Ask the Flying Monkey (December 23, 2008)

Q: I've recently gotten back into sci-fi and was wondering if there were any good gay sci-fi books out there. -- Kyle, Seattle

A: Not enough. Worse, of the few good ones the Monkey has read, many are currently out of print — including the Monkey’s all-time favorite, the four-novel Silent Empire series by Steven Harper that begins with Dreamer.

Still, there is one popular series the Monkey can heartily recommend: the Neanderthal Parallax by Robert Sawyer; the first book is Hominids. Humans from our dimension enter an alternative one where Neanderthals, not humans, evolved into civilization. But Neanderthals, unlike humans, form both same-sex sexual partnerships (for companionship) and opposite sex ones (for reproduction). It’s a fantastic series — Sawyer’s best work, which is saying something — and the same-sex relationships are handled wonderfully matter-of-factly. (And last year, Sawyer told the Monkey personally that he’s working on a fourth book in the series!)

Robert J. Sawyer

Author photo credit: Carolyn Clink

The other big name in gay sci-fi is Samuel Delany, but the Monkey has never been a fan. There’s also out Star Trek writer David Gerrold, who has written a couple of queer sci-fi novels, including a 1974 time travel novel, The Man Who Folded Himself, where a man has sex with … well, himself.

Finally, the Monkey recommends you check out the winners and/or nominees of the annual Lambda Literary Awards in the sci-fi/fantasy category. Often the books are from “smaller” publishers and by lesser-known authors, but the quality can still be excellent.

Q: Who do you think is the most famous celebrity with only one name? – Brick, Seattle, WA

A: There are more of these than you’d think. Some of the top contenders: Beyoncé, Fabian, Fergie, Iman, Jewel, Pink, Prince, Seal, and Sting.

But the most famous of all? Cher edges out Madonna by a surgically narrowed nose.

Q: I was watching The Sterile Cuckoo the other night. In it, Liza played the kind of extremely annoying girlfriend who would turn just about any fellow gay, I would think. At one point she was screeching on about how one of the characters in the film was gay, saying something like, "They have their own code, you know – ask him about alligator shoes and see what happens!" So, my question is, does the term "alligator shoes" really have some sort of secret gay meaning? – Fred, Commodore, Pennsylvania

Minnelli with Wendell Burton in The Sterile Cuckoo

A: There absolutely was a series of code words for gay people back in the 60s and before. Why? Necessity. Until the mid-60s, it was technically illegal in New York for more than two gay men to be together in one place. In New York! So gay people, clever folks that we are, came up with a whole “coded” language that we could use to talk to each other about gay matters, even in semi-public places, but mostly that we could use to identify who was and wasn’t gay. If you didn’t know the jargon, that was a tip that you might very well be a cop trying to entrap someone!

But the “alligator shoes” line in the movie? That’s just a joke (and a pretty funny one at that!).

Next page! No defense for gay panic.