Steve Berman (editor), Wilde Stories 2008: The Best of the
Year's Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2008)
Wilde Stories is a new annual anthology devoted to gay speculative fiction, with the premiere edition containing twenty-one stories previously published in such venues as All Hallows, Postscripts, Subterranean Magazine, and Clarke's World.
As Berman notes in his introduction, the anthology title is a nod to Oscar Wilde, whose classic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray "represents an important milestone in both queer and speculative literature."
Yet it is another work mentioned by Berman which perhaps underscores even more dramatically how gay characters and themes speak to many readers:
[E]ver since Theodore Sturgeon boldly wrote "The World Well Lost" (which first appeared in the June 1953 issue of Universe magazine), there has been a momentum for inclusiveness in speculative fiction. As the "interstitial" and "slipstream" literary movements gain momentum, more and more authors are interweaving their traditional gay themes -- coming out, homophobia, and self-as-other -- with a bit of the strange and weird.
The stories in this anthology range from the gentle ghost story, "The Woman In the Window" by Jameson Currier, about a family with two gay parents who find themselves haunted by a long-ago murder to "Awkward" by Francisco Ibanez-Carrsco, a disturbing tale about a violent confrontation between a middle-aged gay couple and a pair of young hoods who break into their house on Halloween.
"Acid and Stoned Raindeer," written by Rebecca Ore, comes across like a surrealist reworking of Virginia Woolf's Orlando as it follows a mysterious being through various historical periods, while "City of Night" by Joel Lane and John Pelan is a Lovecraftian tale of cosmic horror.
One of my favorite stories from Wilde Stories is "Lycaon" by Peter Dube, told as a series of letters from a wanderer who tries to explain to his lover how his fascination with the horror genre became linked in his mind with his sexual identity.
Werewolves -- whatever they may be, or be for -- mean something. They mark a place where borders break down: the civilized and the wild, man and animal, the mind and the red heart of things.
Another favorite of mine was "An Apiary of White Bees" by Lee Thomas, a lyrical story about memory and first love which was originally published in the Ellen Datlow-edited anthology Inferno.
"The Island of the Pirate Gods" by Hal Duncan is a pastiche of pirates and Shakespearean fantasy, complete with star-crossed lovers and romantically confused fairies. There's no way to describe the story without it sounding completely impossible, but it definitely works, and the mashup of pirate and Shakespearian lore is richly detailed and whimsically madcap.
The final story in the anthology, "Ever So Much More Than Twenty," by Joshua Lewis, sounds a perfect bittersweet parting note as it tells the story of a gay father who, facing the breakup of his longterm relationship and his daughter's impending departure for college, returns to the magical summer vacation home where he first fell in love.
You can purchase it directly from Lethe Press.
