Science Fiction
Homosexuality in speculative fiction refers to the incorporation of homosexual themes into science fiction, fantasy, horror fiction and related genres which together constitute speculative fiction (SF). Such elements may include a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual (LGBT) character as the protagonist or a major character, or exploration of varieties of sexual experience that deviate from the conventional.
Science fiction and fantasy have traditionally been puritanical genres aimed at a male readership, and can be more restricted than non-genre literature by their conventions of characterisation and the effect that these conventions have on depictions of sexuality and gender. However, speculative fiction also gives authors and readers the freedom to imagine societies that are different from real-life cultures. This freedom makes speculative fiction a useful means of examining sexual bias, by forcing the reader to reconsider his or her heteronormative cultural assumptions. It has also been claimed that LGBT readers identify strongly with the mutants, aliens, and other outsider characters found in speculative fiction.
Read more about this topic: Queer Authors
Famous quotes containing the words science and/or fiction:
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
“Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)