Gay Science Fiction discussion

I'd be interested in some good reading leads for human-machine co-evolutionary stories. Sexy is a bonus, but not central. I'm a big fan of Ray Kurzweil's works and am curious to see how his idea of "the machine will learn to think of itself as human" is starting to be expressed in gay science fiction in particular.

For a wildly imaginative look at how AI sees itself (and lots of other things) I would recommend Aldous Mercer (who better be working on the next one :) )

The Prince and the Program

Thanks! I'll take a peek.

This one's good, too:

Wonderful! Looking forward to it...

Angel wrote: "For a wildly imaginative look at how AI sees itself (and lots of other things) I would recommend Aldous Mercer (who better be working on the next one :) )"

Yeah, Aldous! :-)

I can't wait to read those. They sound great!

K.B.,

I can immediately see how AI stories and stories related to lgbt issues might naturally have some elements in common. I didn't think about it much until I watched the movie Her a few weeks ago, but I immediately found myself identifying with the main character as he "came out" to other people and wrestled internally and externally with the idea of being strange, creepy and anti-social. Virtually everything he went through in the movie could have been applied to a gay character instead, and very little would have had to change. Even the way society gradually came to accept it was interesting. There's a scene where the AI starts talking about how she initially saw herself as being worse off for not being human, but now she's started to realize that she has some advantages, and the humans start to react very negatively. They were cool with her up until that point, but once she mentions even a single advantage, they act as if she's done something embarrassing and mean-spirited. I've definitely been in that same situation when I've suggested to straight friends that my perspective might be unique due to my experience. It was a great moment in film history, and it expressed exactly how I felt, even if it wasn't tied to a gay character.

There has also been research in the past on how likely gay Americans (I don't know about other countires) are to explore other social "boundaries" due to their experience as members of a subculture, so it seems plausible that lgbt people may be slightly more willing to accept AI as equal members of society and/or interact with them sexually and emotionally.

I, too, would love to read books or stories that explored this topic.

Thanks for the film lead! I love all kinds of machine-human interactions, maybe a hold-over from being in love with Spock and Data! HA!

Seriously, I agree with you and also with Ray Kurzweil who said the machines won't know they aren't human at some point...that we are their builders and how their minds work will essentially be like our own, no matter how supercharged. But I don't think that means that artificial intelligence will then become inimical to us all. They could step up and be more compassionate, more "humane" because they are outside the pale of the herd.

In fact, the machines of all kinds--AI, EI, nanotech forming clusters and taking on personalities--will in turn tell us how being "human" is a much bigger playing field than we currently imagine. That's what I love to write and read about. Machines taking our hands and helping even the non-enhanced human forward on our evolutionary journeys.

Love to have you read Folds of the Script, or The Children of the Great Reckoning series. I think you will much in there to think about. Folds is not gay romance but is one heck of a ride in a machine-kind/humankind society, and the Children series has gay characters but is pretty hardcore science fiction with lots of political overtones. Let me know what you think...

There is an amazing short story called Feral Machines by Ginn Hale about a cyborg-esque who falls in love with a human. That's a really lame description for such an amazing story. It was what made me fall in love with Ginn Hale (as well as Wicked Gentlemen, but that's steampunk). The entire Tangled anthology (where I originally found Feral Machines) is really good, but you can just by Feral Machines separately.

I hope everyone here knows about Blind Eye Book publishing which pretty much only publishes gay sci-fi, and has fairly high standards, so they publish *good* gay sci-fi.

Honestnixas wrote: "There is an amazing short story called Feral Machines by Ginn Hale about a cyborg-esque who falls in love with a human. That's a really lame description for such an amazing story. It was what made ..."

I don't know why I haven't read Feral Machines yet. I loved Wicked Gentlemen.