Sci-Fi/Fantasy: Gay characters?

[murphy]

I am reading an extraordinary book right now in which the main character is bisexual. It seems to be the norm in the culture, not thought twice about. It might help to have it be the 'cultural norm'.

What is the name of the book and author? Curious (read nosy) minds wish to know.

 

[Raith]

'Maia ' by richard adams. My new favorite.

 

[shadowbox]

In Kushiel's Legacy series, most the characters swing both ways, including the main character who has sex for money, and enjoys a little S&M


So I don't see why not.

 

[mygoditsraining]

Richard Morgan goes to great lengths in The Steel Remains to keep reminding the reader that his main character is, yep, still gay (to the point of having other characters in the parallel storylines reminisce about him, with particular emphasis on his predeliction for naughty sex with those of the same gender).

The take home message is, I guess, that you don't need to be worried about having to be subtle or suggestive for fear of never getting published or finding readers - although personally I found that The Steel Remains laboured the point so heavily that the publisher might as well have retitled it Gay Swordsman Epic and sold it wrapped in a Pride flag.

 

[J-WO]

Currently, sf/fantasy needs all the alternate sexuality it can get- if only to ensure Orson Scott Card never sleeps well again.

 

[FionaW]

Diane Duane's 'Door' series has essentially gay male leads, though they do bat for the other team if the mood takes them. A culture with very different sexual norms is one of the foundations of that series.

Also Melanie Rawn's unfinished 'Mageborn' series plays around with cultural expectations and sexuality in a strangely catholic-styled society full of saints. I loved it the first time I read it but on going back to it recently I found it a bit too flowery.

I always felt the obvious society (fantasy, not scifi) in which to play around with gender roles and sexuality is the elves - already more than a little androgynous, even hermaphroditic in a way. There is a vague idea for doing something similar with dwarves tumbling around in my head; sort of a cross between Pratchett and Nicholls.

 

[J-WO]

Androgynous dwarves. Wow. You walk where Tolkien feared to tread.

 

[Anne Lyle]

I'm surprised no-one has yet mentioned the Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling - her main character Seregil is clearly bisexual, and the young protagonist Alec eventually comes to realise his own homosexuality over the course of the first two books. However their relationship isn't the focus of the series - it's more by way of underpinning, providing conflict and motivation.

There are gay and bisexual characters in my own work - I'm writing about Elizabethan London, which was rife with cross-dressing, homoerotic poetry and all-round gender-bending, so it would be odd to ignore it! - but again, it's just one more aspect of the setting, not the focus of the story. My protagonist is straight, but mainly because I felt this would actually be less of a cliché - women writing from the PoV of gay men has almost become the norm these days!

I have to say I was disappointed by Lackey's Last Herald Mage trilogy - far too much angst and not enough real action, and the ending was just... wrong. YMMV...

 

[Dimentio]

Hi, this goes to anyone who would like to throw their two cents in, but I'm interested in hearing back from someone in the industry;

Is there a market currently out there for books with main characters who are gay? I'm not talking about romance novel stuff, but all the books I tend to read always have a lot of action and fiction stuff and usually some form of heterosexual love interest. Now, I've been out of the loop for a while so there may be a pocket of books somewhere with gay characters, but I'm just wondering what the industry standpoint on this is. Would it be possible to publish a book with a main character who was gay in the sci-fi fantasy genre? Or would no publisher/agent touch such a thing?

Thanks for your time.

I have several bi- and homosexual characters, both amongst the good guys and the bad guys. There is also quite much of inter-species relationships (between humans and goblins for example).

 

[dwndrgn]

I think the main point has already been made, that there are plenty of gay characters - main and secondary - out there and the key is that they have to be there naturally, not as a way to create shock and awe; but I wanted to mention a couple of good authors that haven't been mentioned yet. Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear both use gay or bi protagonists in their very enjoyable and popular books.

So it is clearly not taboo. The only thing really taboo is boring stories and bad writing, imho.

 

[KESpires]

Hi, this goes to anyone who would like to throw their two cents in, but I'm interested in hearing back from someone in the industry;

Is there a market currently out there for books with main characters who are gay? I'm not talking about romance novel stuff, but all the books I tend to read always have a lot of action and fiction stuff and usually some form of heterosexual love interest. Now, I've been out of the loop for a while so there may be a pocket of books somewhere with gay characters, but I'm just wondering what the industry standpoint on this is. Would it be possible to publish a book with a main character who was gay in the sci-fi fantasy genre? Or would no publisher/agent touch such a thing?

Thanks for your time.

Anne Rice made a living with gay and/or bisexual vampires and was very explicit in her depictions.

I'm sure you'll do fine with whatever characters you create provided they are intriguing and drawn well on the page.

 

[KESpires]

Currently, sf/fantasy needs all the alternate sexuality it can get- if only to ensure Orson Scott Card never sleeps well again.

I believe OSC has had gay characters in his fiction before. I'll have to start digging, but I remember him being outraged the J. K. Rowling didn't explicitly state in Deathly Hallows that Dumbledore was gay, saying something like, "Nobody cares if he's gay, but be a brave enough writer to say it in the work itself, not in an interview. When I have a gay or lesbian character, I let the reader know."

I think that's the quote. It was in his blog sometime shortly after Deathly Hallows came out.

EDIT: I did a search though, couldn't find anything mentioning any of his characters being gay or lesbian. Funny enough though, in the blog I mentioned, he claims that Ender's Game inspired Harry Potter...

I'm not sure what he smoked before saying that. But it must have been terrific.

 

[J-WO]

I believe OSC has had gay characters in his fiction before.

I wasn't talking about his fiction so much as his general commentary on various sites. He sees same-sex love as a sin and, though he doesn't think it should be illegal at home, he believes public displays of affection (among LGBs) should be arrestable. For society's good, you understand.

Theres this memorable interview where OSC's spouting his self-pleased nonsense and the journalist is a lesbian and hasn't told him that fact.

I'm not sure what he smoked before saying that. But it must have been terrific.

Maybe he should smoke some more. Might chill him out...

 

[Omphalos]

Just finished a book by Gore Vidal named Kalki. The main character in that book was a bi-sexual female with a proclivity for female lovers. Her homosexuality was not played up too much, but it was important to the story. Vidal's Myra Breckinridge, which is also fantastic, deals heavily with homosexual (gay and lesbian) themes, and probably transgender, as a surgical procedure is important to the book.

I also just found a book the other day called Uranian Worlds, edited by Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo, which is an annotated bibliography of over 1,000 SF and fantasy books that deal in various degrees with homosexuality. Interesting reading.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Just to add to the list - a friend of mine just got a two-book contract on top of the one she's already contracted to write, for a series about her lesbian werewolf private eye (first seen in the anthology "Queer Wolf" that came out earlier this year). It seems there is no genre that can't be enhanced by a little gaiety

 

[jackokent]

Ellen Kushner's brllliant book Swordspoint centres around two gay characters.

 

[nightdreamer]

I'm sure there's a market for it. I have a gay nephew who is totally in love with Glee, largely because of its gay-friendly stance and the inclusion of a strong gay character. I don't know that he reads speculative fiction, but there have to be plenty of gays who do. Also, I'm sure there are plenty of straight people who don't really care about the sexual orientation of a character. Personally I'm a sucker for good old-fashioned heterosexual romance, so I don't know how satisfying it would be for me. I've never written a gay character, probably because I can't really think from that angle. But now that you bring up the subject, I'm wondering if maybe I should try, just to broaden my horizons.

 

[Anne Lyle]

I can add my own novels to the list, now that I have a publisher and one book out already (wow, seems a lifetime since I posted on this thread...).

The hero of my current trilogy is bisexual (as many Renaissance men were - it's a side of that culture that doesn't get mentioned much), and a couple of other central characters are gay. So I can say from personal experience that, yes, there's a market for fantasy featuring gay characters

 

[allmywires]

I have two POV characters in my book and one of them is gay. It features quite a lot in the politics and religion of my world too, but not quite as simply as gay=bad.

 

[Boneman]

Baron Harkonnen was gay, but not a terribly good role model...