h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

On post 13, on the Gay revolution in San Francisco, during the middle and latter 1970s, it was my experience that the gay community elements were much more strongly goal, task and career oriented that the hippies who came before them.

"Tripping the Rift", based on James Tiptree Jr.'s science fiction, something of a gender bender in that Jmes Tiptree Jr. was actually a woman writing under a masculine pseudonym.

I did not know that.
Didn't even know it was based on a book.
Dare I ask if the TV show is a good representation of the original?
Or has it been 'turbo-charged' for effect?
The characters are certainly extreme.
And now that I think about it there does seem to be an overall feminist bias.
But I still see Chode as a positive role model. And I never trusted Six.
Poor Gus is less discriminating and treats her as an ally and Mother figure.

~jwf~

There is a rather odd short story by Neil Gaiman (in 'Smoke and Mirrors', I think) which is about a pill which allows people to change gender overnight, at will. Towards the end, it gets very... metaphysical? I'm not so keen on it, although he is my favourite writer.
There is an anime series called 'Vandread', in which humanity is split between two planets, one all-female and the other all-male. That's played for comedy though, and mostly rather broad comedy.
There is also a series called 'Forever War' by Joe Haldeman - I've only read a short story from it - which is set in a future where artificial incubation is so ubiquitous that heterosexual relationships are frowned on and discouraged. The main characters have multiple obstacles to overcome, but one of them is prejudice against their "heterosex" romance.

This discussion is reminding me of the #YesGayYA thing last year, which was quite interesting in the bloggosphere.

TRiG.

Oh I think she's a bit old fashioned and odd, Anne McCaffrey. But I enjoy her books. Light reading.

Brian Lumley's Necroscope books, well, more the sequel/spin-off series on the alien world get very sexual. But what sexuality it is is not really explainable nor is it really 'explored' as such, but with savage, shapeshifting, vampiric aliens, apparently anything (ANYthing) goes...

"....with savage, shapeshifting, vampiric aliens, apparently anything (ANY
yikes
thing) goes......"
Sounds a little too much like reality rather than fiction to me...

Saw the thread heading and thought this might be about SF that sucks as I'm so used to my kids and their friends describing lame things as 'Gay'.
Gay in the sense that it's boring/it sucks/it's lame/your a loser,it's a loser/that's way uncool/it's bad you have to be kidding, and there are more connotations as well and absolutely none of them have sexual connotations.

I actually like this change in the usage of 'Gay' and hopefully one day we can wrest it back off the Homosexual community and give it back it's original meaning. Oh and I think you might find that the 70's 'Gay' movement in San F' was called camp or some other descriptive, I just don't remember it being called the 'Gay Movement' until quite a few years later.

Certainly in Australia in the early seventies you went to 'Camp' dances+discoes not 'Gay' ones, that descriptive came later on.

>>I actually like this change in the usage of 'Gay' and hopefully one day we can wrest it back off the Homosexual community and give it back it's original meaning.

Why? I'd much rather use the single syllable of 'gay' than the five in 'homosexual'.

Back in the day, just before and after the Stonewall Riots, the term used was homophile with queer and camp being used more informally. Originally gay was quite contentious as it was the activists and isolationists who used it.

Still, it's our word now and we're keeping it.

The title here is probably an insult to scholars/critics of literature, but I am ignorant.. There is a field called 'Queer Theory' in lterary criticism. To sci-fi types, it may also be a bit anachronistic to take the Western perspective on sexuality and consider it as having permanence. I can only speak to my expectations of what others may think, others I really do not know very well. And, I also don't know the OP's intent.

Julzes since I'm an amateur lit critic/scholar with a semi-professional interest in queer studies and a giant nerd to boot I can assure you it's not an insult to anyone.

>>It may also be a bit anachronistic to take the Western perspective on sexuality and consider it as having permanence.<<

If by 'Western perspective' you mean 'scientific fact' then no it's not anachronistic. Sexuality is permanent: you are born with one sexuality or another and the only transience comes with personal choice and some medical conditions affecting hormones.

>>And, I also don't know the OP's intent<<

Me and a mate were talking about sci-fi and neither of us could think of any with sexuality or gay people playing a major role.

Which fact?

You don't understand the thread, fine, but please don't disrupt it or hurl insults/accusations that arise from your ignorance.

Sorry. Bad enter [library change].

Which chromosome was that gene on? I'm pretty sure that an entity that had previously been a fetus would only have voice-register over a period of months to go on. Orientation is a little tricky for something with no consciousness, but I assume what you mean is that in some perfect world people as adults would naturally gravitate either one way or the other based primarily on gender. I don't see it as likely or teastable. The pre-birth mental effects seem like they would be spectral rather than bifurcated to me, and I find it hard but not impossible to make sexuality an entirely or even mostly physiological and reflex activity domain. My thinking was affected by consideration of polynesian anthropology, by the way. And I am personally aware of adults participating in research contrary to their established orientation. Anyway, interested in the take on sci-fi as this thread proceeds, and had only intended to watch. I think it's an important subject. Really, no offense intended.

I thought you just wanted to meet people is all, honestly. I also had not fully registered whose opinion started the thread. Just surprised a lit thread would choose 'gay' over 'queer'.

*testable

I have always wondered if there was any subtext
to be read into the character of Marvin the manically
depressed robot from HHGG. He was always glum
and never gay.

He was not even content. But he did survive several
million years stuck on a swampy planet with no one
to talk to except soggy mattresses.

~jwf~

'Camp' or 'campy', middle 1970s, was used for what they nowadays call 'Gothic' with reference to 'Goths'.

Carolyn Jones of the old Addams Family TV series of the early 1960s, was sometimes described as the 'Queen of Camp'. The late 1970s film, "Love At First Bite" was an important milestone of 'Camp'. Others in the genre, somewhat more off beat include "The Last Days of Man on Earth", "Something for Everyone", starring Angela Lansbury and Michael York.




"Tripping the Rift" stands entirely on its own with respect to content, but is based on James Tiptree Jr.'s "Rift Runners" that figure in many of her stories.




On "Nature versus Nurture", I'm a liberal and always unwilling to ascribe anything to genetics without conclusive proofs.

As one on my psychology professors put it once, "At a certain stage in the development of the zygote the nervous system takes control of developmental processes."

I'd say camp in that instance meant exagerated and over the top. Movies are still described like that.

I quite like the possibilities presented in Ian Banks Culture novels of being able to change one's gender at will.One way to overcome boredom in a long lifetime.

The thing that makes me wonder is does one actually become a different person if you can change gender backwards and forwards?Or is the person you are stay the same whatever gender you are?

It does seem that transsexuals who go through the transition do seem to become happier but is that because they are a different person or more of the person they want to be?

I do have to respond that I don't think being liberal requires one to have the attitude that nature trumps nurture. I just think the law and the larger society's behavior should not interfere with non-destructive natural rights by minorities and the historically oppressed, and that where society fails without the law giving redress it is an injustice. I understand that one can have preferable options to flipping a coin on the truth where one does not know what science says about something, but an open mind is better than a hasty opinion in most cases. Political fights over science tend to dilute what science says on its own merits, but politics is always around whether science is there or convincing.