Columnists – Page 6 – Queer Sci Fi

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“We’re Here” For a Best of the Year. New Yearly Anthology Series – Boogieman in Lavender

February 15, 2023February 13, 2023 by Jeff Baker

What would you have for your last meal? In Ann LeBlanc’s story “Twenty Thousand Last Meals on an Exploding Station,” an engineer on a doomed space station finds herself in a time loop and just has time to eat at a different one of the station’s thousands of restaurants before the end, an end which keeps repeating itself. This imaginative delicacy is just one of the delights in the 2021 edition of the new yearly anthology of Best Queer Speculative Fiction of the Year “We’re Here,” published by Neon Hemlock Press. The series stands as a fine replacement for Lethe … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Prompts

January 16, 2023 by Kari Trenten

I jot it down in a notebook and in a Pages file. I mull it about in my imagination. Sometimes I start writing about it when I’m on the go, stopping at a cafe in the middle of shopping or during a break from some other task.

New Year’s 2023: Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender

January 12, 2023 by Jeff Baker

This Is Myyyyy New Years Resolution by Jeff Baker (title from Spike Jones) So here we are in Two-Thousand-Twenty-Three. As a guy who was watching reruns of “The Jetsons” back in 1969 I find that amazing. There are plenty of reasons for hope about 2023, if only from naive optimism. At the very least, Civil War did not break out in 2022 and the partisan hacks who thought they wanted civil war were shocked, shocked at any violence seemingly directed at them. And the possibility of turning back rights for LGBT people in the U.S. was squelched at least for … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: A Word

December 16, 2022 by Kari Trenten

Perhaps when we’re disturbed by a certain word, it’s a chance to think about what it means. To ourselves and others.

A Truman Memory – Boogieman In Lavender

December 14, 2022December 13, 2022 by Jeff Baker

AUTHOR’S NOTE: We last encountered Truman Capote’s short stories in this column this past February. https://www.queerscifi.com/truman-capotes-queer-tales-of-fantasy-jeff-baker-boogieman-in-lavender/ We close out the year with a look at his most famous short tale and another story for Christmas. A good many readers first encounter Truman Capote’s story “A Christmas Memory” in school, in their textbooks or possibly in one of the many fine recordings of the story by Geraldine Paige or others. A bittersweet recollection of several incidents in the narrator’s childhood, probably based on the Gay author’s own youth as well as on Miss Sook Faulk, Capote’s cousin who seems to have … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Unearthed

December 4, 2022December 4, 2022 by T.A. Creech

Any time I can talk about Tardigrades, you can bet good money I’m going to do exactly that. These little “bears” have so much potential in science. They do all the things, and it’s my personal belief that trans-human modification will start with enhancements from gene-splicing with Tardigrades. Especially with the problems we’re still trying to solve with deep space exploration. Macrobiotus naginae are a soil type Tardigrade. At this rate, there will be more types of these suckers than Pokemon. The specialty of these ones is the ability to live in arid conditions. Deserts. Cold ones too. If humans … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: The Chase

November 16, 2022 by Kari Trenten

I was particularly struck by the end credits of the movie, done in a delightfully Gothic fashion where the very landscape had eyes and turned into their pursuer. It brought back memories of Lord of the Rings, Sauron, and how his eye often followed Frodo wherever he went.

Bewitched, Bewitched, You’ve Got Me In Your Spell—Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender

November 13, 2022 by Jeff Baker

Bewitched, Bewitched, You’ve Got Me In Your Spell by Jeff Baker AUTHOR’S NOTE: As I mentioned last month, this column was intended for October and Halloween but maybe it fits for the Thanksgiving season too! ——jeff If there’s one fantasy sitcom that is perfect viewing for LGBT viewers year-round, especially during the Halloween season it’s probably “Bewitched,” the magical comedy that starred Elizabeth Montgomery as a witch happily married to a mere mortal. Not only does the series feature several LGBT performers but its themes of accepting “the other” are something an audience doesn’t have to be Gay to understand … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Snow

October 30, 2022 by T.A. Creech

Physics is weird. Of course, I mean that in the most respectful way possible, but physics is weird. Weak forces and strong forces and thermodynamics. Fluid dynamics. Quantum mechanics. I sort of understand most of it, but did science, as a whole field, really have to make the whole thing as opaque and esoteric as possible? For instance, I was reading articles on the probability of snow falling upwards under the ice sheets covering Europa. Super cool stuff. I had to crawl through about six articles packed full of the science lingo before I figured out what was going on. … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Meltdown

October 16, 2022 by T.A. Creech

I guess Google had a meltdown? It lasted long enough for people to notice? I must have been at the day job when that happened and missed it. It’s pretty funny how weird that sounds. I first jumped online as a wee teenager back when AOL and Netscape were the major players, when dial up was the only way to get online. When the first Diablo game was super popular. If something like Google crashed back then, we’d collectively shrug and find a different search engine. No big deal. Not to get political about this, but this is why monopolies … Read more