If you wanted to find life outside the closet in the 1930s, you might as well have started looking for another planet — and that’s exactly what a generation of gay and lesbian sci-fi fans did.
They were drawn to a genre that allowed them to imagine new worlds where they could be their true selves and love whomever they wanted.
This fall, a senior seminar offered through the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in the Gender Studies Program will look at how Los Angeles’ legendary sci-fi societies overlapped with the early LGBT rights movement, laying the groundwork for activists long before Stonewall or the Black Cat Riots.