ABSTRACT
This paper considers language, specifically the non sequitur, as a medium with which queer comic writers may penetrate dominant narratives in order to disrupt binary thinking and try to make meaning out of (apparently) disparate ideas. The author uses close readings of Joanna Russ’s The Female Man and Eleanor Arnason’s Ring of Swords to demonstrate the ways that science fiction is unique in its capacity to open the reader to alternative futures and alternative readings of the fiction of the normative present. The reader of science fiction is seen as an interpreter/conspirator against the (il)logic of sequence, making space instead for a comedic dialectic focused on joy and tenderness toward humanity.
