ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the transformative potential of science fiction in relation to queer identities and subjectivities (Gay 2008, Melzer 2006), arguing that speculative genres offer new possibilities to understand the intersections of gender, sexuality, and storytelling. It focuses on El-Mohtar and Gladstone’s This Is How You Lose the Time War (2019), a science fiction novella centered around the romance that blooms between two sapphic characters who time travel to create opposing futures, and its subversive narrative style. The structuring of the story, which consists of short letters and chapters that take place in different moments in time, seems to rely on language fragmentation and non-linear storytelling to both represent and denounce the lack of a non-fractured history and literary tradition in which queer people can find themselves. Therefore, this chapter is concerned with both the connections between science fiction and the margins and the exploration of queer history (or lack thereof) in hegemonic discourses through narrative devices such as temporal discontinuity and irregular structures.
