Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction

by Bogi Takács (Editor)

Overview

As with the first volume of Transcendent, Lethe Press has worked with a wonderful editor to select the best work of genderqueer stories of the fantastical, stranger, horrific, and weird published the prior year. Featuring stories by Merc Rustad, Jeanne Thornton, Brit Mandelo, and others, this anthology offers time-honored tropes of the genre--from genetic manipulation to zombies, portal fantasy to haunts--but told from a perspective that breaks the rigidity of gender and sexuality. A winner for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Transgender Fiction!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590216620
Publisher:	Lethe Press
Publication date:	10/22/2017
Series:	Transcendent , #2
Pages:	206
Sales rank:	403,365
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Bogi Takács (e/em/eir/emself or they pronouns) is a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person and a resident alien in the United States. E writes, edits and reviews speculative fiction, nonfiction and poetry. You can find eir work in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons and Uncanny, among other places; e also had a story reprinted in the previous Transcendent anthology, edited by K.M. Szpara. Bogi lives in Kansas with eir cheerful neuroatypical family.

Table of Contents

"Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy" by Charlie Jane Anders

"Skeey-Bride" by Sonya Taaffe

"Transitions" by Gwen Benaway

"This is Not a Wardrobe Door" by A. Merc Rustad

"Three Points Masculine" by An Owomoyela

"The L7 Gene" by Jeanne Thornton

"Rhizomatic Diplomacy" by Vajra Chandrasekera

"The Pigeon Summer" by Brit Mandelo

"The Road, and the Valley, and the Beasts" by Keffy R. M. Kehrli

"About a Woman and a Kid" by M Eighteen Téllez

"Sky and Dew" by Holly Heisey

"The Nothing Spot Where Nobody Wants to Stay" by Julian K. Jarboe

"Lisa's Story: Zombie Apocalypse" by Gillian Ybabez

"Happy REGARDS" by RoAnna Sylver

"The Way You Say Good-Night" by Toby MacNutt

"Her Sacred Spirit Soars" by S. Qiouyi Lu

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/16/2017
Musings about body, identity, and society thread through these 16 phenomenal stories about ghosts, gods, mythical birds, and magic doorways. Speculative fiction, like transgender, is a porous term, and that refreshing amorphousness is on full display here. The anthology opens with “Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived by Her Mercy” by Charlie Jane Anders, in which Pris falls into and then out of love with an intentional queer community in a drowned San Francisco; the community’s members are trying, through magic and music and filtration systems, to heal the polluted ocean. “Transitions” by Gwen Benaway follows a delightfully acerbic trans woman who begins to hear the voices of her indigenous ancestors. An Owomoyela’s “Three Points Masculine” is a layered, dystopian story of war in which a military built on binarist ideas of feminine and masculine forces soldiers into unwanted roles. The final story is S. Qiouyi Lu’s “Her Sacred Spirit Soars,” a moving transhumanist meditation on depression, loss, and love. This anthology embraces the multifaceted nature of trans identities, imagining them into worlds that are both new and familiar. Takács has assembled a book that reads like a fascinating conversation in which the reader feels lucky to participate. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"This anthology embraces the multifaceted nature of trans identities, imagining them into worlds that are both new and familiar. Takács has assembled a book that reads like a fascinating conversation in which the reader feels lucky to participate." - Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the Publisher

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