Speculative Anthologies That Get Creative With Gender

The cyberpunk stories and poems in this transfeminine anthology feature a whole range of technological and fantastical metamorphoses of the body. Within this overarching premise, narratives vary widely based on the transformative source, the relationships between characters, and the aspects of the body that become changed—which, as mentioned in the introduction, also includes the mind. One concept that makes an appearance across multiple stories is the role of corporations in misappropriating the materials needed for regulating bodily changes. Another, on a related note, is the idea of agency—who or what gets to control administration of transformative tools, and the ways this is enforced or reclaimed in society. And there is also a recurring theme of venturing into the unknown: of pursuing indefinable change when the only alternative is remaining stuck in a situation that is wrong, of creating or destroying life as acts of both god and fundamental human nature.

The stories in this anthology portray speculative apocalypses that draw from Indigenous histories and understanding of disasters that have shaped reality. Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer authors write about their characters’ love and dedication for each other and for their settings—commitments that ground them through various endings of worlds. In “Andwànikàdjigan,” îhkwewak, Two-Spirit people, connect ancestral spirits to living communities, preserving and sharing generations of oral histories through markings that appear on their bodies when they listen to others’ stories. When most of the world abandons a destroyed Earth for a parallel dimension in “History of the New World” by Adam Garnet Jones, a defiant Indigenous 2SLGBTQI community reaffirms their reciprocal responsibility to their origin planet and all its life forms. “How to Survive the Apocalypse for Native Girls” by Kai Minosh Pyle shows how fluidly any aspect of society can change—personal identities, belonging, teachings, definitions of community, nations, borders—and how people come together to honour or endure these foundational transformations. Joshua Whitehead’s introduction explains how this anthology was initially intended to be dystopian in genre. Instead, the project evolved into an exploration of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer characters thriving, caring for their communities, and nurturing joy after their world ends. In this way, the anthology develops a futurism that arises from the important connections Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer people share with each other and with the land. Despite the destructions that threaten both environment and people, the steadfastness of these cultural, spiritual, and queer bonds protects a collective future through mutually assured safekeeping.

In this mixed-media anthology created by queer Palestinian authors and artists, Eman Abdelhadi’s and editor Yaffa AS’ introductory pieces remind us that a free Palestine, that a more liberated world, is on its way here. It is that future the pieces of this anthology manifest into concrete, tangible scenes. The anthology engages in hope as a political praxis; it outlines possibilities of a better reality in a commitment against the layers of intersectional oppression that are imposed on queer Palestinians and that suffocate our shared world. The achingly beautiful stories, poetry, essays, photographs, and artwork convey a continuity between human life and Palestine as a place. Maria Zreiq’s poems, accompanied by photos, depict intimacy between partners who recognise collective experiences of the land and its people in each other’s bodies. She, Palestine, comes to life in Sonia Sulaiman’s sensory love poems “My Homeland” and “She.” In “Where Divine Love Meets You,” AB Bedran connects the healing of Queer bodies to the affirming love of familial relationships and to the memory of Palestinian roots. And Mama Ganuush’s closing powerfully declares the sovereignty of the narrator’s feelings, existence, and even death. Relationships with others, with one’s own body, with gender, with anthropomorphised land all flow over each other, inseparable. They exist in superimposed space as they define and rely on each other.

This serialised space opera, also available as podcast episodes, takes place in a system where excessive solar harvesting by the inner planets is destroying their sun and threatening the existence of the entire solar system. Refugees from the outer planets, which suffer the worst and earliest consequences of the dying sun, are predictably unwelcome on inner planets. Although not a traditional anthology with separate stories, episodes are written by different authors, all of whom have well-established expertise in speculative fiction. The worldbuilding reflects the range of its creators. While the premise effectively employs battles in space and fantastical technology to mirror the uneven repercussions of colonialism, extractivism, and environmental collapse in our own reality, the multiple fictional cultures also draw inspiration from different parts of our world. At the forefront of this epic setup, we have two queer protagonists, one a trans woman and one nonbinary. In these complex, multiplanetary societies that suffer from context-specific discrimination and prejudices, bigotry against queer people is not one of them. The characters’ gender dimensions exist without drawing repressive reactions—or any particular reaction, for that matter.

A young adult anthology that reclaims queer narratives by delving into the stories we know about monsters. The pieces span a range of tones and draw on different sources of inspiration. There are multiple retellings, as well as subversions of popular storytelling concepts, with trans or nonbinary characters. These include both love stories and tales of terror. Mythology, folklore, and classic works in the Western tradition have often put forward models of people, bodies, and relationships that reinforce the dominant norms of its worldview. As a result, this can erase or villainise queerness and other cultural perspectives. By restricting themselves to such limits, these canonical narratives may miss opportunities to take speculative questions further, to truly test the expansiveness of the human condition. Queer retellings like the ones in this anthology reenvision well-loved tales by creating diverse characters and worlds that resonate with the timeless themes of the originals.