Abstract

Abstract:

Consider communication with extraterrestrial entities, where delays in responses might be on the order of centuries and reception of these signals demands unprecedented precision. Or fathom the strange mixtures of different life periods that occur during the immense bodily changes of hormone replacement therapy. Or recall the vast times that are brought together in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. These temporalities become weird through strange simultaneities that upset our beliefs about linear progression. Drawing upon these heterogeneous examples, the possibilities of queer reinterpretations of Lovecraft, and her own transition experiences, the author, through experiments in textual form, manifests the ways in which the concept of xenology—or the study, analysis, and development of the xeno—allows us to better contend with strange times.

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