THE THEME
Incited by recent conversations and controversies concerning queers and queerness in popular science fiction, we are joined by special guest editor Nike Sulway (Rupetta, 2013; Dying in the First Person, 2016) for a special issue on queers and queerness in science fiction. The future beckons with a queer fist, and we need you to write it.
We seek critical and creative works, from any disciplinary perspective, in any format or medium, on the intersection of science fiction with the study of genders and sexualities.
We seek to make visible the invisible queer pasts, presents, futures of science fiction, to critically and creatively cultivate science fictional possibilities pressed into service for the coming of future actual and imagined queer bodies, lives, relationships, communities…
Do not be limited. Like your forebears: Be brave. Play with form, style, and genre. Invent, demolish, reimagine.
Writing from Below is a peer-reviewed online open-access gender, sexuality and diversity studies journal. We provide a forum for new research on gender and sexuality and the array of intersecting practices, ideologies, and issues that shape their human experience and social expression. For this special issue, topics might include (but should not be limited to):
- The representation of queers, queerness, and same-sex sexualities in science fiction, across various mediums (song, dance, literature, film, visual arts, etc.)
- The history of queer science fiction, its legacies and our inheritances
- The critique of privileged sexual and gender practices in science fiction—discrimination, marginalisation and exclusion; power and coercion
- Queer social movements—their advancement, representation, critique—in science fiction
- New models of gender, sexuality, and eroticism articulated through science fiction
- The future of queerness: what will queer be (if it persists) in future science fictions
- Hope, hopelessness, and queer science fictional futures
- Dystopian and utopian representations of futuristic queerness
- Post-humanism and/or trans-humanism, in theory and practice
- Bodies and texts in science fiction: non-human queerness, post-humanist queerness, queerness without bodies; cyborgs and augmented humans; intersexuality and alternative embodied genders
- Dildos and deathrays: sex, sexuality, and technology
- Queers Destroy/Destory Science Fiction: canons and cannons
SUBMISSIONS
We are open for submissions until 7 November 2016. Written submissions, whether critical or creative, should be between 3,000 and 8,000 words in length, and should adhere to the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.
For more information, for editorial enquiries, or questions about unusual submissions, please contact our managing editors.
REVIEWS
We are also seeking reviews of contemporary science fiction film, television, theatre, live or recorded music, artwork or exhibition, et cetera. We typically publish longer review-essays of between 1000 and 2000 words, and again encourage generic and stylistic experimentation.
If you’re interested in reviewing for Writing from Below, please contact our reviews editor.
