A celebration of queer speculative fiction. In these pages you'll find writers from across the spectrum of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror. We have big names and small, much-published veterans and promising beginners, Lammy and Spectrum Award nominees and winners, past Gaylaxicon Guests of Honor, and fresh new names. Some of these writers are attendees of Gaylaxicon 2006 in Toronto; others are unable to make it to the con. Includes science fiction, fantasy, even a bit of nonfiction; essays, short stories, and excerpts from longer works; drama, erotica, and comedy.

How popular culture is engaged by activists to effect emancipatory political change One cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. Civic imagination is the capacity to conceptualize alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; it also requires the ability to see oneself as a civic agent capable of making change, as a participant in a larger democratic culture. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination represents a call for greater clarity about what we’re fighting for—not just what we’re fighting against. Across more than thirty examples from social movements around the world, this casebook proposes “civic imagination” as a framework that can help us identify, support, and practice new kinds of communal participation. As the contributors demonstrate, young people, in particular, are turning to popular culture—from Beyoncé to Bollywood, from Smokey Bear to Hamilton, from comic books to VR—for the vernacular through which they can express their discontent with current conditions. A young activist uses YouTube to speak back against J. K. Rowling in the voice of Cho Chang in order to challenge the superficial representation of Asian Americans in children’s literature. Murals in Los Angeles are employed to construct a mythic imagination of Chicano identity. Twitter users have turned to #BlackGirlMagic to highlight the black radical imagination and construct new visions of female empowerment. In each instance, activists demonstrate what happens when the creative energies of fans are infused with deep political commitment, mobilizing new visions of what a better democracy might look like.

A collection of stories from authors including Ann McCaffrey and C.J. Cherryh, inspired by a song by Leslie Fish, explores what life in space is like

A man working in a covert operation called the Ivory Madonna avenges his father who was abducted and destroyed by a stranger 20 years ago.

It is springtime at Bolin College and death is in the air.The Virtual Campus Challenge demo is one week away. To make matters worse, Robby hasn't had a boyfriend since freshman year and his gender-fluid friend is making that all too clear.When Robby and his team uncover a link between suicides and virtual reality games, Virtuella, SaikoVR's AI game engine, fights back. Can Robby and his friends defeat Virtuella, save the world, and find love in the BEST GAME EVER?

"Charmed Lives" offers readers a collection of more than 30 short works of fiction and personal essays as an alternative to the stories that society often tells about gay men. All offer insight into modern gay life that will inspire and shed light on the grace of being gay with tales of hope against adversity, and love over loneliness.