Wayfarer - Blog Posts

I'm definitely using this as book recs having just finished The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet- thanks for the list!

Lizard’s Queer Space Opera Collection

What time is it? It’s ✨ lizard talks about queer sci-fi ✨ time

My family don’t understand how much joy I get from queer stories, and none of my close friend really read space operas (at least not with the same voracity that I do), so I’m appearing here to pass my knowledge on to you, the void that is my blog.

I read a lot of space operas, and I’ve had the incredible luck that the last handful I’ve picked up have been joyfully queer (or maybe we’re just seeing a shift in the sci-fi publishing world. I love it.). This isn’t a comprehensive list or anything, and this isn’t limited to pure space operas, but they are some of my favorites. Hope I can convince some of you to read a couple (and if you do or have read any, please come and shout at me! I want to talk about them! Always!)

I originally wrote these out for my Instagram, and I can’t really be bothered to retype it all so below the cut are my quick descriptions/thoughts on each of the books, but I’ll chuck the list here too

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin

Machine, Elizabeth Bear

Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie

Winter’s Orbit, Everina Maxwell

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

A Matter Of Oaths, Helen S. Wright

A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine

The Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi

These are just books that I’ve read in the last year or so, and if you have any more recs please tell me!

A couple additions that didn't make it to Instagram:

If you like graphic novels, please give On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden a shot, it's really lovely and quiet and feels like a big warm space hug.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado is a collection of horror short stories, some of which border on scifi, which is why it didn't make it into the main list, but I highly recommend it. My copy was given to me by the lovely @markcampbells

I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter has a bit of a history due to its presentation of gender, and the author actually asked for it to be removed from the Clarkesworld magazine due to the hate comments she was receiving. Still, if you can find it I highly recommend it, as it is genuinely very good.

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer is. Wow it sure is a book that emotionally damaged me. It's about two boys (men? they're 17 but it doesn't feel like a YA book, except int he good ways) who are on a spaceship heading out to Titan to attempt a rescue mission on Earth's first extraterrestrial colony. There are a lot of feels and ouch.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North. This book isn't a space opera, but it is somewhat sci-fi? anyway, Harry August is one of my favourite books of all time, and it explores a man trapped in what is almost a timeloop, except that time-loop is his whole life. each time he dies he's reborn right back where he started, and it's only through his and the other people like him's actions that the world is ever changed in each repeat.

The Culture series, Iain M Banks. I put this one on the list with a good bit of trepidation and the warning of: these books were written by a (supposedly) cishet white man, and almost all of his protagonists are…nearly cishet white men (with a couple women thrown in in later books). The same can not be said for literally every other character, who are almost entirely trans and bisexual. These books really gave me my love for space operas and if you're a fan of the genre I recommend. Also, the AIs here are amazing. Let us not forget the Ship "Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath". They're great.

(I’m also going to add, I would not recommend his normal fiction. I’ve read two, The Wasp Factory which kind of scarred and disturbed me, and Transitions which was just plain bad. Maybe I picked a bad selection, but I can only in good conscience recommend his sci-fi.)

And that's it my dudes! go forth! read queer space operas!

Just played wayfarer prologue on itch yesterday, my character and aeran gives off massive alina starkov to mal oretsev vibes I thought I was crazy