I just want to say thank you, again, to all of you who have posted to this thread with recs and resources- so helpful! Haven't heard of some of these authors, which is awesome- I love discovering new ones
Tanith Lee's great (how did I not know about
Death's Master? will have to get that!) and I just bought China Mieville's
Iron Council because of this thread (love Perdido Street Station, though I haven't finished it yet and it's the only novel of his I've yet tackled).
I haven't forgotten about this but have some craziness I am dealing with at the moment. I will have some lists to post of good gay fiction in various genres (at least according to my tastes)
veinglory, I totally understand (my life= undergoing some crazy right now as well). Thanks for the update and I hope everything's okay. The whole "according to my tastes" thing? Precisely what I was after by posting this here
Taste is so subjective, but I guess I was curious as to what gay fantasy fic. people found memorable/worth a rec.
Probably not much in the mainstream simply for the fact that by NOT having a gay character you alienate no one, while having a gay MC alienates a large percentage of potential customers. J.K. Rowling's announcement that Dumbledore is gay notwithstanding because she didn't say that until AFTER she'd published her final in that series. Now I wonder why she wouldn't have said something earlier?
MelancholyMan, are you saying no one will read my vampire-centric fantasy novel featuring lesbian luv (assuming it ever gets published, lol)?
I know authors run a risk when they include gay characters, but we queer folk like to see ourselves represented on occasion too- and I hope that as homophobia and transphobia become less prevalent over time, if a character pops up in a writer's head with a set orientation/ gender identity, that writer goes with it (and still stands a good chance of getting published/ getting good press). I hope that readers in general will become more accepting of fully rounded, complex, gay (and gender-bending) characters.
[Harry Potter geek hat on] Oh, and speaking of that thing with Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books? So irritating! I wish Rowling had just thrown in a casual mention of it in book 7 (wouldn't have lost much money that way, would she now?) or not even really bothered with it at all. Unimportant peripheral straight romances popped up all over the place, but she couldn't make one mention of Dumbledore's partner so-and-so, who died x years ago and whose magic photo is still in Dumbledore's office...? or whatever. She got so deep into Dumbledore's past in book 7, but all she gave was subtext, and I know they were "children's books" but that's all the more reason to include this, since Dumbledore was a role model for many in the HP-verse. Flawed as he was, it would have been nice of her to say
within the books that a great and powerful wizard like Dumbledore was gay; especially for the GLBT youth who read her works.
[/end Harry Potter geekage]
