Saraband

I know, that's a super-weird choice as the first role to come to mind -- but her character on Tales of the City was a memorable part of my baby-queer existence. <Sniff>.

I actually do wonder. As @BHopper2 said, the OP hung around for quite awhile before making his spectacular entrance. Taking into account his . . . somewhat ostentatious word choice (along with an incorrectly chosen indefinite article) and the shout-out to Howl, it occurs to me that Mr. Cole may be doing some sort of performance art, and we're all just part of the show. (If that is the case, I would suggest to him that a more effective example of this sort of commentary can be found in Yoko Ono's re-interpretation of Katy Perry's "Firework.")

Oh, webcomics. Truly the best of the worst, some of them . . . (Yeah, it took me more than a couple hours to dig those out of the archive, whatayawant? If you need me, I'll be putting new tennis balls on my walker. . .)

As I'm coming late to this party, the gist of what I would say about signaling has been well covered by @Puppilull in her comment, and in the subsequent conversation. The thing that I would add is, basically, "this is water." There's something that's important here that I'm slightly at a loss to say succinctly and eloquently. @Mikiesboy has his finger on it with the observation that this (idea of gender expression and signalling) isn't hard to understand -- if one wants to. But as Thorn points out in the comment immediately above, often the ignorance comes from "lack of self-insight and critical thinking." All of these things are true: the importance and pervasiveness of signalling; the notion that it isn't a difficult concept to grasp, given a little consideration; the fact that many (if not most) people do not spend the time or effort to do so. There is little need to stop and consider what one is signalling, or why, if the process of doing so is not disruptive to a person's life. (I'll ignore the question of whether there is value for now.) Most folks can swim through the day, signal to the other fishes, and never stop to think about the water. We lucky few in here know about the water. Of course, that's often because, for us, the water has not been comfortable. But when we try to tell the other blithely swimming fish (who are our parents, our siblings, our partners, classmates, colleagues and friends) that the water is fucked up, we are actually asking them to make a pretty significant leap. First they have to see the water. Then they have to realize how they are so well adapted to it (let's ignore the vice-versa argument for now.) Then, IF they begin to realize that this water isn't so great for us, there's a chance they will think that the problem is with us, instead of with the water. So by the time we get to "wearing men's clothes doesn't make you a boy," the good news is that we're about halfway there. Our poor, thick-headed mothers -- and I may be reaching with an assumption, but the reach is not that far -- can see that there is a signal, even if they cannot yet read the message. *The questions of why someone cannot or will not get the message is a whole different fun conversation, and one that I am DEFINITELY not going to get into here, because for starters it ain't my blog . . .

Oh, Stravinsky, my hero. . . As someone who (literally) ran screaming out of piano lessons as a child, and later backed into classical music again by way of jazz, Frank Zappa and Astor Piazzolla -- Rite of Spring is TOTALLY MY JAM (And if anyone wants to hear me swoon and count the ways I think it is amazing, we can do that in another room, I guess.) Thanks for putting this here. Also, fun fact: I have no idea how this happened, but Firebird is the first ballet I ever saw. So, it, too, has a soft space in my heart. My ex in college played the flute, and thus did I come to spend more time with the orchestra woodwind section than I ever expected to do, or even want to. They used to tease the bassoon players about the Rite of Spring opening: "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII'mm just a poooooor bassoooooooonnn. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII'mmm not an English Hooooorrrn." Good times.

Thank you so much for this. I haven't really listened to any Couperin since my conservatory days, but this was exactly the music that helped me learn to love the harpsichord. (I mean, I like Scarlatti on the piano. I love Bach on the piano. But it's like the piano has nothing special to offer Couperin -- and Couperin offers his best self through the harpsichord. So I love the two of them together, like couple-friends. ) I was only minimally aware of Mr. Ross -- I knew that he played harpsichord, that he was a weird dude, and that he was dead. So thank you for this, as well. I would never have thought to look up his interpretations specifically, but I certainly will now! Ain't that the truth, though?

From one 'tran' to another, hello and well-met. One of the fun and challenging things about being trans is that we "get" to negotiate how we will engage our trans identity in each and every social interaction, whether that be in person, on the phone, in images, videos or print. One of the things I find disappointing is that (often for reasons of safety or convenience over preference) we frequently adopt a gender presentation that functions for us one way or the other -- but that excludes the transgender aspect of our experience. If one is trans and binary, and one elects to transition, I can see the appeal of just doing the thing and leaving the whole experience behind -- but for the non-binary group, this queer element of gender is a permanent part of our experience, regardless of what choices one makes about transition. It deserves no less acknowledgement than any other aspect of sexual identity. The nonsensical idea that anyone's genderqueer identity originates with a desire for attention is . . . interesting, and probably deserves some academic exploration regarding what it says about the people who profess it -- but it has exactly no bearing on the validity of that identity, or the experience of genderqueer people. If some shithead(s) want to profess that you're somehow fake, I invite them all to take that crap back to elementary school and the 1980s (or '50s) and you can just come hang out with us cool kids. We see you, and we like you fine.

Well, this is interesting. I go away for a month and return to find that the forum threads I follow have had CHANGES, and there are no notifications lingering w/r/t unseen replies on the old threads. Whatever; I figured it out. On the upside, everything so far in Dead Composers 2.0 looks GREAT (although I have not yet spent 2 hours listening to Gardiner's take on the Monteverdi Vespers). I thought I'd share this nutso recording of a little Chopin ditty I recently started with one of my students. Full disclosure: I don't generally like playing Chopin -- for oh so many reasons, including Scriabin-sized hands -- but this Prelude is the *moment* when I really viscerally came to understand the interaction of rubato and melodic gesture, both as a performer and a composer. (I mean, a 10th grade version of such, but still. It also didn't hurt that I went over and played it on the marimba, which had the effect of amplifying the physicality of the gestures -- and that really made a difference back at the piano.) Now, I like plenty of Artur Rubinstein recordings (Brahms, op 118, anyone?) but seriously -- what the ring-tailed rambling hell is up with this? It's not just the tempo. . .the top voicing is surprisingly agitated, too. If you find you love this version, please tell me what/why? I feel a little uneasy hating on Rubinstein this strongly. . . For a contrasting take (significantly more in line with my own performance preference) here is Maurizio Pollini's 1974 version -- B minor prelude #6 starts at around 7:15, in case the time code doesn't work.

At least one of those doco's contains the footage wherein Marsha says the words :). I don't remember which; I've only seen part of each one. (I may be a terrible person -- especially as a historian -- but I really can't watch documentaries for fun.)

I'm loving ALL of this. Especially the Freddie love (although I confess to being a raging Brian May fan, myself, appropos of nothing). I have to add Justin Tranter, formerly of Semi-Precious Weapons and currently one of the top bitches of the songwriting business (accorded the title by RuPaul himself). Tranter's first really big moment from the writing room was his contribution to the Fall Out Boy song "Centuries:" he wrote the chorus. The chorus that goes "you'll remember me for centuries," to the tune of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" and in the words of Marsha P. Johnson -- who originally said them to a camera. Probably 99.98% of the people who know that song do NOT know of Marsha P. Johnson, let alone the debt the queer world owes her. But Justin Tranter is sly, and is committed to bringing queer thoughts into the mainstream. And I love him for that, even if I don't give a crap about Fall Out Boy.

My favorite thing about that Munich concert is "Montsy"'s humor -- when she introduces one of the encores (O mio babbino caro) she calls it "a little ditty" -- which it is -- and she and Marilyn Horne seem to have such an easy rapport on the stage. Caballe really seems to be struggling physically, though. She looks and sounds (to me, anyway) uncomfortable singing this duet, and I recall seeing somewhere that she had been pretty ill a lot around that time. Her dynamics and control are STILL exceptional, though, especially put right next to Marilyn's less nuanced lines (like, around 4:00). Thanks for posting both versions! I listened to both, and really prefer the staged version. I don't think I ever would have seen it otherwise, since I'd never think to look to Caballe for any sort of acting. (Not that she really did any, here, either -- but now I have a great example of what people meant when they called her singing "limpid.") She may have been a lousy actress, but she was definitely a character -- and thanks to youtube, I don't even have to miss her. I can watch her manhandle students with no breath support in a master class any time I want! And we'll always be able to enjoy her sparkling singing, and charming irreverence (not to say, disrespect ) for the music. Still, it's sad to know she's gone.

Lovely.

Well, hot damn! I go away for a minute (or a month) and return to find that not only has Sasha returned, but given us an absolutely heartwarming -- not to mention smoking-hot -- story! The dynamic presented is really interesting. The guys' relationship is very equitable in some ways, and challengingly asymmetrical in others. With three members of the quartet apparently exclusive tops, Marcus is effectively a keystone of the relationship. But then there's "the Captain". . . and Tiago, who seems to bring the emotional intuition and openness; and Eric, who's always ready to turn up the heat. Everybody really does bring something different. I can't wait to see how this one wraps up. I'm certain we'll all be wanting more -- but I'm equally convinced that this story will appropriately wrap as a novella. Detailed exploration of the relationship complexities within a 4-man poly group can be left as a fun exercise for the reader . . .

In preparation for my 11-year old student's AM lesson which will include the Invention #10, I was poking around on YouTube. (I told the kid to do some listening this week, and come back to me with her thoughts on a best-fit tempo, now that most of the notes are under her fingers. I thought I should see what was out there, myself.) @Tiger 's post from last month reminded me that Valentina is always a good bet when you want to hear a really ballsy take on something, so when I found her Inventions, I couldn't resist. But. . . I have SO MANY QUESTIONS about this: And fresh among them is: "is my G Major invention this batshit when I do it fast?"

OK, I'll bite. I have listened to this and carefully thought about it for a whole week now, and I don't think I hear what you hear. At least not entirely, or entirely within the "Nimrod" variation. (Buckle up, this is longer than I wanted it to be, but your question deserves full and respectful consideration You can, of course, tell me to piss off if you want.) I'm no expert on Elgar -- in fact, I have a guts-deep impression that late romantic music, and English late-romantic music in particular is way more in your wheelhouse than mine -- but for starters, nothing I knew of him up to now, or have learned this week, makes me think Elgar was all that gay. (If you know something else about this, please DO send it my way -- I want to know!) For seconds, I have probably listened to more f**king Enigma variations this week than I have to all other music by Elgar in the rest of my life, and I do this for a living. (I mean, it's surprisingly easy to function as a jazz pianist and teacher without Elgar in your life, so there's that. But still.) So: my overall impression of Variation IX is of grandeur and melancholy, with more or less elements of serenity and brightness, depending on who's playing it. And, in that regard, I think the Warsaw recording you shared above is one of the most intense and distraught versions I've heard -- although the conductor does right by the climactic moment, putting it later in the cadence than a lot of folks seem to want to do. Barenboim in Chicago was unsurprisingly "meh;" Solti in London was skipping-fast, which was super surprising (and I didn't like it, either). Stokowski's version with the Czech Philharmonic is probably the closest I heard to the Warsaw performance, and is still a little more hopeful in outlook, I think. My favorites were actually two Russian conductors' interpretations: Rozhdestvensky at the Proms several years ago, which is a standout both for the maestro's insight and because I actually just love watching him lead the orchestra, and Yuri Temirkanov's version with St Petersburg, which I think is my overall winner. Both of these last two recordings -- in addition to being complete performances so I could do a real apples-to-apples comparison of the conductors' whole outlook -- had "Nimrods" with great tempo, sensitivity, dynamic and emotional range. Rozhdestvensky brings out a sense of catharsis, with serenity and lightened resolve by the end of the variation; Temirkanov's take is a little more stoic, but brings a sense of stability: a confidence that everything is beautiful, and somehow all right. Programmatically, that seems to have been Elgar's intent for this movement, as you also pointed out in the OP. Which brings us to the next part of your question: Yeah, I'd say this is definitely a thing here, and the Jaeger dedication attached to one of the three or four most substantial and emotionally intense variations (including the composer's self-portrait at the end) clearly shows the importance of Elgar's relationship with him. My read on this movement is that it is a depiction of both the character of Jaeger, and of the role his friendship played in Elgar's life. We know that Jaeger helped Elgar get through his "Heiligenstadt Testament-moment", and resolve to continue working artistically. As I described above, I think these elements come through clearly in the writing, and in most performances -- it's only when someone decides to double-down on the hyper-romantic interpretation that the variation starts to sound really wrought. And, even acknowledging that Jaeger was almost certainly one of Elgar's most intimate friends, can we conclude that there was a romantic element to their relationship (from this music or anything else written by or about them)? I'm actually not entirely sure whether you're supposing this, or a more platonic intimacy between them -- but from your statement about "an inconvenient truth to ignore", I get the sense you believe the two were romantically involved. I wouldn't blow off the possibility, but I'm not ready to jump on that wagon. But what about this possibility? Variation 1 (for Elgar's wife) is characterized by delightful melody, warm harmonies and some really tender orchestration. From what I know, the story of Elgar's marriage to Alice is fairly compelling, and I don't believe their relationship to have been any kind of a sham. Variation 9 (for Jaeger) is already discussed -- but let's say overall is weightier, solid in character. Variation 13 (which seems to have some uncertainty surrounding its dedication, and could be for one of a few different women, including an ex-fiance, and a possible illegitimate daughter) is brooding and oblique: around three minutes of conflicted thematic and orchestral writing. Sometimes-bright, sometimes-sinister sounding, with the clarinet whipping back and forth between carefree, sad, and even spooky lines that never seem to get all the way to wherever they could be going. Whomever this movement is written for, Elgar must have had some very complicated feelings about that person. And finally, Variation 14 (the man himself) starts out marchy and even gets a little manic in a kind of weird resolutely-affirmative way. Then it unites material from Variations 9 and 1 in the uptempo, major-key, exhilarated finale. The dedication of the work is to "my friends pictured within," and is assuredly a loving depiction of each one of them, even when Elgar is teasing them.* But I do notice that the composer's picture of himself could not be complete without including both his closest friend and his wife. Now, if only I could listen to this music and not see footage from Dunkirk in the film-reel of my mind, that'd be perfect. *Except maybe for Variation 13, which is weird. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to spend some serious time getting to know music I never thought I'd find all that interesting.

Thank you; I needed both of these today, for so many reasons.

I for one am glad you did this; I'm usually there for a little bit of mystery that makes the reader pay attention, especially if it's well executed and adds depth to the story world and characters. True to your guess, I did start out reading with the notion that the Georgie character was a man. When I began to notice the "clues" you dropped -- which on second pass are abundantly clear within the 'backstory/reflection' moments of ch1 -- I initially took them for potentially serious inconsistencies, but moved on. As the clues added up, the reader begins to sense the author's intention, and once the reveal is made the impression is more an affirmation than a surprise. The overall effect, for my reading experience, was that your device caused me to think about the basis for my initial assumption, and why I would be more likely to make it for some but not other authors whose writing appears on this site. This is only the second story of yours I have looked at (the other being Church/Tradesman), so in future I think I'll definitely read with a keener eye towards how you approach characterization. Thanks for an engaging read.

Well damn, that makes one of us. . . I really want to just thoroughly heckle Rousseau on both his music and his musicology, but I'm afraid you might like him or something and (as I don't really know you) I don't want to troll you too hard. It was actually on realizing that this guy was probably way more influential, musically-speaking, than he had any right to be that I ended up tabling my project as "no longer a quick-and-simple effort." So, if you're game I will absolutely rip Rousseau in this quasi-public forum, but I also don't want to sideline the original intent of the thread. I'm equally happy to take the conversation off-thread with you and/or Lux when I get back to it after the end of semester, because there's actually stuff I want to know, not just piss and grumble about. I'll take your word; I'm afraid I'm gonna have to ride the bench for all the Gilbert and Sullivan stuff. My last experience with operetta was a 9th grade production of Iolanthe where the kid playing the Lord Chancellor came down with laryngitis in the second week and his understudy didn't know the nightmare song. I had to sing it from offstage while the poor schmuck pantomimed with a sock puppet. It was not nearly as hilarious as it sounds, but I still have the whole damn thing committed to memory 24 years later. Never again, I say. However, I can offer you some French jugglers performing a Bach prelude using early childhood classroom instruments called Boomwhackers. It IS as hilarious as it sounds, and also pretty genius, I think. Enjoy.

Hello, Lux -- I didn't want to forget to put a figurative pin in this item, as it relates to some research I tabled last spring (it's not my thesis topic) but would like to eventually get back to. Would you be able/interested to talk with me a bit about stuff more or less peripherally-related to the Rameau/Rousseau kerfuffle at some indeterminate time in the future? Probably not on this thread, of course, unless we want to torture everyone with that one sorry recording of "Devin du Village" that seems to be out there -- but still. I thought I'd ask here before pinging you with a random PM that I'm unlikely to follow up on for at least a few months. Please let me know if this is potentially in your wheelhouse. And thanks!

Thanks for bringing this back to my attention -- that is SUCH a fun song to play . . .but it's just not the same without words! Ella's interpretation is of course fantastic, (but no piano) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U2fgvXzS58. Turns out it's shockingly hard to find a good piano-vocal performance of this on youtube. Samuel Ramey's concert recording is almost inaudible, and doesn't include any video. There's a lot of mu-theater-student-recital stuff, some choral versions, and assorted other disappointing concert performances of actually quite astonishing variety. This was the best performance I saw -- and it looks like it was at the Corcoran Gallery stage in DC, but I can't find any listing for this concert. Oh well. Enjoy

. . . I can attest to that I had put off watching the History Boys film until I'd had a chance to read the play, but between the both of you, I clearly can't justify waiting any longer.

I really enjoyed reading this. It has such a different tone compared to the EPIC series (which I have only recently caught up on), but your writing voice still comes through. As usual, the dialogue is stellar -- very natural, and brings the reader right into the scene. If you write more of this story, I'll be interested to get a better feel for Masatoshi's voice -- he seems to be bilingual, and you tell us (via clear implication) that he has lived outside the US, though not for how long or how recently. At the same time, his (American?) English is entirely idiomatic, so I'm left to wonder about the sound of his words, and if he has particular rhythms to his speech that wouldn't be apparent from a single short scene. . . Anyway, well done, and thanks.

It was described thus to me by a friend -- incidentally, the same person who turned me onto the Ali Smith book I mentioned in an earlier reply, and who has repeatedly tried to get me into Philip Dick's novels, notably Man in the High Castle (ok) and Valis (incomprehensible; I'm still confused), without success. Which surprised us both, because I love Dick's short stories. That is also my sense of Banks' writing, and I didn't intend to imply otherwise in my comments about Wasp Factory. The critical discussion I found made much of the issue (some one wad wrote an entire thesis on it), and I was trying to fit those perspectives on the book into the context of what I knew of the author and his other work that I have read. Sorry if there was any confusion. I'm glad to see your impression supports Banks' sensitivity and insight to the subject -- even if he is determined to make the reader squirm all the way to understanding.

On the flip side of this, I've never read any of Banks' non-SF, though I've heard The Wasp Factory described as kind of a surreal mind-fuck that is pretty far outside the usual realm of most literary fiction (not my words, there). So I suppose the boundaries of genre ought to be at least as flexible as the boundaries of gender. A quick search turns up quite a bit of critical discussion, and even some scholarship specifically concerned with Banks' handling of gender, gender performance, and misogyny in Wasp Factory. It does seem like he walks a line, and while Banks has ultimately NOT delivered an endorsement of male chauvinism, and may possibly have intended some subversion of binary and essentialist understandings of gender, I have the sense that some faith and effort will be required from the reader in order to discern this. A trans or gender nonconforming reader might find grounds to identify with the character of Frank, but I have to wonder whether I would find that experience more upsetting or rewarding. I'd love to know your thoughts on this, and from anyone else who's read it. On the SF side, I've read most but not all of his catalogue, and have sometimes finished a book thinking "well that was fucking DARK" -- so it's probably fair to say that, ultimately, Banks is Banks, with or without the "M" in the middle. I think perhaps the scale of space opera and the availability of non-humanoid characters facilitates writing about the difficult questions and some of the darker aspects of human nature in a way that less directly challenges us. At least, I find that to be the case when I'm reading. As to the "200 hours," Banks definitely helps you out with that by stacking the action so that once you get about 40% of the way in, it's nearly impossible to stop reading until you get to the end of the book. But having done so, a nice break and a palate-cleanser are usually in order before I find myself wanting to come back for another round. I hope you enjoy Left Hand; it's a classic, as well as being one of actually rather few SF stories specifically concerned with gender and gender identify -- as opposed to just, say, using non-traditional gender constructions as a way to Other aliens, or employing sex-change as a convenient plot device creating no real meaning or effect upon a character. A little bit of poking around turns up some very interesting discussions of this online, and they point to some excellent reading choices as well. Here's one, a concise blog piece that gently points out both the power and the usual pitfalls of employing transgender tropes in speculative fiction, and gives specific examples of where and how the writer thinks various authors have been successful or failed. I personally discovered four new authors/series I would like to check out from this article, and it also confirmed my choice not to read the work of one other. I noticed the short list at the end includes the novel Triton by Samuel Delaney -- the author mentioned by jamessavik in the reply above. I've never read any of Delaney's work, so I'm grateful to james for pointing it out. See you around!

Hi, Nikatine, I'm not familiar with much trans-specific content on GA, although there's plenty of genre-fiction to be found here across the entire hard-SF to high fantasy spectrum. I can speak to a few standouts in the SFF literary canon, though. If you are already familiar with any of the titles or series below, I'd love to know what you think of them and I can perhaps recommend other stuff specifically. Here goes: Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is definitely the first thing that comes to mind. I remember being absolutely floored by that novel in highschool (it was the early 90s and there just wasn't TransANYTHING to speak of). I kept giving it to all my friends and trying to explain how they needed to understand the Gethenians in order to understand me. The world of that story, Gethen, is inhabited by people whose sex, apart from social constructions of gender, is changeable from a sort of default "neutral" to poles of male and female that manifest according to their biological/reproductive cycles. There is a human male narrator -- an alien in the Gethenian world -- who functions as a foil for the Gethenian characters, and an avatar for the reader. The linked review gives an excellent and concise discussion of the literary merits, which I have not really attended to here. Le Guin wrote this story in the 1960s and at the time it was a pretty groundbreaking examination and reflection upon sex and gender in society. Also firmly in the SF category (practically space-opera, sometimes time-of-war) are Iain M. Banks' Culture novels (not to be confused with Iain Banks, who is the same author in his non-SF persona). The humans -- or should I say post-humans -- of Culture worlds live in a society that preserves the basic constructions of sex and gender with which a contemporary Western reader would be familiar, but the future utopia is post-sexist, non-misogynistic, and generally entirely sexually liberated. The personal naming conventions used are sufficiently exotic that I have often been unsure of whether a given character is intended to be male or female until specific physical description is given. Not that this really matters, though, since bioengineering has given people the ability to change sex at will throughout their much-extended (centuries-long) lives. While this ability has not featured prominently in the plot of any of the Culture books I have read, it has definitely been mentioned in more than one novel and had some contextual significance for several characters. For bonus fun, the sentient starships -- colorfully self-named AIs, who are pretty clearly the ones really in charge of Culture society -- are tremendously entertaining characters in their own rights, and I have often found myself most looking forward to what the Steely Glint, the Fate Amenable to Change, the Problem Child, the Appeal to Reason, or the Grey Area (aka Meatfucker) would contribute to any conversation. Banks passed away a few years ago, shortly before the publication of his final Culture novel. Most of his work is now being reprinted and should be easy to find. While it is not necessary to read Culture books in order, there is some historical continuity. The first chronologically is Consider Phlebas. Though I would not specifically call it SF or fantasy, I highly recommend Ali Smith's Girl Meets Boy, a contemporary retelling of the story of Iphis from Ovid's Metamorphoses. This myth is specifically a story of gender ambiguity and transition, and reads strikingly modern even in its original telling from 2000 years ago. Smith's rendering, published in 2007, is quite fun, and while Iphis' story is a transmasculine narrative on the surface, even Ovid's original was a recognition of the flexibility and adaptability of people and society (with the aid and blessing of the gods.) Smith does not treat it solely as a story of binary gender transition. Her version is a fast read, but many-layered, and I should probably give it another look myself. Finally, I should mention the James Tiptree award on general principle. James Tiptree, Jr. was the penname of mid-20th century SF writer Alice B. Sheldon. The Tiptree award is "an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender." Unfortunately, the organization's website (linked above) is pretty shit, but the writers they recognize and those that serve as jurors and organizers are top-tier. I am certain you will find characters and stories that speak to trans experience among Tiptree honorees. I DEFINITELY read my share of cyberpunk back in the late 80s/early 90s, and Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, and Neal Stephenson are some of my very favorite authors of this SF vein. I cannot recall any trans-relevant stories, characters or themes from their work that I have read. However, I do think there's some interesting ground to be mined as to the appeal of cyberpunk worldview(s) for trans, GNC and nonbinary-identifying readers -- but this is already crazy long, so I'm happy to pursue that conversation another time, if you care to do so. So, be welcome to GA -- I'm sure you will find plenty of good reads here . And I hope that the information above is of some aid or interest to you as well. Feel free to hit me up anytime if you want to talk more about this stuff, or about other good reads (even non-SF!) on and off this site. My real wheelhouse is music and music history -- but if I don't know a thing I might want to learn it. I can at least try to point in the right direction, or boost a signal to someone else who may have the perfect answer.