Columnists – Page 6 – Queer Sci Fi

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Sources of Inspiration: A Special Writer

March 16, 2023 by Kari Trenten

Ultimately what made me want to write were stories. Other people’s stories. They enthralled me so much, transporting me to other times and places. I fell in love, again and again with books. Certain characters haunted me, coming to when I was listening to music. I found myself playing out my favorite scenes in my imagination, sometimes going beyond what was on the printed page. I wanted to create such compelling characters, make them part of plots which would enthrall them. I wanted to sweep people off their feet with story. Too often my own weren’t worthy of even causing … Read more

Two Briggon Snow Podcasts – Boogieman in Lavender

March 15, 2023March 11, 2023 by Jeff Baker

Look Up & Roommates – Two Briggon Snow Podcasts Radio drama, the “theater of the mind” is alive and well, in podcast form anyway. Back in the days of “The Shadow” or even the later “Radio Mystery Theater,” there would not have even been a mention of any LGBT people or issues. Not so with modern-day podcasts. Two in particular are produced by actor/director Briggon Snow. “Look Up,” a 2020-21 podcast series from Atypical Artists and created by Snow involves Emmet (Evan Bittencourt) and Lincoln (Snow) in a sci-fi drama. They are two teenagers who encounter each other on the … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Safety

February 16, 2023 by Kari Trenten

A heroic act, trying to create a safe place. Perhaps this place becomes more real and less of an illusion the more people strive to maintain it.

“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.