Year of Queer Lit

I have a complicated relationship with science fiction. I do not always reach for it first but when a sci-fi book grabs me it grabs me completely and does not let go. These four books did exactly that. They are wildly different from each other but they all have one thing in common: they expanded my understanding of what queer stories can do when they are set loose in the universe.

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

I do not have the words for how much I love this book. I have read it more times than I can count. I have gifted it at least ten times. I will probably gift it ten more. If you have never pressed a book into someone’s hands and said “please just trust me” this is the book that will make you do that for the first time.

Red and Blue are agents on opposite sides of a war that spans all of time, leaving taunting letters for each other across the strands of history. What starts as rivalry becomes something neither of them can name and then something neither of them can stop. It is written in the most gorgeous prose I have ever encountered in science fiction. It is a love story told in letters across centuries and timelines and it will rearrange something inside you permanently. This is one of my all time favorite books ever written and I will die on that hill. Please read it. Please.

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

This one is short, only about 200 pages, but it hits with the force of something three times its length. The Deep is Afrofuturist science fiction inspired by the song of the same name by clipping. It follows the descendants of pregnant African women who were thrown overboard during the Middle Passage and became water breathing mer-people who carry their collective traumatic memory in a single historian.

It is devastating. It is stunning. It is one of the most original concepts I have ever encountered in speculative fiction and Rivers Solomon executes it with such care and power that you will be thinking about it for weeks after you finish.

And if you can, get the audiobook. It is narrated by Daveed Diggs and I am fully convinced that man could read me the phone book and have me completely enthralled the entire time. His voice adds an entirely new layer to an already extraordinary story. Treat yourself.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

This one will surprise you and I mean that in the absolute best way. Kyr has been raised her entire life in Gaea Station, a militant cult dedicated to avenging humanity after Earth was destroyed by aliens. She has trained for war since she could walk. She believes completely in everything she has been taught. And then the story systematically dismantles every single thing she thinks she knows.

Some Desperate Glory is a queer space opera with a sapphic lead that is equal parts action packed and morally complex. It asks really hard questions about loyalty, identity, and what happens when everything you built your life around turns out to be a lie. It is the kind of book that makes you genuinely uncomfortable in the best possible way and that you cannot stop thinking about after you finish it.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

This one is the wildcard of the list and I love it for that. It is a sapphic dystopian western sci-fi novella set in a future American Southwest where a young woman stows away in a traveling library wagon to escape an arranged marriage. The librarians, it turns out, are secretly resistance fighters.

It is short, punchy, and completely unlike anything else on this list. There is a nonbinary character with great rep and the sapphic romance is warm and satisfying. If you want something you can read in an afternoon that will leave you grinning and immediately wanting more, this is your book. Also the premise alone should have you clicking that link.

Four books, four completely different corners of queer science fiction. Drop a comment and tell me which one you are starting with, and if you have already read This is How You Lose the Time War please come find me in the Discord so we can scream about it together.

Join us here: https://discord.gg/6fb475q76B