of the main characters is gay. You don’t see a whole lot of homosexuality in fantasy, and you should …. One of them is sexually promiscuous. One of them is depressed. There’s a kind of range of psychological personalities that is a little bit broader than what you see in standard fantasy.” – The Magician’s Land – Lev Grossman

“Gibson’s inclusion of gay characters as a regular part of Clanton’s community is commendable, and merits remark until such inclusion is no longer remarkable.” – The Peripheral – William Gibson

This is what bugs me. We are still acting, as a community, as though the inclusion of gay characters in popular Sci-Fi and Fantasy is somehow…cutting edge. I don’t know if Steles of the Sky has any gay characters, but every other book on the list does. That’s 9 out of 10, which is like…90 percent or something.

Those are insanely high numbers. Now, you may be thinking that I’m somehow upset by this fact, but hey, I have gay characters in my own Firstborn Saga so it’s not like I’m petitioning for them to be removed.

Actually, I’m not sure what I’m petitioning for, because on the one hand I think it’s fantastic that the LGBT community is getting the inclusion they deserve–they are getting stories where, FINALLY, they get to be the hero–but the paradigm is shifting in a weird, unexpected way in that the LGBT community is now being…over-represented.

Huh? You all grunt as a collective.

Alright, don’t burn me at the stake quite yet, hear me out.

The National Center for Health Statistics does an annual National Health Interview Study and recently they began surveying Americans’ sexual orientation and what they found is that about 3.8 percent of American’s identify as gay/lesbian/bi/transgender. I’ll be the first to point out that there are some significant methodological issues with this survey.

– A lot of people don’t feel comfortable reporting one way or the other.

– A lot of people who participate in same-sex relations don’t identify themselves as gay, ie: “I sleep with men, but I’m not gay.” Huh? That… that is confusing. I agree, but remember, sexuality is a spectrum.

Anyways, I’m willing to grant that 3.8 percent is probably on the low end, so let’s round up to a solid 10%. Okay, so that means 10% of the population is represented in 90% of the Locus Award Eligible Novels for Sci Fi and Fantasy.

That’s INSANE (in both a good and a bad way). It’s good because I think gay rights is a super hot button topic right now. It’s good that writers are bringing awareness to this and being inclusive in their writing.

The bad side of the equation is that now, to write an award winning book, it almost feels like you have to include a gay character. As a result, everything is feeling a little.. same. A little.. forced.

Here’s an example of something else that affects ten percent of the population: Diabetes (which incidentally is the seventh leading cause of death in America). Now, imagine that 9 out of those 10 books all had a character suffering from Diabetes, and that a percentage of them even died from said disorder.

That’d be a little weird, right?

How about mental disorders? Hell, we could focus entirely on Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar Disorder which together affect over 10 percent of the population. Include all mental disorders and you’re looking at closer to 25 percent of the population.

Okay, I guess if I had to state my gripe, it would be this: We’ve thrown open the doors of inclusivity, but by doing so we’ve pigeonholed ourselves to the singular character trait expressed in terms of sexuality.

I am not defined by my sexuality any more than my sister is. If the character in the book your reading is, then we’ve got a problem. We’re doing something wrong.

There is a caveat to this and it was mentioned in one of those reviews up above. Let me scamper up there and grab that real quick… hold tight.

*puts on some elevator music*

“One of the characters is gay, and it’s A Very Big Deal in the way his history is presented.” – The Goblin Emperor – Katherine Addison

When introducing a character and making a point of their sexuality, it has got to serve a purpose. If it doesn’t, then your character is a blatant attempt at ticking boxes on your Diversity and Demographics checklist.

Let’s leave off with this:

“Gibson’s inclusion of gay characters as a regular part of Clanton’s community is commendable, and merits remark until such inclusion is no longer remarkable.” – The Peripheral – William Gibson

The long, drawn out point I’m trying to make is this: the inclusion of gay characters, in and of itself, is no longer remarkable. It just isn’t.

Or is it?

*shrug*

Honestly, I just thought it was really cool how many awesome books are including gay characters these days and wanted to push your buttons to draw attention to that fact. Sucker! You’ve been had!