In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Queer Universes: Sexualties in Science Fiction ed. by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon
  • W. Michael Johnstone (bio)
Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon, editors. Queer Universes: Sexualties in Science Fiction. Liverpool University Press. 2010. xii, 286. US$35.95

Queer Universes relies upon a provocative and perceptive claim: that queer theory and science fiction share an affinity for imagining different ‘ways of living in the world,’ and in doing so both function to question and destabilize those narratives, discourses, and institutions that define and reinforce notions of what constitutes ‘the normal’ in society. Each piece in Queer Universes takes this position as its foundation in its exploration of the representation of sex/sexuality/gender in science fiction, such that the [End Page 597] collection as a whole offers an important demonstration of the constructive, recuperative possibilities of a queer(ed) view of the genre. Key to that perspective is the definition and application of ‘queer’ throughout the collection. The editors, along with the other authors, frame ‘queer’ as that which in some form challenges, subverts, strays from, and envisions alternatives to a heteronormative world. Assuming this stance, the collection gives ‘queer’ a critical flexibility that allows for a compelling variety of voices and approaches in its twelve pieces – personal narrative, interview, theoretical exposition, genealogy/history, close analytical (re)reading, and subgenre description (a variety that can be said to queer the genre of the multiple–author collection of scholarly essays itself). Most significantly, Queer Universes not only testifies to the fruits of a queer(ed) view of science fiction, but it proves distinctly valuable for revealing the queerness already inherent in science fiction, a genre fundamentally concerned with envisioning different ‘ways of living’ than what we know now.

Wendy Pearson’s ‘Alien Cryptographies: The View From Queer’ establishes the theoretical ground for the collection. She sees science fiction as, yes, traditionally invested in ‘heteronormative assumptions,’ but also as especially effective at ‘representing dissident sexual subjectivities.’ Four types of queer science fiction texts may be encountered: one that is ‘not overtly queer’ but can be read as such in relation to its historical context; a ‘“proto–queer” text’ that at some level questions the standard notions of sexuality of its time; one ‘coded as queer’ but hiding ‘in plain sight’; and, finally, an ‘overtly queer text.’ Discussing John W. Campbell’s story ‘Who Goes There?’ (1938) as an example of the first type of queer science fiction text, Pearson persuasively observes that its anxiety about the ‘invisible alien’ among us expresses the fear of being unable to ‘recognize a “homosexual”’ prevalent in the late 1930s. The sort of ‘dissident’ analysis that Pearson performs with Campbell is fulfilled in the rest of the collection, which throughout presents readers with what she calls ‘strategic interventions of “queer” into the world of sf.’

Like Pearson’s queering of Campbell, the essays by Guy Davidson, Graham J. Murphy, and De Witt Douglas Kilgore contribute especially astute queer(ed) readings of specific science fiction texts. Their examinations of sex/sexuality/gender in, respectively, Samuel Delany’s Trouble on Triton (1976), William Gibson’s Neuromancer series (1984–88), and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (1992–96) exhibit how effectively a queered approach to science fiction can reassess such texts in surprising and productive ways. For instance, Murphy’s repositioning of Gibson’s matrix as a queer space that actually ‘disrupt[s]’ instead of reifies ‘gender coding’ and Kilgore’s argument that Robinson points to a ‘queer futurity’ beyond the constrictions of a default ‘heteronormative whiteness’ give to these classic science fiction works a fresh relevance for understanding the influence of technoscience upon individual and social sexual/gender [End Page 598] identity. Such ‘interventions’ are also highlighted by Rob Latham’s investigation of New Wave science fiction’s subversion of the ‘literary censorship of science fiction magazines up into the 1960s’ through ‘overt representations of sexuality’; Veronica Hollinger’s reading of Joanna Russ’s seminal feminist science fiction novel The Female Man (1975) as a ‘satirical critique of compulsory heterosexuality’; and Patricia Melzer’s detailing of the conventions of queer sex in science fiction erotica.

Queer Universes makes a vital...

pdf

Share