What does autism representation in fiction mean to me? There is almost a formula for answering this question. A story about looking fruitlessly for yourself in the books you love, finally grabbing them to assert your right to be in them anyway. This is a meaningful story which is real and important for a vast […]
Late last year, my therapist told me I was bipolar. We had talked about my personal history, and I’d always had phases of depression and mania, though the former had lately been a deeper, more life-altering issue. Depression for me is melancholy, feeling I’m sinking deeper into a hole, and compounded guilt over missing deadlines […]
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 […]
(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 […]
“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 […]
“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 […]
“The Lessons of the Moon” (published in Accessing The Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction, edited by Djibril al-Ayad and Kathryn Allan) is in part a story about me and my body. How I coped with loss and disappointment, and the realization that I am disabled. I wrote a protagonist who chooses, in their […]