Gay Science Fiction discussion

One of my all-time favorite tropes is time travel. NOTE: major spoilers below, especially for Rinse and Repeat and Downtime.

Time travel comes in a few different flavors. One is the traditional The Time Machine version: you can travel to the past but you can't change anything. These tend to be rather sad and dark, and hence aren't my favs. (I like light, bright and sparkling). But I do like the movie 12 Monkeys, because while the MCs can't change the past, the future will likely be better because of what they learned while trying.

Another, much more fun version is the Back To The Future version: you can change the past and then go back to the present to see the effects. Sometimes the heroes bounce around through time trying to save the present from evil people changing the past for their own nefarious purposes. Andre Norton's The Time Traders is like this as is The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World and anything with "time police" anywhere in the title or blurb.

A third flavor is the Downtime version, where a character travels to the past and stays there. I have mixed feelings about these. Downtime is awesome, but too often these are way too "rosy glow of nostalgia" for me. I don't really want to hear about a simpler time, with better morals and things built to last with no mention of homophobia, sexism, and death in childbirth. Downtime does grapple with this sort of thing - one of the MCs is sent to an asylum for being gay - and I kind of wanted them both to come live in the present. But Tamara Allan sells me on it.

My current favorite time travel trope is the time loop, aka Groundhog Day. Stargate SG1 has a really awesome episode with this; Window of Opportunity. I am not sure I have ever laughed harder at a TV episode.

Rinse and Repeat is a gay scifi version that I like a lot. Time loop stories tend to be a bit melancholy, because the looper has experiences and interactions that don't exist for anyone else once the looping ends. In Rinse and Repeat, the looper, Peat, ends up happy and love with the other MC, Jake, but Peat has memories of their falling in love and being together that Jake doesn't.

Time travel tourism is when the characters visit a time period; future or past; and don't really effect much then or in the present. There are tons of Star Trek Episodes like this. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court turns out to be this, though it looks like a "go to the past and stay there" story for most of it. A YA gay sicfi version of this is Repeating History: The Eye of Ra.

Gay scifi time travel stories [1]:

Some personal gay time travel favorites:

Do Over
Downtime
Rinse and Repeat
Mike Dies at the End

Some To Be Read gay time travel stories:

A Token of Time
Destiny's Bastard
Stealing Some Time: Volume 1

Some lists of gay time travel stories:

GSF Time Travel List

M/M Romance Time Travel List

The Slash Pile Time Travel List



[1] Some of these are a bit iffy since the time travel mechanism might be more paranormal than scientific, and the scientific basis for time travel (at least into the past) is weak at best.Do Over

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold is another classic time travel story with a gay protagonist. It's a novella, and is now available for $2.99 at Amazon in Kindle format. (I haven't checked to see if it's available in other ebook formats.)

Brandon wrote: "The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold is another classic time travel story with a gay protagonist. It's a novella, and is now available for $2.99 at Amazon in Kindle format. (I haven't checke..."

Do you like it? I have hesitated because it sounds like it might be a little melancholy.

Another interesting variation on this theme is the flipside of the Time Travel Tourist, in which the main characters are living in the time of interest, and encounter time travellers who are just passing though.

These stories tend to be geared toward major disasters, and the possibility of the present day characters averting the future event that the travellers are present to witness, giving rise to subsequent paradox timelines.

Arshad wrote: "Another interesting variation on this theme is the flipside of the Time Travel Tourist, in which the main characters are living in the time of interest, and encounter time travellers who are just p..."

I remember one of these where time travelers from the future came to the present, and it turned out they were observing a plague. :-( Not averted either.

One of our group authors has alerted me to a new time travel story:

Slow Dreaming

I really liked Stealing Some Time: Volume 1 and Stealing Some Time: Volume 2 a lot. The vision of the future is quite dystopic with most of the residents not even realizing it. The very ending of Vol. 2 is a little Pollyanna-ish, but you know, without it it would be depressing. The best part is how detailed the author is in realizing the future and the past. The characterizations are also vivid.

Destiny's Bastard is interesting, but the characters in the present time seem to be better realized than the past. I do like the introduction of the bad guys because of the perspective they're first described from.

Meghan (mm_reads) wrote: "I really liked Stealing Some Time: Volume 1 and Stealing Some Time: Volume 2 a lot. The vision of the future is quite dystopic with most of the residents not even realizing it. The very ending of ..."

Oh, good to know. I have Stealing 1 and Destiny's Bastard on my Kindle.

Cole RIann just reviewed a new time travel story, The Once and Future Love. Review:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Charming wrote: "Do you like it? I have hesitated because it sounds like it might be a little melancholy."

Yes, I do like The Man Who Folded Himself, because I think it's well written and does a good job of exploring aspects of time travel that don't usually get considered. You're right that there is a certain melancholy aspect to the story, but I didn't think it diminished the experience. It remains one of the most memorable time travel stories I've read.

Apparently, Dreamspinner has a whole line of gay time travel books, here

http://www.goodreads.com/series/80811....

Free time travel:

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/79...

There is a new listopia list for gay time travel here:

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/30...

I'm wondering if anyone's written a story about gay characters from the past traveling through time into our world (or the future). How would they feel about our technology and progress, etc.

Alex wrote: "I'm wondering if anyone's written a story about gay characters from the past traveling through time into our world (or the future). How would they feel about our technology and progress, etc."

I can think of two:

Trick of Time
Liquid Glass

They are both more from a paranormal point view rather than scifi.