Gay Science Fiction discussion

Hi all.

I’m trying to improve my German at the moment, trying to bulk up my vocab by reading random newspaper articles and so on – but i’m easily bored! Ideally, i’d like to find a few light, entertaining stories, either science fiction (preferably space opera) or gay romance (or, y’know, preferably both, but i probably can’t afford to set my expectations too high!).

I’m a bit stumped, though, in that i’m not yet familiar with the way the genres are constructed or marketed in the German-speaking world. Every time i’ve actually visited a physical bookshop in Germany, the shelves in their SF sections seem to be stuffed to the rafters with translations of books originally written in English (in which case, i might as well read the original). I’ve managed to buy a few Heftromane – space opera, along Perry Rhodan lines, and a few Heimatromane (romance novels with a rural setting, mostly about male-female couples). I don’t think we really have the equivalent of Heftromane in the UK (A5, magazine-bound short stories printed on newsprint-quality paper) except in the form of things like the People’s Friend pocket novels, but they’re great for reading practice because they’re generally written fairly simply and clearly, and they’re short enough to feel as if you’re making some progress even if you have to turn to a dictionary every few sentences!

I’ve been googling around trying to find books i might enjoy, but it’s difficult to know which words to google. In English, i’d maybe search for “MM SF romance”, but i haven’t yet figured out whether there are equivalent terms/acronyms in German. If anyone knows of any German-language terminology relevant to the sci-fi and romance genres, or eg any blogs reviewing German-language books in either of those genres, that’d be awesome.

As a broader general point, i’d be interested to know whether anyone knows about how those genres are faring in other language communities. I’m aware that there are now a few small presses and self-published authors in English who cater specifically for the SF&F gay romance market; i’d be intrigued to know what the equivalents would be (if any) in the Spanish- or French-speaking world, for example.

You might look at Dreamspinner Press - they have German translations of some of their books and among there are some fantasy/paranormal/SF (although not much SF I think) - https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/deu...

There is a growing trend to M/M in translation across the genres (eg. In Italian, Triskell Edizioni Rainbow is doing a lot of translations and some original fic - http://www.triskelledizioni.it/catego... )

I'm not aware of a press catering to queer spec-fic specifically - hopefully someone else is - and I think that originals may lag behind translations, although obviously the translations are what I hear about.

Thanks! I will explore.

(Although I remain generally a bit confused as to why translations seem to be so much more prevalent than originals, at least in the fantasy/SF genres… it surely can’t be that cheap to hire a professional translator!)

I think it's because the market for English language books is so much bigger. And some who buy the translation are reading in English, and know the genre and authors, and form a market for the translations from authors they know. The "reading in English by German fans" was big enough they have a whole group here on GR - might be something to check out too for you since they may well discuss translations and original fic as well as discussing English books in German. It's not active though - last post was in July - and they'd have to accept your membership to see the content - https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Martin wrote: "Thanks! I will explore.

(Although I remain generally a bit confused as to why translations seem to be so much more prevalent than originals, at least in the fantasy/SF genres… it surely can’t be t..."

Okay, so I'm German but I'm one of those strange people who prefer to read English books so unfortunately I can't help you out with direct recommendations. Romance books in German would be "Liebesromane" and SciFi is "Science Fiction". There really is no German word for that. M/M as such does probably not exist but I did a search for "Schwule Science Fiction" ("schwul" being the probably most used German word for gay (for people of the male persuasion)) and it got me this on Ammy Germany. Mind you, I haven't read a single one of these books and I don't know whether they are available where you reside but maybe it's a starting point. There are definitely translations from English among them (e.g. Kim Fielding) but you can weed them out if it says "Humpty Dumpty und Fritz Schmitz" (Fritz Schmitz being the translator).

Pro search tip: You can find out whether the book is available on amazon.com (or amazon.co.uk) by changing the .de in the adress bar of your browser to .com (or .co.uk or what have you) and vice versa.

While (I think) you can buy DTBs from Ammy Germany in the US, you definitely can't buy kindle books from outside of Germany.

The search for gay lit (which is the unbelievably stilted search term "Belletristik für Homosexuelle" - Ammy Germany needs to get into this century asap!) got me this list.

The result for "schwule liebesromane deutsch kindle" which should basically cover m/m in German on Kindle was this. Doesn't look very impressiv. Sorry about that.

So, best of luck. It's after midnight so I'm wilting but I'll keep the internal search engine running. Maybe I can dredge up some recommendations or think of people to ask.

Thank you – i’d managed to find a similar selection online myself, but it’s re-assuring to know that i’m not missing anything, or searching using the wrong words.

Thanks for the pointer about not being able to buy Kindle books direct from Amazon.de – i hadn’t realised that! (I’ve only bought hardcopy books from there before). Although it looks as if several of the books on these lists are available via Amazon.co.uk too (it’s just not an immediately-inspiring list!).

Martin wrote: "Thank you – i’d managed to find a similar selection online myself, but it’s re-assuring to know that i’m not missing anything, or searching using the wrong words.

Thanks for the pointer about not ..."

If you are interested in gay German movies (no sci-fi I'm afraid) I think I might come up with some recommendations. There are some that come with English subtitles which I still sometimes find rather useful (English subtitles, that is). They never tell the full story but can be useful as a crutch.

Let me know, and I'll start my internal search engine.