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Design a spaceship. Or a space station, if you prefer. Imagine an artificial planet, or a galaxy. But start with a spaceship. Start from nothing except the vacuum of space. Sketch it with a freshly sharpened pencil across the blue-green lines of graph paper, or model it in three dimensions, dragging your mouse to shape […]
And so it is. Disabled People officially join Women, Queers, and People of Color currently destroying science fiction. Why, oh, why are we ever bound to destroy that which we love most? Disabled folks love science fiction, did you know that? This personal essay section exists purely because we love science fiction. Because disabled authors […]
(Content Note for discussion of self-harm and suicide.) The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley taught me that gangly, self-conscious girls could become heroes; not damsels, but knights and dragon slayers. Robert Heinlein’s Friday introduced me to pansexuality, sex without shame, and the joy of multiple partners. Like most, I discovered myself through the […]
(Content note: discussions of suicide) Rachel Swirsky holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop where she, a California native, learned about both writing and snow. Last year, she traded the snow for the rain of Portland, Oregon, where she roams happily under overcast skies with the hipsters. Her fiction has appeared in venues including Tor.com, Asimov’s […]
“Mister? Mister, are you Daredevil?” I’m at a local science fiction convention, riding in an elevator with this little boy of about six and his mother. I am dressed sharp because I’ve been making public appearances all day. I’m wearing my big dark wrap around glasses because the burning summer sun shining in through the […]
Destroy. That’s the brief of this issue. Destroy science fiction. Why? Because disabled people have been discarded from the narrative, cured, rejected, villainized. We’ve been given few options for our imaginations to run wild within the parameters of an endless sky. This issue destroys those narratives and more. As with the previous Destroy projects (Women, […]
“This visa is expired. Please step to the side.” This could have been the opening to a spy thriller or a rollicking cyberpunk novel, full of chase scenes and neon lights. It certainly felt cyberpunk, being hustled back through the airport to a waiting taxi, surrounded by over-enthusiastic grifters and uncaring security guards. I cried […]
Last year, my queer platonic partner gifted me the graphic novel version of Octavia Butler’s Kindred. For us, this gift served as the meeting place of our passions—a book that bridges her love of comics and graphic novels with my love of gut-wrenching, meaty speculative fiction. Upon receipt, I made an effort to read the […]
I knew I was different my entire life. Born with a neuromuscular disability, my early childhood involved medical procedures, hospital and doctor visits, and times spent by myself due to social isolation or not being able to keep up with my non-disabled peers when playing. On one of my birthdays, I received Everyone Knows What […]
I cannot think about my disability identity and my love of science fiction separately. They arrived in my life together. While some people have loved SF since they were children or teens, I’m a late bloomer—I didn’t start seriously engaging with SF until I was in my mid-twenties, which was also when I experienced a […]
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