20 of the best LGBTQIA+ works of science fiction

Big Big Sky (Cover image via Red Deer Press)

3. Big Big Sky

Big Big Sky, the 2008 novel by Kirstyn Dunnion, is decidedly queer. It follows Rustle, a young scout living in a post-apocalyptic world. She’s part of a five-person warrior group, called a “Pod”, composed entirely of women. This tight-knit company trains, eats, sleeps, and even occasionally forms romantic relationships together.

At first, Rustle and her Pod mates believe that all of the men and adults have disappeared from the planet. Thankfully, there are the ScanMan aliens who take care of them. Well, except — as is kind of clearly telegraphed from the earliest pages of Big Big Sky — the ScanMans are bad.

How bad? Well, when they first arrived on Earth, the ScanMans exterminated all males and human adults. The remaining female children were either exterminated, experimented upon, or assigned to Pod groups. Of course, the survivors’ memories have all been replaced with kinder recollections. Anyone who becomes too wily or simply stands out too much is sent to the “Living Lab”, never to return.

Rustle’s partner, Loo, is concerned when she sees Rustle beginning to exhibit those strange alterations. That’s a particularly big problem, seeing as Rustle and Loo are “fused”, or intensely devoted to one another.

This all sets off a series of events that reveal some Pod mates as betrayers, some as pawns, and some as new, changed people entirely. The survivors are also forced to escape into the wilderness, where they encounter humans not under the aliens’ control. This also includes their first encounters with men, who the protagonists call “strange beasts”. It’s a beautifully weird and unabashedly queer novel.