20 of the best LGBTQIA+ works of science fiction

Adaptation (Cover image via Little, Brown)

7. Adaptation

This 2012 novel by Malinda Lo and its 2013 sequel, Inheritance, is something of a departure for its author. Lo is well known for her fantasy, not to mention her well-established track record of writing LGBTQIA+ content. She has been a faculty member for the Lambda Literary Foundation and regularly publishes diversity reports in Publisher’s Weekly and The New York Times.

Adaptation, however, is one of Lo’s first novel-length ventures into science fiction. It focuses on Reese, a high school student, who is first seen trying to home after a debate competition. She’s accompanied by her debate partner (and crush) David Li. Though the pair had originally planned to take a flight home, all planes are grounded when birds mysteriously begin to fly in to jet engines everywhere.

They then rent a car, but Reese crashes it while they’re driving on Nevada’s Extraterrestrial Highway. Both Reese and David survive uninjured, but they wake up in a secure government facility a month later. Neither of them remembers what’s happened since the accident.

As you may well have guessed, Adaptation takes quite a few cues from The X-Files (which Lo studied while she was a graduate student at Stanford University). With its focus on mysterious conspiracies, alien beings, and burgeoning queer romance for Reese, the book moves at a fast pace. It also ends on a serious cliffhanger, but thankfully Lo has already published the book’s sequel, Inheritance.

Far from being a single note in Reese’s character arc, her queerness is front and center. It plays a pivotal role in her conception of herself and how she interacts with others around her. Of course, that’s also in addition to other trends in her life, including the existence of extraterrestrials.