Monday, October 10, 2011

The First Lesbian Science Fiction Novel


It was published in 1906.

From a piece in io9...

Like most genres of popular literature, science fiction has been slow to present lesbians in a positive light. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, lesbians were entirely unrepresented in science fiction, with homosexuality an act only depraved men engaged in. Which makes Gregory Casparian's The Anglo-American Alliance. A Serio-Comic Romance and Forecast of the Future (1906), the first lesbian science fiction novel, all the more notable.

Casparian (1855-1947) was a Turkish Armenian who emigrated to the United States in 1877 after making himself unwelcome in Turkey as an officer in the Armenian army. He settled in New York and became an artist, painter, and photoengraver for an engineering firm. Little else can be found about him, but he must have been an interesting and thoughtful man, for The Anglo-American Alliance, his only book, is remarkably progressive sexually.

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