I started this entry last week (obviously) and couldn’t finish for various reasons. Most having to do with my brain, which stops working efficiently every once in a while and I was afraid it didn’t make much sense. So here’s what I had:

It’s Nicola Griffith week and I meant to write something profound and (hopefully) witty on the subject, but I’ve been sick and haven’t had a brain to write with. Besides, I’ve already reviewed/recced Always, so if to please go read.

So, since I’m in a brain cloud, I’m going to do what shouldn’t be done and talk about the queer thing. I realize that this is a no-no. There’s the fear that this will somehow ghettoize these books (and therefore doom them to mediocre sales) and Yes, I know, we’re supposed to be talking about the writing, the structure, the characters, but Aud’s gay! And strong! And this is (surprisingly) not a combination I see very often. In fact, I’ve seen the argument repeatedly that we shouldn’t want strong female characters to be gay (I’ve seen this argument most around Starbuck, and typically made by lesbians) because that would somehow stereotype all strong women as lesbians. Why is this so terrible? Apparently it is. Most of the lesbians in media are very…well, they certainly couldn’t kill anyone with a flashlight. In fact, I’m pretty sure they couldn’t change a tire or make a fist either. They’re almost always stripped of strength, power, and anything that signifies butch and or even queer. They read as straight girls (and I mean that in the worst possible, hyper-feminized way)…who just happen to like other girls. And the tough women? They’re almost always straight (Starbuck, Ripley, The new Bionic Woman, Faith, Buffy, Sydney, Veronica Mars). I’ve even seen people argue vehemently that Vasquez in Aliens was straight, which completely breaks my brain, but it’s not like there’s any concrete evidence to the contrary.

[insert transition here]

The other wonderful thing about very gay!Aud is that she doesn’t whine or worry or even talk about her gayness. It’s simply one of the many filters through which she sees the world. It is one more truth about her body, her physicality, the part of herself she understands so completely (unlike her emotions, which seem to be a mystery to Aud). Although everyone’s coming out experience is a unique and special snowflake, they have pretty much the exact same arc in narrative and, well, it’s nice to read a character who is so completely at home in her own body. Someone who knows this truth about themselves and is fighting other battles. Battles with other people and forces, not with their own sexuality.

I found Nicola Griffith’s work by searching for ‘lesbian fantasy and science fiction’. You’d be surprised how few titles come up. And if you’re looking for well-written, compelling fiction that list becomes pretty much microscopic. At the time, I was living in Brooklyn, working in advertising and surrounded by lit fiction types. I got bored with the McSweeney’s and New Yorker set. I found the extraordinary Ammonite, then the stunner, Slow River, and finally The Blue Place. I gave it a chance even though I was looking for more scifi (I knew already that Ms. Griffith could fucking write!) and Aud completely blew my mind. Here was the scifi dyke heroine I’d been dreaming about…in a crime thriller. She’s tough, smart, and isn’t to be fucked with. In other words, she’s a character of/for the future like flying cars and laser guns because she certainly doesn’t exist (or isn’t visible in any medium) today.

I realize that the standard line so far when it comes to great fiction with lesbian protagonists has been sort of, “read these books, they’re great. you won’t even notice the lead character is a big queer.” So far I’ve had more luck with a slightly different approach when it comes to Always and the Aud books: “You’ve got to read these books. The lead character is this unbelievably hot dyke who solves crimes and kills people. And they’re astonishingly well-written.” I’ve had a lot more success with this approach. Seriously. People (most of them straight) frothing at the mouth kind of success. I’m tired of apologizing and with a protagonist like Aud, why are we bothering? She wouldn’t.