A novel written in cyberspace, Nearly Roadkill is an Infobahn erotic thriller without any boundaries – virtual, sexual, legal, or otherwise. What-appears-to-be Boy meets what-appears-to-be Girl. But their world is the Net, where any persona – and any gender – can be created. They pose as a host of different personalities, switching identities and genders as quickly as they create passwords. Named Scratch and Winc, these two genderless beings cybersurf into the various worlds on the Net as they fight government intervention on this final frontier.
Representation Includes
- Non-binary transfeminine protagonist (Winc)
- Sapphic cis woman experimenting with gender presentation (Scratch)
- Both use ze/hir pronouns
Content Warnings
Many explicit cybersex scenes; other content warnings needed.Awards
- Longlisted for Otherwise Award
Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- First published 1996
- Original title: Nearly Roadkill: An Infobahn Erotic Adventure
- ISBN13: 9781852424183
Teenage baker Syd sends ripples of heartbreak through Austin’s queer community when a batch of post-being-dumped brownies turns out to be magical—and makes everyone who eats them break up.
“What’s done is done.”
Unless, of course, it was done by my brownies. Then it’s getting undone.
Syd (no pronouns, please) has always dealt with big, hard-to-talk-about things by baking. Being dumped is no different, except now Syd is baking at the Proud Muffin, a queer bakery and community space in Austin. And everyone who eats Syd’s breakup brownies . . . breaks up. Even Vin and Alec, who own the Proud Muffin. And their breakup might take the bakery down with it. Being dumped is one thing; causing ripples of queer heartbreak through the community is another. But the cute bike delivery person, Harley (he or they, check the pronoun pin, it’s probably on the messenger bag), believes Syd about the magic baking. And Harley believes Syd’s magical baking can fix things, too—one recipe at a time.
Representation Includes
- Agender bisexual protagonist who prefers no pronouns
- Transmasculine love interest who switches between “he” and “they” pronouns and who is demisexual
- Large queer supporting cast
Content Warnings
dysphoria, some misgendering (non-malicious), Break-up, therapy, coming out, divorce, surgery, sex,Reviews
- Alex Brown’s review
- Rainbow and Sunshine’s review
- Rampant Reading’s review
- Mimi’s review
- Utopia State of Mind’s review
- LGBT Representation’s review
Where to Find
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What would the future look like if we weren’t so hung up on putting people into boxes and instead empowered each other to reach for the stars? Take a ride with us as we explore a future where trans and nonbinary people are the heroes.
In worlds where bicycle rides bring luck, a minotaur needs a bicycle, and werewolves stalk the post-apocalyptic landscape, nobody has time to question gender. Whatever your identity you’ll enjoy these stories that are both thought-provoking and fun adventures.
Featuring brand-new stories from Hugo, Nebula, and Lambda Literary Award-winning author Charlie Jane Anders, Ava Kelly, Juliet Kemp, Rafi Kleiman, Tucker Lieberman, Nathan Alling Long, Ether Nepenthes, and Nebula-nominated M. Darusha Wehm. Also featuring debut stories from Diana Lane and Marcus Woodman.
Representation Includes
- Transgender and non-binary protagonists
Content Warnings
Help grow this entry by commenting below or emailing queersffbooks@theillustratedpage.net.Awards
- Nominated for the Lambda Award.
Reviews
- D.N. Bryn’s review
- More reviews from queer reviewers needed.
Where to Find
Details
- Full title: Trans-Galactic Bike Ride: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories of Transgender and Nonbinary Adventurers
- Edited by Lydia Rogue
- Published December 8th 2020 by Microcosm Publishing
- ISBN-13: 978-1621065081
Dragons. Art. Revolution.
Gyen Jebi isn’t a fighter or a subversive. They just want to paint.
One day they’re jobless and desperate; the next, Jebi finds themself recruited by the Ministry of Armor to paint the mystical sigils that animate the occupying government’s automaton soldiers.
But when Jebi discovers the depths of the Razanei government’s horrifying crimes—and the awful source of the magical pigments they use—they find they can no longer stay out of politics.
What they can do is steal Arazi, the ministry’s mighty dragon automaton, and find a way to fight…
Representation Includes
- A non-binary protagonist from a Korean-inspired fantasy country
Content Warnings
War, death, violence, torture, imprisonment, earthquake, bombing, some characters discuss eating a cat but the cat livesReviews
Where to Find
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Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy.
To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything
“I refuse to be nothing…”
In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.
When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.
After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother’s abandoned greatness.
Representation Includes
- Genderfluid lesbian protagonist (Zhu Chongba) who is Chinese and also
spoiler
becomes an amputee (missing hand) partway through the book. - The other main character/protagonist is Ouyang, who is both gay and a eunuch.
- Ma, a major POV character and Zhu Chongba’s love interest, expresses attraction towards multiple genders
Content Warnings
Gender dysphoria, mentions of sexual assault, mentions of slavery (Ouyang’s backstory involves slavery, war themes, murder, death, violence, child murder (off-page), starvation, death of parents, death of sibling, misogyny and patriarchy, misgendering, internalized homophobia, ableism, amputation, non-consensual castration, brief mention of cannibalisms, hurt to an animal, death of an animal, mention of vomiting, plague, mass illness, quarantining, off-page torture, bombs, death by fire, death of queer character’s love interestReviews
- Utopia State of Mind’s Review
- May’s review
- Liz Bourke’s review (Tor)
- Liz Bourke and Alex Brown’s review (Locus)
- Lee Mandelo’s review
Where to Find
- Amazon
- IndieBound
- WorldCat
Combining the social commentary of The Handmaid’s Tale with the white-knuckled thrills of Red Rising, this epic space opera follows a comfort woman as she claims her agency, a soldier questioning his allegiances, and a non-binary hero out to save the solar system.
First Sister has no name and no voice. As a priestess of the Sisterhood, she travels the stars alongside the soldiers of Earth and Mars—the same ones who own the rights to her body and soul. When her former captain abandons her, First Sister’s hopes for freedom are dashed when she is forced to stay on her ship with no friends, no power, and a new captain—Saito Ren—whom she knows nothing about. She is commanded to spy on Captain Ren by the Sisterhood, but soon discovers that working for the war effort is so much harder to do when you’re falling in love.
Lito val Lucius climbed his way out of the slums to become an elite soldier of Venus, but was defeated in combat by none other than Saito Ren, resulting in the disappearance of his partner, Hiro. When Lito learns that Hiro is both alive and a traitor to the cause, he now has a shot at redemption: track down and kill his former partner. But when he discovers recordings that Hiro secretly made, Lito’s own allegiances are put to the test. Ultimately, he must decide between following orders and following his heart.
A stunning and sweeping debut novel that explores the power of technology, colonization, race, and gender, The First Sister is perfect for fans of James S.A. Corey, Chuck Wendig, and Margaret Atwood.
Representation Includes
- A bisexual protagonist (The First Sister)
- A Japanese nonbinary protagonist (Hiro)
- A Hispanic panromantic asexual protagonist (Lito)
Content Warnings
Sexual slavery, sexual assault (off page), violence, war, death and graphic injury, amputation, PTSD, denial of bodily autonomy, forced surgery, blackmail, execution, untreated mental illness, dysphoria, implied torture, mentions of child abuse, forced gender presentationReviews
Where to Find
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Fifteen-year-old Jack Bishop has mad skills with cars and engines, but knows he’ll never get a driver’s license because of his epilepsy. Agreeing to participate in an experimental clinical trial to find new treatments for his disease, he finds himself in a completely different body—that of a girl his age, Jacqueline, who defies the expectations of her era. Since his seizures usually give him spazzed out visions, Jack presumes this is a hallucination. Feeling fearless, he steals a horse, expecting that at any moment he’ll wake back up in the clinical trial lab. When that doesn’t happen, Jacqueline falls unexpectedly in love, even as the town in the past becomes swallowed in a fight for its survival. Jack/Jacqueline is caught between two lives and epochs, and must find a way to save everyone around him as well as himself. And all the while, he is losing time, even if he is getting out of algebra class.
Representation Includes
- Protagonist with epilepsy who is AMAB and switches between bodies, exploring gender feelings and presentations (genderfluid-ish)
Content Warnings
Medical procedures; fireReviews
- Cooper Lee Bombardier’s review (and interview with the author)
- C. K. Combs’s review
- Meredith Katz’s review
- Bhavya’s review
Where to Find
Details
- Published July 22nd 2016 by Lethe Press
- Paperback ISBN13: 9781590216613
Derek is LitenVärld’s most loyal employee. He lives and breathes the job, from the moment he wakes up in a converted shipping container at the edge of the parking lot to the second he clocks out of work 18 hours later. But after taking his first ever sick day, his manager calls that loyalty into question. An excellent employee like Derek, an employee made to work at LitenVärld, shouldn’t need time off.
To test his commitment to the job, Derek is assigned to a special inventory shift, hunting through the store to find defective products. Toy chests with pincers and eye stalks, ambulatory sleeper sofas, killer mutant toilets, that kind of thing. Helping him is the inventory team — four strangers who look and sound almost exactly like him. Are five Dereks better than one?
Representation Includes
- Protagonist is one of five clones who make up the main cast; three of the clones are male, one is female, and one is non-binary/genderfluid
- Hints of M/NB romance
- Protagonist is strongly coded as autistic
Content Warnings
Gun violence; animal death; abusive workplace; detailed depiction of illness, including coughing up blood; minor body horror; some ableist and transphobic comments (pushed back against); hints of romance between two clonesReviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published April 20th 2021 by Tordotcom
- ISBN13: 9781250787491
Lethe Press is excited to be releasing the debut short story collection by Bogi Takács. Takács may be known more for their recent editorial efforts, winning a Lambda Literary Award for Transcendent 2: The Year’s Best Transgender Themed Speculative Fiction. But Takács is a talented storyteller and poet. An uplifted octopus finds a strange capsule in the water and wonders if one of the long-vanished humans might be found inside; a team of scientists perform some reverse-engineering on a space station and shapeshifting becomes political; and other tales of AI, hybrids, and the far future.Representation Includes
- Queer, Jewish protagonists
- Many non-binary protagonists in particular
Content Warnings
Content warnings for each story are listed at the back of the book.Awards
- Nominated for the Lambda Literary Award (Transgender Fiction)
Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published October 7th 2019 by Lethe Press
Fifteen-year-old Kivali has never fit in. As a girl in boys’ clothes, she is accepted by neither tribe, bullied by both. What are you? they ask. Abandoned as a baby wrapped in a T-shirt with an image of a lizard on the front, Kivali found a home with nonconformist artist Sheila. Is it true what Sheila says, that Kivali was left by a mysterious race of saurians and that she’ll one day save the world? Kivali doesn’t think so. But if it is true, why has Sheila sent her off to CropCamp, with its schedules and regs and what feels like indoctrination into a gov-controlled society Kivali isn’t sure has good intentions?
But life at CropCamp isn’t all bad. Kivali loves being outdoors and working in the fields. And for the first time, she has real friends: sweet, innocent Rasta; loyal Emmett; fierce, quiet Nona. And then there’s Sully. The feelings that explode inside Kivali whenever Sully is near—whenever they touch—are unlike anything she’s experienced, exhilarating and terrifying. But does Sully feel the same way?
Between mysterious disappearances, tough questions from camp director Ms. Mischetti, and weekly doses of kickshaw—the strange, druglike morsel that Kivali fears but has come to crave—things get more and more complicated. But Kivali has an escape: her unique ability to channel and explore the power of her animal self. She has Lizard Radio.
Will it be enough to save her?
Representation Includes
- Genderqueer, gender-non-conforming, sapphic-leaning protagonist
Content Warnings
Homophobic and transphobic dystopian government; violence against children; possibly stereotypical depiction of bisexual supporting characterAwards
- Otherwise Award
Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published September 8th 2015 by Candlewick Press
- ISBN13: 9780763676353