Space is Gay* (*LGBTQIA+) – part 2

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

This book won the Hugo Awards last year, which seems to be mostly forgotten because of all the controversy surrounding that edition of the Hugos. This book has been previously reviewed by Iris, which you can read here.
Some Desperate Glory follows Kyr, who is part of the crew of the last resistance of humans against the alien overlords. She has been training to become a super soldier all her life, but her beliefs start to shake when she meets her first alien and gets an unexpected assignment. Her whole world gets flipped upside down, and she doesn’t know what to do.
This book has “escaping a cult” vibes as it explores how reality can shake your whole belief system and how your upbringing influences your perceptions of the world.
Also make sure to pick up Emily Tesh’s latest novel, The Incandescent—Queer Dark Academia with adult main characters, set in 2025.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Lesbian Necromancers in Space. That is one of the taglines of this book, and I would call it pretty accurate. There are nine necromancer houses, of which Gideon (the title character) and Harrowhark are of the Ninth house. Each house has their own necromantic specialization, and the heirs of the houses have all been summoned by the Emperor for a call to action. Harrowhark brings Gideon along as her cavalier.
Some people have questioned the tagline of ‘lesbian necromancers in space,’ and I guess if you thought that meant this was a love story, you’ll be gravely (pun intended) disappointed. This book is full of lesbian longing and mega lesbian coded characters. And cool necromancy and friendships blossoming and just overall wacko and crazy stuff. Unfortunately, the series is not finished yet, but the fourth and final book is forthcoming.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

This book is also part of one of my other favorite Science Fiction subgenres, AI with Anxiety, because the main character, Murderbot, is anxious and depressed. It is a security unit who has hacked its own governor module, meaning it doesn’t HAVE to listen to what the humans tell him to do. But also, it can watch soap operas for literally hours while doing his menial job. Who hasn’t binge-watched too many series while being depressed?
This book is full of fun gender fuckery, Murderbot itself goes by it/its pronouns and people just generally have pronoun tags to make misgendering just… not a thing.
Murderbot itself is also very aro ace (aromantic asexual) coded, and the world overall is very queernorm, because hello, they are in space and have androids!
This series has also been adapted into a TV series on Apple TV, and while I haven’t seen an episode yet (at the time of writing, it still hadn’t been released), but the trailer looks very hopeful and the way the actors talk about the series seems like they kept in all the gender fuckery I loved so much about the books.

Seven Devils by Elizabeth May and L.R. Lam

This is one of the two books on this list I haven’t read yet, but the descriptions say Space Opera and LGBTQIA+, so it is definitely on my To Be Read pile (which is too long). Be Gay, Do Crime in space is what I’ve gathered it’s about. It is a finished duology, so you don’t have to wait for a sequel or whatever, just binge the Gay Space Opera.
This is a queer, feminist, down-with-the-system type of book, with seven resistance fighters coming together to take down an empire.

The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton

This is a part space opera, part sapphic romcom, so the SF counterpart to Romantasy, but queer. Romantascience fiction? Is this already a genre? If not, it is now.
This is the other book I haven’t read yet, but I already have it at home to dive into in the near future! This is a found family, queer romance, romantic comedy with a lot of depth, and a heist-turned-space mission, in which a group of friends accidentally steal a spaceship to solve a mystery.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

This book is the definition of political scheming and having to salvage seemingly unsalvageable situations, all while having a nice flair of sapphic longing and romance as a shout out to the Gays* (*LGBTQIA+).
In A Memory Called Empire, you meet Ambassador Mahit Dzmare, who has been fast-tracked to become the ambassador to the Teixcalaanli Empire for her small, independent mining station, Lsel, after her predecessor dies mysteriously.
Lsel station has secret technology that helps preserve knowledge, which the Texocalaani might be more interested in than they first thought. Mahit must navigate keeping Lsel independent while finding out what her predecessor promised to who in a web of lies and weirdness. This is part one of a finished duology, so again, no need to wait for the final part in the series. And I’ll let you in on a secret: I enjoyed Matine’s second book, A Desolation Called Peace, more than I did the first.

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Spare Man is a locked door murder mystery, set on a spaceship in a very, very Queer-norm world. Tesla Cane is an uber-wealthy, brilliant inventor who is traveling from the Moon to Mars, incognito, when someone on her spaceship dies and her husband turns out to be the main suspect. It is so refreshing to read a book in which the norm is for all prefixes to be gender-neutral and to have people introducing themselves by their pronouns, while those who are bigots are minorities who get put into their places. And it’s a fun murder mystery to boot!

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

You can check out my full review here, but let me gush about this book some more. Simon Jimenez does SO MUCH with his writing style in The Vanished Birds.
On the surface, this is a fun book about found family, finding your place, space travel and life in general. But it goes way deeper than that. Jimenez also manages to convey the scope and ideas of time dilation through his writing and manages to tear your heart out and smash it to bits.
At the time of writing, my colleague Matty finally started reading this book because I recommended it, after having already gotten a lot of her friends and family to read it because of me. She is halfway through and already LOVING the scope and the time fuckery and basically everything about this book. Also, very gay, but I guess that goes without saying if it is on this list.