Blood Feuds and All the Feels: TorCon 2021 Highlights – Den of Geek
Space is Gay!
With books like Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit, Charlie Jane Anders’ Victories Greater Than Death, and Ryka Aoki’s Light From Uncommon Stars, it comes as no surprise that space is becoming increasingly gay. But moderator K.M. Szpara (First, Become Ashes) keenly started off the panel by asking the authors to define what they even mean by space. For Aoki, it was the sense of needing space: “If there’s any world you sometimes need a break from, it’s the world we live in as queers.” Anders likened the genre, with its interstellar jaunts and gallivanting, to one of the very best romance tropes: “It’s like there’s only one bed, but with the entire cosmos around you.”
“There’s only one pod!” the panel chorused, and we knew this was going to be a gallivant for the ages even if we were stuck on terra firma. But it wasn’t just riffing: When asked what should be made gay after space (dinosaurs and cyberpunk came to mind), Aoki brought up the necessary point that our work in space was not done: “Don’t just make it gay,” she said, “make it queer and trans.”
This panel had some of the most sparkling witticisms of the con, with this self-appointed starship crew of authors plotting a gay space heist involving tactical ballgowns, robbing Elon Musk’s inevitable space bank, and knowing exactly where to hide a body on a space station. Even when discussing more serious topics such as the need for queer scientists and educators (in addition to sci-fi writers), Aoki had the panel and audience cheering: “Imagine Bill Nye the Science Bi!”
Conjuring the Diaspora: Myths, Legends, and Classics Reimagined
Moderator Lily Philpott began this panel, about the intersections between the Asian diaspora and speculative storytelling, by acknowledging how vast the diaspora is, inviting the panelists to each speak about their ancestors and formative myths and legends. With these authors based on three different continents, no two people had the same perspective on identity. To wit, in discussing the disparate influences on Light From Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki said, “I’m not doing that to show you how many places I can be, I’m doing this to show you how many places I am.” With regard to rediscovering one link to her family history in Japan while losing another, Aoki said, “I refuse, with this book and with many of my books, to see myself as fragmented.” Whereas Nghi Vo (The Chosen and the Beautiful), whose family is Vietnamese and Hakka Chinese, said that while she appreciated the discussion of wholeness, “I have no interest in being whole. I have plenty of identity in fragment.”