Sci fi stories that include queer characters and themes. Return to general Sci Fi
Note: these books are currently sorted by release date, with newest first.
Word Count: 75000
Summary: The once-beautiful domed neo-Victorian city of Bridges is split between four crime families in an uneasy cease-fire. Social disparity increasing and its steam-driven infrastructure failing, a new faction is on the rise: the Red Dogs. Jacqueline Spadros has a dream life: a wealthy husband, a powerful family. But her life is not what it seems. Kidnapped from her mother's brothel and forced to marry, the murder of her best friend Air ten years before haunts her nightmares. She finds moments of freedom in a small-time private eye business, which she hides in fear of her sadistic father-in-law. Air's little brother disappears off his back porch and the Red Dogs are framed for it. With the help of a mysterious gentleman investigator hired by the Red Dogs to learn the truth, Jacqui pushes her abilities to their limits in hope of rescuing the child before the kidnapper disposes of him.
Word Count: 25745
Summary: When a steel trap of celestial and infernal politics threatens to close around them, Shax and Verin flee Earth’s system in a stolen ship, leaving everything behind. It’s an elegantly simple plan, with a new ship and a new life as carefree brigands among the stars. But the ship seems to hate them, and in order to have any sort of life they need funds. A frightened man offering them a contract to deliver three mysterious crates comes just in time, and Shax is sure their troubles are over. Out of his environment and in over his head, Shax scrambles to understand the players and the consequences of his new life. With cargo that’s not what it seems, shadowy motives around every turn, and a gorgeous rogue named Julian for a dash of added confusion, Shax’s grand schemes of a new start may be his demise before he can even begin.

Word Count: Information not available
Summary: Stories for Chip brings together outstanding authors inspired by a brilliant writer and critic, Science Fiction Writers of America Grandmaster Samuel R. “Chip” Delany. Award-winning SF luminaries such as Michael Swanwick, Nalo Hopkinson, and Eileen Gunn contribute original fiction and creative nonfiction. From surrealistic visions of bucolic road trips to erotic transgressions to mind-expanding analyses of Delany’s influence on the genre—as an out gay man, an African American, and possessor of a startlingly acute intellect—this book conveys the scope of the subject’s sometimes troubling, always rewarding genius. Editors Nisi Shawl and Bill Campbell have given Delany and the world at large, a gorgeous, haunting, illuminating, and deeply satisfying gift of a book. Nisi Shawl is a writer whose work has been published at Strange Horizons, in Asimov’s SF Magazine, and in anthologies including Dark Faith 2, Dark Matter, The Moment of Change, and The Other Half of the Sky. Her story collection, Filter House, was one of two winners of the 2009 James Tiptree Jr. Award. She is a cofounder of the Carl Brandon Society and serves on the Board of Directors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. She lives in Seattle. Bill Campbell is the founder of Rosarium Publishing and the author the novels Koontown Killing Kaper, My Booty Novel, and Sunshine Patriots as well as the essay collection, Pop Culture: Politics, Puns, and “Poohbutt” from a Liberal Stay-at-Home Dad. He coedited, with Edward Austin Hall, the groundbreaking anthology Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond. He lives in Washington, DC.

Word Count: 36600
Summary: Undercover agent Liam Connell stared at his captor. He looked like a pirate from a holovid— black trousers, a white, puffy-sleeved shirt, and a purple sash wrapped jauntily around his waist. Wavy black hair fell to his shoulders and ... Connell couldn’t believe it. He actually had gold hoops hanging from his ears. The pirate ran his forefinger lightly down Connell’s cheek and smiled. “Mmm! Mmmm! What do we have here?” Just what had Connell gotten himself into? (M/M Romantic Sci-Fi) Word Count 36,600

Word Count: 7150
Summary: In a four-gendered world where correct gender identity is law, Venk struggles with his inability to choose one sexual orientation over another. His body has matured, but he still shows the multi-colored crest of a juvenile, someone who has not yet presented proper orientation. With his family losing patience and others beginning to whisper, Venk must find a way to change his crest or be labeled an aberration. But the only choice he sees is a dishonest one.

Word Count: 25000
Summary: Exiled to Earth for perhaps the worst failure in Irasolan history, General Teer must assimilate or die. Earth is too warm, too wet, too foreign, but he does the best he can even though human males are loud, childish louts whom he can't imitate successfully. When a grieving seaplane pilot strikes up a strange and uneasy friendship with him, he finds he may have been too quick to judge human males. They are strange to look at, but perhaps not as unbearable as he thought.

Word Count: 63220
Summary: Alan Stewart, First Lieutenant on the space ship Qatar, and Captain Robin Lang of the Huan Police Force, have been best friends since their days in the Space Academy, despite the fact that Stewart is homosexual and Lang has a wife and son, Max. However Max is growing up and their friendship is threatened when Lang believes Stewart has designs on his son. When Max, now an adult and a recent recruit to the Qatar, is assaulted in a gay bar, Lang accuses Stewart. In an attempt to protect his son at all costs, Lang finds himself drawn into a dark conspiracy of murder and blackmail. Meanwhile, Stewart has his own battles to fight. Apart from defending himself against Lang’s accusations, he discovers the young man he is falling in love with, Michael Banner, is the one man on the ship who is out of bounds, untouchable. Lives and love hang in the balance as Lang and Stewart search for the truth.

Word Count: 66500
Summary: Aviana Aquila does not have much, but she does have structure. No home but whatever she is currently assigned to, no family, and the closest to a relationship she has is a not very clandestine affair with her emotionally inhibited commanding officer, with whom she dreams to run away. As an Imperial soldier, ever on deployment, she knows she may die at any moment. As a commander, she knows she will need to order people to their deaths. After years on years, she is dull to all of that, existing to exist. But when an Alliance Admiral comes aboard on what was just supposed to be a routine mission, her structured semblance of a life is completely overturned. The Admiral is not a normal being, and possibly insane. Yet her presence may save Aviana in more ways than one and make her rediscover the woman she loves. A stand-alone book in the Worlds of the PACT universe.

Word Count: 15400
Summary: Space ship Lieutenant Matthew Ferris has desired Daniel Peters, his ship’s newest recruit, from the moment he saw him. But Peters is a lowly private and as the senior officer, Ferris knows he must wait for a sign that his feelings are returned before making an approach. When Peters follows him into a two-man capsule after a mission, Ferris thinks all his dreams are about to come true. What he doesn’t expect is to discover a scandal that could tear his ship apart. Some call it rough play, he calls it unacceptable. A novella in the Aurigan Space Series. Gay sci-fi romance.

Word Count: 69300
Summary: Vassily Belikov, composer and pampered son of privilege, suffered neurological damage in the accident that killed his father. Resentful of being treated as an invalid, he lives as a recluse, dependent on his mother. That changes the day she brings home a new husband with two sons of his own. When deep-space pirates capture Vassily's mother, he's left to the mercy of his cruel, amoral stepfather. Fighting addiction and his physical shortcomings, he's forced to seek out the criminal mastermind Baba Yaga for a crucial piece of equipment. While she agrees to deal with him if he beats his Exoticus addiction, paranoia and mysterious intentions infuse her household. Drawn to her fierce, suspicious youngest son, certain his actions are all carefully observed, Vassily must find the courage to face both his fears and his desires if he expects to survive.

Word Count: 39865
Summary: The boys desperately need a vacation. With the not-quite-ill-gotten gains from the Frog incident, Shax takes the Brimstone's crew to the exclusive resort planet, Opal, for some much needed rest and relaxation. The resort has everything a demon prince and his crew could want, but an incident on the Trauma Ball court has Ness stalking off in anger and sends events swiftly spiraling out of control. Loving a demon isn't easy, as Ness has discovered, and harder still for a newly fallen who's still sorting out what that means. A new friend lending a sympathetic ear helps until Ness learns too late that friendship was the last thing on BJ's mind. Shax will need every bit of his cunning and his legendary luck to save his Ness as he’s drawn into a web of criminal experiments and…pink hedgehogs?

Word Count: 100300
Summary: Traveling has always frightened Marya, but when the Ktar chooses her to protect the heir on his confirmation journey, she fights panic. A prophecy concerning the heir's death, ominous dreams of a mysterious city, and news that one of the heir's companions will betray him all point to disaster. Unfortunately, the discovery of the assassin's identity is only the beginning. His menace pales in comparison to the ancient evil lurking in the mountains. When Marya is trapped and the men with her enslaved, she is faced with two choices: surrender to the alien being who offers her power, or ally with the handsome assassin she sought to thwart. One way she loses her soul, the other she may lose her heart.

Word Count: 31368
Summary:
While Shax recovers from a near fatality, his shipmates have been busy. He's rather proud of them for taking the initiative and finding them a lucrative cargo run. His pride turns to outright horror, though, when he finds out what sort of cargo. Frogs. The one thing in the universe that incites mindless panic in Shax. Unfortunately, he also soon discovers that a healthy fear of frogs doesn't prevent frog-driven disasters.
An unlikely series of overlapping mishaps hurls the Brimstone back to an even more unlikely point in history for a couple of demons and a fallen angel in a spaceship. Somehow they need to repair and refuel, and puzzle out how to get home. Time travel has never been so messy.

Word Count: 23000
Summary: Shax, the Demon Prince of Thieves, has reconciled himself to exile. He has a grand time careening around the galaxy as a high-end, intergalactic purloiner of pretties. Everything's going just fine, thank you very much. All right, fine, the anti-gravity cows are a bit problematic and some of his buyers are bad for his health, but he manages until he comes across an injured angel in a psychedelic alien jungle. He only rescues the wing boy for his golden feathers, but what Shax doesn’t know about angels could fill an intergalactic encyclopedia. Ness, since his full, angelic name is too much to deal with, is shockingly naïve and seems convinced that Shax and Verin have brought him aboard to torture him or perhaps eat him. Little by little, Shax begins to earn his trust in the quest to wheedle a golden feather or two from him until to Shax's dismay, the yearning after pretties becomes a different sort of yearning entirely.

Word Count: 11000
Summary: Any landing you can crawl away from is a good one. A data privateer crash-lands on a barely habitable moon where he's rescued by a research scientist who refuses to show his face. Though suspicious and paranoid by necessity, Rhodi finds himself drawn to the soft-spoken man behind the mask. Professor Covington prefers being isolated with his research. He has good reason to limit human contact, but he can’t abandon anyone to the ravages of a fickle and dangerous environment. He knows Rhodi’s hiding things. It’s none of his business and his mysterious guest will leave once a nasty native virus has run its course. Strange how the thought makes him less happy by the hour.

Word Count: 43000
Summary: Lieutenant Jack Alexander has wasted years, waiting for his best friend, Marc Duran, to return his affections. Perhaps it is time to finally move on and find someone new. However, when Major Ethan Pattisson is sent to the planet Mayia to investigate the theft of hundreds of illegal weapons, Marc comes under suspicion, and Jack can’t help stepping in to save him. When Jack finds himself caught in the middle between Ethan and Marc, he discovers that unrequited love might soon be the least of his problems.

Word Count: 24500
Summary: Heir to a wealthy shipping family, Adam S Hayes has his life carefully mapped out. Career, marriage, family. After establishing himself successfully as Captain of the Patrol Ship Revel, it is time for the next step. Marriage to Fiona Becker, daughter of the Capella space station manager, might not be the biggest romance of the year but there are strategic advantages in the alliance, and no-one is surprised when Fiona accepts his proposal. Everything is going according to plan ... until he meets Danyel King. Tall, dark and handsome and as open about himself as he is about his homosexuality, King throws all his plans into total confusion. Trapped underground together after an explosion, Hayes seizes the opportunity to try something he’s only dreamed of, but finds he is totally unprepared for the consequences - and the passion that flares between them. King knows exactly what he wants, and it isn’t to be someone’s secret lover! Troubled and confused, Hayes risks losing his chance for love as he finds himself torn between his heart and his head. Revised edition released 31st March 2016

Word Count: 10360
Summary: While the cell is sparse and cold, at least this one has a bed. The figure resting there is too thin; too still, the prominent bones the result of long starvation, the stillness the product of too much anguish and abuse. He watches, though. An anxious, intelligent mind still occupies this frail and failing body, one that watches and wonders about the new guard occupying his cell each night.

Word Count: 16500
Summary: Spaceship Captain Luke Matthews has kept his sexuality a secret. What happens when the crew finds out? Is Lieutenant Kent as straight as he always believed? Will he hit him or kiss him, or both?

Word Count: Information not available
Summary: The focus of the Heiresses of Russ series, a tribute to iconic author Joanna Russ, was lesbian speculative fiction in short story form, and its mission was to highlight the breadth and quality of what had been published during the past year. There was so much excellent work, in fact, that a single anthology couldn’t possibly contain it all, in so many styles, voices and far reaches of creative minds that the true uniting themes of our book turned out to be variety, and a breaking down of limitations and expectations. The writers in this book portray being lesbian as a vital component of their protagonists, but not to the exclusion of all the variation possible for any characters in speculative fiction. Their plots may or may not hinge on the lesbian factor, but they are also about much more, with the unrestricted inventiveness and well-crafted prose of all good work in the genre. From Lethe Press A Lambda Literary Award Finalist

