Homosexual Female Characters in Science Fiction

In doing the research for this series of articles, I have found that lesbians outnumber gay men in science fiction by about a factor of ten. I suppose it would be disingenuous of me to pretend that I don't understand why this is. Given science fiction's classic target demographic, and given that demographic's propensity to consider lesbians "hot," and gay men "icky." IO9 recently posted a list of female-dominated cultures in science fiction novels, and the comments on the post are an excellent example of this. (Note also the commenter who asked if there were any worlds filled with gay men, and the resounding silence in response.) Certainly I can see how there would be a tendency for the media industry to green-light novels with the possibility for lesbian sex, and take a pass on novels with sex between gay men. After all, the media is in the business of selling things that its audience wants to buy. Framed this way, it's more about profits than it is about prejudice. But can this solely account for the proliferation of openly gay female science fiction writers, and the relative dearth of openly gay male writers? I have been cross-referencing works which won Lambda literary prizes, and so far I have found only a tiny handful of openly gay male writers. (David Gerrold, Russell T. Davies, and Samuel R. Delaney.) I'm sure there are more, and if you know of any, please let me know! At the same time, I found a website which lists lesbians in science fiction, both authors and characters, which recently hit its 200th entry. This ratio - 200 to less than 10? - strikes me as bizarrely unbalanced, even accounting for the predilections of The Core Demographic. I wonder, do gay women feel more comfortable with the science fiction genre and fandom than gay men do? I don't have the answer to that question, and I haven't been able to find anything about it online. Surely someone is asking this question - I can't be the only one, can I? I found this interview with Elizabeth Bear, regarding the release of her novel "Carnival." Bear's mother was a lesbian, and who has won several Lambda awards herself. And for extra credit, the interviewer identifies herself as a lesbian as well. (And two more gay male leading characters for The List!) The interview covers many related topics, but never quite touches on why lesbians have better representation in science fiction. Although there may be a hint in the way their conversation keeps getting linked to the feminist movement. The interview isn't entirely relevant to the question at hand, but it's well worth reading. Back to "the feminist thing," it seems that a lot of lesbian characters and female-only worlds are as much a matter of gender politics as they are of personal sexual identity. I'm not sure how I feel about this, to tell you the truth. I'm a big fan of feminism, but when you frame it like this, it makes it sound as if the feminist movement has co-opted a sexual preference in order to make a statement about patriarchy. Is that ethical? I wish I had the answer. No one does, but I think it's important to ask the question.

...And What It All Means

Yesterday, I crowned Captain Jack Harkness the first openly gay male leading character. Having spoken to a lot of people and done a lot of research since I went on this jag, I feel that's a definitive statement of fact. Now it's time to dig a little deeper into the broader significance. It must be said, and so I will say it: Captain Jack, charming as he may be, is hardly a model citizen. This wouldn't be such a big problem if he wasn't the first and only openly gay male leading character in science fiction. EVER. Don't get me wrong; I like Captain Jack, and I'm enjoying "Torchwood." That being said, it occurs to me that Wales must have a pretty lax set of regulations regarding sexual harassment in the workplace. Even though he is created and played with the best of intentions - a stellar "gay pedigree" if you will - he represents all the fears of the unevolved straight man come to life. First, a step back. For those of you new to the scene, Captain Jack was created by Russell T. Davies, who took over the Dr. Who helm and brought the new series to life. Davies is himself openly gay, and I commend him for having the guts to put homosexuality on the science fiction scene at all. As far as I can tell, that's a rare thing. Captain Jack is played by John Barrowman, who is also openly gay. I want to highlight this point, because although the mainstream audience has become accepting of gay fictional characters, we still prefer them to be played by straight men. In fact, Barrowman was up for the part of Will in "Will & Grace," but the show's producers passed him over for Eric McCormack, who is straight. The most salient and noticeable feature of Captain Jack Harkness is that he will hit on anything, and frequently does. Within the context of the show, his advances are usually welcome, but occasionally lead to awkward moments. For example, sometimes when he hits on Ianto, his male employee, Ianto's reaction could be charitably described as "conflicted." See also this deleted scene from the Torchwood episode "Meat." Ianto has previously had a girlfriend, although there is the implication that he and Jack have engaged in hanky panky which Ianto initiated. Although the basis for this statement is a notoriously bizarre and confusing scene, regarding the activities which one can engage in with the help of a stopwatch. (I don't half suspect it was just a bit of silliness, and that at some point in the future, we will see Jack and Ianto playing a game of chess in Jack's office.) The trope of the predatory, hyper-sexual gay man is an ugly one, and one which mainstream media has happily left behind for the most part. But I expect that science fiction has to start somewhere, and hopefully in the future it will move forward into acceptance like the rest of the evolved world.

Homosexual Male Characters in Science Fiction: A Follow-Up

Barring the introduction of any further evidence (leave a comment if you have some!) I will now definitively announce Captain Jack Harkness as science fiction's first openly gay male leading character. And one of the few openly gay male characters at all. Isn't that something? Let's break it down: Science fiction: for the purpose of this discussion, "science fiction" is defined narrowly. No fudging the rules by broadening the category to "speculative fiction." This is because on the issue of homosexuality, the horror and fantasy genres are cleaning our collective clock. Sadly, science fiction remains in the dark ages with regards to sensible, grown-up discussions of sexual orientation. Openly: yesterday we discussed the case of Lt. Felix Gaeta from "Battlestar Galactica." Gaeta was "outed" by the show, in one brief scene, in a webisode series which few people have seen. His homosexuality was never referred to again, either by the show or by the character himself. For the purpose of discussion, a fictional character whose homosexuality remains off-camera and out of context can be described as "not openly gay." This situation doesn't completely map to "closeted," because - as John Scalzi has aptly pointed out - not everything about a character makes it to the page. There's a lot of stuff about any given character which the author leaves out as irrelevant to the story. And there are plenty of characters for whom no orientation is ever explicitly stated. In which case it's your own fault for assuming they're straight. YOU TERRIBLE PERSON. (Just kidding!) Gay: Two points to be made here: 1. More specifically, Captain Jack is bisexual. As a matter of fact, three of the five gay male characters I've found so far are also bisexual. All three of the bisexual characters are on TV. In fact, male homosexuality in visual science fiction mediums is represented 100% by bisexuality. Doesn't that strike you as odd? My cynical suspicion is that this allows them to occasionally kiss girls, thus defusing the "ick" factor for science fiction's traditional target demographic. 2. I have decided, with the editorial powers bestowed upon me by the internet, to officially strike Ianto ("Torchwood") and the Doctor ("Dr. Who") off the list. In both cases, their only qualification for homosexuality is that they have snogged Jack Harkness. Which I think says more about Jack Harkness than it does about Ianto and the Doctor. Male: Isn't he just? Rrowr! Leading Character: every other homosexual character I've found so far has been strictly a secondary character at most. And having a random tertiary character wander into the foreground and mutter something about "my boyfriend" hardly counts as progressive. I shouldn't be shocked that science fiction is still stuck in the dark ages on this issue. But I am. I think of science fiction as being progressive, as showing us the way to the future, as introducing its audience to new concepts, and addressing society's broader themes. First inter-racial kiss, and all that. Sadly, science fiction still has a long way to go.

Top 3 2 2.5 Gay Male Science Fiction Characters

I've been catching up on the Dr. Who spinoff series "Torchwood" this week. It's awfully fun, aside from the occasional cringe-inducing stumble in the scripts. (Is it just me, or is Gwen the worst cop in Wales?) But it got me thinking about gay characters in science fiction, and how there really aren't any, aside from Captain Jack Harkness. I went looking online to see if my memory was simply failing me. I found a lot of "top 10 gay science fiction characters" lists, but they all had to stretch their definition of "science fiction." For example, the After Elton website stretched their definition of science fiction to include "Zorro, the Gay Blade" and John Constantine (the real one, from the comics, not the movie). One character which didn't make any of the "top 10" lists I found is Lieutenant Felix Gaeta. "Battlestar Galactica," a show which has earned a well-deserved reputation for fearlessness, has been surprisingly squeamish on the matter of Gaeta's sexuality. Okay first of all, his name has "gay" in it, which makes me cringe. Gaeta's homosexuality was implied throughout the series, causing a cascade of "is he or isn't he?" threads on message boards across the internet. Gaeta was finally outed by the show, but only in the webisode series "The Face of The Enemy." Frankly, I find this sort of thing almost worse than having no gay characters at all. Why won't they just come out and say it? Why be coy? It's the year 2009, for pity's sake. The assumption that "these things have to be kept quiet" is insulting. On the up side, Gaeta is one of the more memorable and complex characters on a show which is chock full of memorable and complex characters. Gaeta is arguably more three-dimensional than many of the primary characters. (I'm looking at you, Apollo.) Gaeta is neither good nor evil; he's just human. His homosexuality is simply a part of the fabric of his character, along with the tiger tattoo, and the loss of his leg. In a move which is only surprising if you don't think about it for very long, lesbian characters are relatively thick on the ground in science fiction. (More on lesbians in science fiction in a future post.) It's difficult not to draw the conclusion that lesbians are acceptable, but gay men are not, because science fiction's traditional core audience (males age 18-24)finds lesbians "hot," and gay men "icky." Of course, circling back to Dr. Who, the Doctor himself has had (offscreen) dalliances with men. (Okay, with Captain Jack.) But I'm not sure if this actually counts as homosexuality, because the Doctor isn't actually human. Frankly, I'm a little vague as to whether Gallifreyans even have gender in the way we understand it. Can a non-human from a planet which may or may not have gender, who incarnates in the body of a male, be said to be homosexual if he kisses another boy? Frankly, this is a rather delightful question, and it's the kind of thing that science fiction would be great at discussing, if it would only grow up.

Star Trek Geekery

Because of the new Star Trek movie, due May 8, 2009, there's an absolute frenzy of geeky, fannish Trek stuff online. It's the eleventh movie, so between the movies and five television series, there's a lot of material for bored fans to work with while they wait. For instance the official movie site is here, complete with trailers and promos. There are various sorts of "official" guest appearances, like the cast of Start Trek the Next Generation appearing on an episode of The Family Guy.

There are oddities emerging from Star Trek films of the past, like this very odd test scene from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), the infamous (or possibly notorious) directorial masterpiece of William Shatner. Apparently there were plans for "rock creatures," ten of 'em, to be deployed in a final battle on the planet Sha Ka Ree, the supposed home of, well, god. Or a god, or . . . anyway, the suits cost $350,000 each. You can see the video for yourself, but it's sort of like Hulk meets the Horta.

There are the very unofficial but traditional Star Trek trivia-based pursuits, like drinking games, or counting how long a red shirted guest actor lasts before his or her character is killed. But there are also a fair number of fan-created videos created in a spirit of roughly equal parts homage and satiric glee at Star Trek, its fans, and fandom in general. For instance, there's a nifty fan compiled video of all the ways the poor guest actors in red shirts get offed— complete with an essay that discusses the statistical likelihood of death-while-wearing-a-red-shirt in Star Trek: Does my ass look dead in this? I note, for the curious, that there is apparently a Star-Trek tie-in fragrance called "Red Shirt."

But there's a lot of good stuff in fandom, some really good stuff. For instance, take a look at the fabulous action-figure stop-motion animation operatic version of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan movie. I've embedded the video for you here:

Le Wrath di Khan is absolutely delightful, and very very well done— it's the work of the people behind Cartoon Network's Robot Chicken. The "opera" was part of a recent (January 2009) episode of Robot Chicken called "Two Weeks Without Food." Matthew Senreich and Seth Green are the co-producers behind Robot chicken, and this lovely little bit is not their first Trek reference; you can find others here.

Behind Shatner's somewhat genuine plea to fans to "Get a Life," there is a genuine realization by fans and actors alike that there really was something special about Trek. For instance, take a look at the charming interaction here, between Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner. It says a lot about the longevity of Trek fandom, and why even very jaded actors are willing to go beyond the potential cash value of fannish appearances.

As for me, I'm going to pass the time waiting for the new movie by watching streaming episodes of the original Star Trek television series on my iPhone. You can watch classic Trek episodes here, by the way, in the form of free streaming video from CBS.

John Scalzi Launches BigIdeaAuthors.com

Today science fiction author John Scalzi announced that he has launched a new website, BigIdeaAuthors.com, as a standalone site for the "Big Idea" guest blog posts which he has been running on his own blog for some time now. Scalzi will serve as the Executive Editor, sharing the masthead William Schafer (Publisher) and Yanni Kuznia (Editor) from Subterranean Press. The "Big Idea" guest posts have been a fascinating look into the process and background behind many of modern science fiction publishing's best and most interesting novels. I always read the "Big Idea" posts with interest, both for books that I have and books that I haven't read. There is no such thing as a typical "Big Idea" post. In a general sense, it's the literary equivalent of a director's DVD commentary track. "Big Idea" posts have included: The new BigIdeaAuthors.com website will feature Big Idea essays, as well as author interviews, articles about the publishing industry, and a slew of content to engage and spark discussion with its readers. The site will officially open for business on April 20, 2009.

Sci Fi in the New Yorker

The New Yorker website has put up a science fiction short story which was published in its most recent issue. "The Invasion From Outer Space," a delightful work of short science fiction by Steven Millhauser, is generally leaving science fiction fans cold. The most remarkable thing about this story isn't the story itself, but that it was published in the New Yorker of all places. Although the New Yorker has long supported short fiction, when was the last time it published something as distressingly genre as science fiction? Presumably Millhauser's Pulitzer helped soothe editorial fears at the New Yorker. Along with the fact that Millhauser isn't actually a science fiction writer. ("Slumming" isn't the kindest word, but it's the first that comes to mind.) The story is much more about how nothing ever lives up to its hype, and about how anyone who says "Everything from this point forward is different" is wrong. It also echoes the 9/11 attacks, which makes me wonder how long it will be before we stop flinching at accounts of a fall of particulate matter (in this case, yellow dust) falling from the sky. Steven Millhauser has several credits to his name, including a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his 1996 novel, Martin Dressler. He is also the author of the short story "Eisenheim the Illusionist," which became the movie "The Illusionist," for which he wrote the screenplay. The full text of "The Invasion From Outer Space" can be read here.

Donnie Darko Sequel Art Revealed

IO9 has published artwork from the upcoming sequel to Donnie Darko, titled S. Darko. The sequel follows Donnie's little sister (she of Sparkle Motion fame) who leaves town looking for fame and fortune, and then there's something about a meteorite, and probably a lot of weird and confusing special effects. Daveigh Chase (perhaps better known as Rhonda Volmer on HBO's series Big Love) stars as Donnie's sister Samantha. The Darko's mother is nowhere to be found in the IMDb cast list, which isn't too surprising. She's got her hands full saving humanity from Cylons, or destroying all remaining life, or both. Donnie Darko fans have expressed a great deal of skepticism about the sequel, and who could blame them? Any Donnie Darko fan who sat through the Director's Cut can't help but think that any further meddling or attempted extension of the original story will only ruin it. S. Darko is being directed by Chris Fisher, who has only a small handful of credits to his name, most of which are single episodes of television show series. "Directed by the guy who directed an episode of Chuck and two episodes of Moonlight" isn't exactly the biggest confidence booster. The original movie was both written and directed by Richard Kelly, who returns as one of two writers of S. Darko. (He is credited as the "characters" writer, while the relatively unknown Nathan Atkins is credited as the "screenplay" writer. I have no idea what that means.) Given Kelly's commentary on the DVD, and his appallingly bad Director's Cut, I can't say that Kelly's participation inspires excitement, either. It's almost as if the original Donnie Darko was fantastic despite Richard Kelly.

Red Dwarf Returns

Slashdot reports that science fiction television favorite Red Dwarf will return with a two part episode, titled "Red Dwarf: Back to Earth." The episode will be written and directed by Doug Naylor, half of the original team which created the first six Red Dwarf seasons. Doug Naylor and Rob Grant, the duo responsible for the creation and (some say best) early years of Red Dwarf, split in the mid-nineties, for reasons unknown. Prior to their split, they were known collectively as Grant Naylor, and wrote several Red Dwarf novels in addition to the shows. Rob Grant left Doug Naylor in charge of Red Dwarf, citing "creative differences." Doug Naylor did what he could with the series, but many people feel that it simply wasn't the same after Rob Grant left. Grant's departure coincided with an influx of cash for the show, which updated the crew's uniforms and set, and changed the feel of the show for many fans. In the years since, Naylor has been working on the Red Dwarf movie, whose mysterious "it will be out soon" perpetual in hiatus status has become legendary among fans. The movie has been announced as in "pre production" for several years, with a script floating about, and all of the original cast members sworn to participate. However, the movie has suffered from a chronic lack of funding, and most fans feel that it will never come to light. The two part episode will be aired along with two special feature episodes, "Red Dwarf: Unplugged" (an episode done entirely with improvisation) and "Red Dwarf: The Making of Back to Earth" (a "making of" mini-documentary).

America's First Trekkie President

Much news has been made about Barack Obama being America's first black president. But few people realize that the REAL first is much more relevant: Barack Obama is America's first Trekkie president. I first stumbled across this astounding fact when I was listening to a rerun of the NPR show "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" which featured a lengthy interview with Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy mentioned that he happened to walk through a hotel which was holding a rally for Obama's candidacy. Obama spotted Nimoy as he crossed the lobby, and - unbidden - grinned and flashed Nimoy the Vulcan hand signal. A little bit of digging turns up further evidence of Obama's Trek credentials. Last March during a rally in Wyoming, Obama is quoted as saying, "I grew up on Star Trek. I believe in the final frontier." This quote was said in the context of a discussion about NASA and America's space program, but I think the conclusion is obvious. For more than 20 years, faithful Trekkies have daydreamed about the time when real life could begin to resemble Star Trek. From television's first inter-racial kiss, to the consistently multi-cultural Enterprise crew, through to Captain Picard's level headed diplomacy, Star Trek has given us a picture of a wonderful world. A world where racial and gender equality are incorporated seamlessly into everyday life. Where strangers are neither tortured, nor oppressed by a technologically superior culture. A world where the people in charge would do anything to prevent a war. A world where rational, fact-based diplomacy saves the day.

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