We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2022

Kanakia (We Are Totally Normal) and series editor Payseur bolster Neon Hemlock’s reputation as a champion of queer speculative fiction with these 19 praiseworthy shorts. The scope is broad, from flash vignettes such as Bogi Takács’s “Four Glass Cubes (Item Description),” presented as an exhibition booklet entry attempting to explain an impossible artwork, to Amy Nagopaleen’s novelette “We’ll Always Have Enceladus,” in which a bereaved Machine Linguist is sent to help an isolationist colony whose computer has become sentient. The stories also reflect the wide possibilities of queerness, from straightforward attempts at dating—as in Ian Muneshwar’s “Dick Pig,” about a man whose anonymous Grindr hookup knows much more than he should—to the complex cyborg polyamory of Xauri’EL Zwaan’s “Normalization” and the squirm-inducing alien vegetable reproduction of Samir Sirk Morató’s “The Halved World.” The grief and challenges of the present moment loom large—a particular standout is Rebecca Cuthbert’s “Falling to Pieces,” a story of economic inequality about a woman who still shows up to her service job while literally disintegrating—but there’s also possibility and enormous joy. The message that queer people are here and will continue to be here in all possible futures resounds. (Oct.)