ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the invisibility of queer fantasy texts both as a theoretical concept and as a practical difficulty faced by researchers, by examining different approaches that have been taken in locating queer fantasy novels. Moving past Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo's final date of 1989, the overwhelming increase in depictions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and queer characters and themes in fantasy during the late 1980s and the 1990s makes the cataloguing of queer fantasy a project of far wider scope. Any queer fantasy text has the potential to hide in one of its component genres, passing as primarily queer literature or primarily fantasy. The queer sf fan community was so engaged with Uranian Worlds that they were directly responsible for its second edition: the Gaylaxians, a club for gay science fiction fans, organised a letter-writing campaign in January 1989 to petition the publisher to release a new edition.