"Pushing the Envelope" resource list

(Last modified 4 June 2006.)

Compiled for the "Pushing the Envelope" panel at WisCon 2006.

This list provides some starting points for discussion of how to go about pushing the boundaries of sfnal portrayals of sexual orientation and gender.

Here's the panel description, lightly edited:

Melissa Scott's Shadow Man is an example of the thesis that the most cutting-edge writing/thinking about gender (i.e., about deconstructing the binary sex-gender system) is happening in science fiction, though almost no other SF/F out there has pushed our ideas about sex-and-gender as radically as that book did (though some have come close). In a post-W28 online journal entry, Jed Hartman wrote, "I think the real-world spectrum of gender possibilities is more interesting and broader than most of what's available in SF." Sadly, that appears to be true. How do we push the envelope? How do we effectively clamor for more radical thinking/imagining about sex and gender in SF/F? What can fans do? What can writers do?

The following is not in any way a comprehensive list of works touching on issues of gender, sexuality, and orientation. There are other booklists that cover such topics. This list is a sampler. If you'd like to suggest an item for the list, drop a note to Jed with the title and author and a brief description of what about the work pushed the envelope for you. Note that a work's lack of inclusion on this list doesn't necessarily indicate that we believe the work doesn't belong on the list.

Some recent (and forthcoming) envelope-pushing fiction:

• "Knapsack Poems," by Eleanor Arnason (2002). Features aliens who consist of multiple individual bodies (some male, some female, some neuter) who consider themselves to together form a single person. (This sort of collective-person idea has shown up in a variety of works lately, including works by Vernor Vinge and Paul Melko, but the Arnason story has more focus on the gender aspects than most such works.)
• "This Tragic Glass," by Elizabeth Bear (2004). Has one transgendered protagonist (a biological woman, social male), and one who is an asexual biological woman.
• Carnival, by Elizabeth Bear (2006). A libertarian feminist dystopia ("think Joanna Russ by way of Heinlein with a side trip through an Andre Norton novel as written by John Varley").
• Whiskey and Water, by Elizabeth Bear (2007). Has an intersexed protagonist.
• "Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation," by Raphael Carter (1998). A short story in the form of a scholarly article about some modern humans who perceive gender very differently from most people.
• "Liking What You See: A Documentary," by Ted Chiang (2002). Portrays a world in which people can opt to turn off their response to sexual attractiveness.
• Distress, by Greg Egan (1995). The male main character forms a relationship with a character who is physically and neurally asexual by choice.
• Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, by Laurell K. Hamilton (1993-present, but apparently the most relevant material starts around book 10, published in 2001). Protagonist gradually becomes poly and kinky over the course of the series.
• "Genderbending at the Madhattered," by Kameron Hurley (2004). A short story set in a world where people can easily change sex, but at any given moment must dress and behave as their current gender in accordance with a strict gender code.
• River of Gods, by Ian McDonald (2004). Includes a character who has opted to be surgically modified to remove all gender characteristics.
• The Invisibles (comic book), by Grant Morrison (1994-2000). One of the protagonists is Lord Fanny, a transvestite shaman.
• "Start the Clock," by Ben Rosenbaum (2004). Shows a world in which a virus has caused everyone to stop aging; for example, people who were young kids when the virus hit never go through puberty, so among other things, the story's an interesting look at asexuality.
• Set This House in Order, by Matt Ruff (2003). A novel about a person with multiple personalities, some male and some female.
• Shadow Man, by Melissa Scott (1995). A science fiction novel portraying a future human society with five sexes, and a planet where societal pressures force people of all those sexes to label themselves as either "male" or "female."
• Larque on the Wing, by Nancy Springer (1994). A middle-aged straight woman transforms herself into a young gay man.
• Ghastly's Ghastly Comic, a webcomic, subtitled "Tentacle monsters and the women who love them" (2001-present). Two of the main characters are anime tentacle monsters—one is a prudish monster who's put off by the idea of sex with a human, while the other is "game for nearly any sexual perversion imaginable, at least once." The strip includes explicit sex, closeups of genitalia (human and otherwise), tentacle sex, gay sex, quasi-child sex, transsexual sex, oral sex, zombie masturbation, animal sex, elf sex, BDSM, and lots more. (Note: Also features racial caricatures and sacrilegious jokes.) All presented with enthusiastic glee and an odd sort of charm.

Some relevant nonfiction:

• Kate Bornstein's book My Gender Workbook; How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely. Excellent resource for hands-on mind-expansion and deconstruction of what gender means to us personally. Also recommended: Bornstein's book Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us.
• Raphael Carter's Androgyny Rarely Asked Questions list. Unfortunately currently offline, but see the copy at archive.org.
• Uranian Worlds: A Guide to Alternative Sexuality in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, by Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo (1990). The classic reference work on this topic.
• "The Future of Sex," by Jed Hartman (2003). An editorial for Strange Horizons about the lack of diversity—and especially the lack of queer, trans, poly, and kinky people—specifically in "human-future-in-space" science fiction.
• The Intersex Society of North America provides resources and information for and about real-world people whose anatomy doesn't conform to typical definitions of male and female. See especially their FAQ; lots of good information, well-written and clear.
• Mary Anne Mohanraj's Alternative Sexualities in Science Fiction and Fantasy list.
• The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender, by Martine Rothblatt. Mentioned on the panel, though it gets mixed reviews at Amazon.
• Writing the Other, by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward (2005). A manual based on a workshop that Nisi and Cynthia have run, helping writers learn to write about characters whose backgrounds differ from the writer's own in any of various ways that society considers significant. $9 from Aqueduct Press.
• The Tiptree Award website, featuring lists of Tiptree winners and shortlists (and sometimes long lists) for each year's award, plus commentary from the jurors.
• "Both/And: Science Fiction and the Question of Changing Gender," by Sherryl Vint (2002). An article for Strange Horizons discussing "the representation of the gender-fluid SF body" in Delany's Trouble on Triton and Varley's Steel Beach.
• John Williams's Gender-Neutral Pronoun FAQ.

Some older envelope-pushing fiction:

• Bone Dance, by Emma Bull (1991). Explaining the reason for its inclusion on this list would be a plot spoiler.
• Xenogenesis trilogy, by Octavia Butler (1987-1989). Features aliens who require a third gender for reproduction, and their interactions (sexual and otherwise) with humans.
• "Aye, and Gomorrah," by Samuel R. Delany (1967). About people who have a fetish for neuter spacers.
• "Time Considered as a Helix of Semiprecious Stones," by Samuel R. Delany (1968). Widely regarded as a groundbreaking portrayal of gay SM in sf.
• Dhalgren, by Samuel R. Delany (1975). Bi and poly characters, and an explicit threesome scene.
• Trouble on Triton, by Samuel R. Delany (1976). An early sfnal portrayal of transsexuality.
• Golden Witchbreed, by Mary Gentle (1983).
• The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein (1966). One of the early portrayals of Heinlein's "line marriages"; often cited (along with other Heinlein works, especially Stranger in a Strange Land (1962)) by poly people as their introduction to the idea of polyamory.
• "'—All You Zombies—,'" by Robert A. Heinlein (1959). An early sfnal appearance of a hermaphrodite.
• Don't Bite The Sun, by Tanith Lee (1976). The incarnation of Death transforms a man into a woman.
• Death's Master, by Tanith Lee (1979). Has a character who changes into a woman several times throughout the book.
• Drinking Saphire Wine, by Tanith Lee (1977). A future where people switch bodies, sexes, etc. regularly. The hero/heroine sticks him/herself in a female body without changing to make a point to everyone else in that society.
• The Book of the Damned, by Tanith Lee (1988). A character who switches back and forth between male thief and female nun.
• The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969). The grandparent of mutable-gender sf; in addition to pushing the envelope of the time in its own right, led to later more nuanced explorations of the gender-changing Gethenians in various Le Guin short stories. Also worth reading: Le Guin's followup essays "Is Gender Necessary?" and especially "Is Gender Necessary? Redux."
• "Grownups," by Ian R. McLeod (1992), featuring a world in which human reproduction requires a third sex.
• "When It Changed," by Joanna Russ (1972). Men from Earth visit Whileaway, an all-female planet (which figures prominently in other Russ works as well).
• Tomoe Gozen books, by Jessica Amanda Salmonson (1981-1984). They detail the adventures of a female samurai in a feudal not-Japan, and a great deal of concern is given to how she navigates the line of being socially high-status male but physically female.
• "The World Well Lost," by Theodore Sturgeon (1953). The first science fiction story to portray homosexuality sympathetically.
• "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side," by James Tiptree, Jr. (1971). Focuses on human sexual desire for aliens. "[A]ll our history is one long drive to find and impregnate the stranger. Or get impregnated by him; it works for women too."
• "Houston, Houston, Do You Read," by James Tiptree, Jr. (1976). Modern male astronauts encounter a world that turns out to be populated entirely by women.
• Eight Worlds stories and novels, by John Varley (1976-present). Many of these focus on people being easily able to change sex (but see criticism of Steel Beach in the Sheryl Vint article cited elsewhere in this list). Perhaps specifically the story "Options"?
• Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, by Kate Wilhelm (1976). Features single-sex groups of clones who have sex within the group.

Panel participants:

• Elizabeth Bear
• Joan Haran (moderator)
• Jed Hartman
• Aaron Lichtov
• Melissa Scott