We are excited to share the table of contents and contributing authors for Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity, an anthology coming next year from Erewhon. Edited by award-nominated writer, critic, and researcher Lee Mandelo, and overseen by editor Diana Pho, this anthology promises stories of queer hope, joy, and triumph.
Whether speculating on new technologies and cultural shifts; envisioning social politics through utopias and dystopias; navigating an ever-changing world as well as intimate relationships; or something else entirely: Amplitudes will offer engaged, imaginative perspectives on our lives. The stories inside this anthology contain multitudes—whether playful, serious, sexy, experimental, frightening, hopeful, or all of the above—centering how queer folk are powerful and trans lives matter, and featuring works from current and emerging science fiction and fantasy voices across the spectrum of identities. Amplitudes is a clarion call that readily accepts how we’re here, we’re queer—and we’re fucking used to it!—for today’s readers and beyond.
The twenty-two pieces collected in Amplitudes: Stories of Queer and Trans Futurity all answer the question “what if things were different?” in their own ways, but they share a resistant, critical belief in the possible futures we can create together. These stories carry a sense of hope—though it might be hard-won, complicated, and partial.
Overall, my editorial aim with Amplitudes was to approach queerness and-or transness expansively: as lived politics, experiences, identities, and cultures; as resistance against oppressive systems of power; as sources of self-making and intense connection with others across time and space; as gateways to pleasure, sex, desire, and intimacy; et cetera. And I think these stories do that so well together!
—Lee Mandelo, Editor
Here, preview the Table of Contents in the authors’ own words:
1. The Republic of Ecstatic Consent by Sam J. Miller
Wow, who would have thought, turns out living in a radical queer activist collective in a future moment of massive liberational societal transformation isn’t just tons of fun, it’s tons of work too.
2. Trans World Takeover by Nat X Ray
The first guy we decided to trans as part of Trans World Takeover was this older lady from San Antonio who was our school’s trigonometry teacher slash football coach.
3. The Orgasm Doula by Colin Dean
What if each orgasm could be your last?
4. The Shabbos Bride by Esther Alter
The feminine aspect of the Holy One fucks a closeted trans woman.
5. MoonWife by Sarah Gailey
“MoonWife” is about the ghosts we create through our online lives, and the love that can pursue us even into death.
6. Forever Won’t End Like This by Dominique Dickey
“Forever Won’t End Like This” is a love letter to all the queers networks have tried to bury, and the fandoms that refuse to let them die.
7. They Will Give Us a Home by Wen-yi Lee
The mlm/wlw lavender marriage from attempted-murder hell where they dream about killing each other to claim sole ownership of their dystopian dream apartment.
8. There Used to Be Peace by Margaret Killjoy
In the middle of the collapse of the USA, an order of antifascist knights brings both sword and rifle to the cause of protecting refugees.
9. Fettle & Sunder by Ramez Yoakeim
The Militia is closing in, neighbors turn their backs, and Juan and Ephraim’s narrow escape path is littered with threats, sacrifices, and revelations that threaten to tear them apart.
10. Six Days by Bendi Barrett
Societal collapse, but instead of doom-prepping edgelords, make it loving, emotionally-mature, cooperative queer community building.
11. The They Whom We Remember by Sunny Moraine
A person living in a future of wildly malleable bodies and genders struggles to understand their own present self through the hazy lens of the frightening past.
12. When the Devil Comes From Babylon by Maya Deane
“You don’t have to be a boy, the Devil tells me. In Babylon, you can be anything you want. I know where I’m supposed to fit into God’s grand design, but my heart rebels against it, rejecting every good thing, longing for wickedness. ” A closeted trans girl lives in fear that a demon from Babylon will save her from her family’s Christian cult. What follows is closer to a CPS visit.
13. Copper Boys by Jamie McGhee
Kit understands trees. Easy to plant. Easier to chop down. But her feelings? Not so much.
14. A Few Degrees by Ash Huang
What happens when ‘if it fits it sits’ comes up against a multi-million dollar satellite dish—and the narrator’s deep-seated insecurity.
15. Where the World Goes Sharp and Quiet by Ewen Ma
A young man from City H tries (and fails) (and tries again) to escape the bleak weather conditions that killed him, and also has to deal with the annoying emotional consequences of coming back from the dead.
16. Circular Universe by Ta-wei Chi, trans. Ariel Chu
An excerpt from the sequel to The Membranes, “Circular Universe” asks: what can a lesbian mother under the sea do to save Momo, her trans daughter, across various parallel universes?
17. Blueprint for the Destruction of Solitude by Paul Evanby
You make me your weapon, you make me your future, you make me your love.
18. The Garden of Collective Memory by Neon Yang
According to the brokers, my most valuable memory is from my sister’s birthday lunch in 2011.
19. Sugar, Shadows by Aysha U. Farah
What if the moment you hit rock bottom was crystallized? What if it had a face and a name?
20. A Step into Emptiness by Aiki Mira, trans. CD Covington
In a cheap hotel on the moon the worlds of a spacer and an earther collide, bearing love, grief and emancipation.
21. pocket futures in the present past by Katharine Duckett
A ragtag crew of temporal anarchists living in Appalachia try to protect vital portals linking the present and future when one of their founding members goes missing.
22. Bang Bang by Meg Elison
Welcome to the last gay club in the galaxy. What’s the password?
