Is expecting a book subtitled "Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction" to provide speculative fiction stories about genderqueer characters too much to ask for? Apparently so, if this collection is any indication. It's not that I didn't enjoy any of the stories. It's that almost none of them lived up to the book's label. (Bisexuality is not the same thing as sexual fluidity. Being transgendered is different from being genderqueer.) This is particularly frustrating because this is a co...

My flight back from Readercon was delayed by several hours, so I got to read this anthology cover to cover. I usually prefer to break up the reading of a themed anthology, but there was enough variety in this one to keep me engaged. I particularly liked the Kelley Eskridge story. I would have loved to see even more variety, both in the types of speculative fiction and in the expected breadth inherent in the "beyond binary" label. Still, taken individually, most of these stories are strong; taken...

Beyond Binary is an incredibly strong reprint anthology, showcasing tales of fluid gender and sexuality. Of the stories I'd read elsewhere, the two stand-outs were Kelly Eskridge's Eye of the Storm and Catherynne M. Valente's Palimpsest. I was delighted to see both included, particularly Eskridge's piece, as it has lingered with me since I first read it years ago, and it perfectly encapsulates the theme of the collection. The stories which were new to me that really stood out were Nalo Hopkinson...

Brit Mandelo is something of a queer genre celebrity, having served as the senior fiction editor for Strange Horizons Magazine, while also leading the discussions on Queering SFF for Tor Books. It was actually an early piece of her on Tiptree Award Winners that first brought her to my attention, and I’ve been relying on her to expand my bookshelf ever since.Beyond Binary is a collection of previously published Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction stories that I'd been looking forwa...

Really appreciate the diversity of identities on display in this anthology, as well as the varying degrees of focus the stories place on gender and sexual identity -- some stories are focused largely on identity, others treat identity as a given, only marginally relevant to the story at hand. Glad to see asexuality represented here -- in Sarah Kanning's "Sex with Ghosts" -- interestingly, both Kanning's story and Tobi Hill-Meyer's "Self-Reflection" have to do with a character encountering hersel...

Meh. A couple of good stories and quite a few that are so oblique they are almost incoherent (and I'm not interested enough to invest the time to decipher them). Starts stronger than it finishes...and if I hadn't read the title of the anthology or the introductory essay, I wouldn't have guessed the common theme.

I read this back in June but forgot to rate and review. The selections are all good to great, but I got my money's worth from Delia Sherman's "Faery Cony-Catcher" and Richard Larson's "The Ghost Party". Valente's story, "Palimpsest," was nice to see here, too, particularly since her novel of the same name often eclipses the story that was its seed. The Kelly Eskridge story was one I had not come across before, and it was wonderful, as were the Sandra McDonald and Ellen Kushner stories. Kudos to

Was thinking about adding this in my undergraduate module reading list, but I think it's too light on the speculative fiction elements and more sexuality explicit than I want to discuss with a room full of 20 years olds. Not that many actual genderfluid leads either. Like most anthologies, there were stories I enjoyed and some that didn't work for me.

I made the mistake of not looking at the publication date before checking out this collection. Not that every single queer story published before 2012 is bad, but it would have at least made me a little more prepared for how many of these stories really didn’t age well. My average rating for those stories would be a 1.76, but my overall experience with the book was so bad, that I can’t even give it the two stars that would round up to.I had seen some of the reviews saying there’s actually not a

Decent selection of stories, some that I have read before in other collections. However, I found myself confused as to why several of these stories were included as I was unable to figure out their connection to gender.

The rating is mostly because I was pretty disappointed in this book. In about 18 stories, only three or four (that I remember) had elements that I would call genderqueer. Which was a pretty big let down because the title is literally "Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction". I was also like :/// at how much sexual content there was in the book. Did I expect some? Yes, because "Sexually Fluid" is in the title. Did I expect there to be more than three* stories without se...

Overall, I really liked the anthology. There where stories I didnt like because the plot wasn't of interest to me. A good example was the pirate story. I like the idea of computer hackers as pirates but I couldn't connected with the drinking of rum as a medium to reincarnation and possession. I liked Fisherman by Nalo Hopkinson. It was grounded in a reality of experience that I believe could have existed in a different era. I also really adored Spoiling Veena! Veena knew that Vikrum was truly wh...

For a book that claims to be "beyond binary" and "genderqueer," the almost complete lack of either in this anthology is astonishing. (Doubly so since it's full of reprints.) Most stories paid lip service at best via some bisexuality (and often fleeting at that), and for a book that promised no surprise reveal of genitals as a punch line, one of the stories in fact does just that.The best thing about this book is Kelley Eskridge's "Eye of the Storm" which really is just reminding me that I've had...

I really wanted to like this, because the title describes a book that I would probably love. Sadly, the actual book doesn't live up to its billing. Most troublingly, it doesn't seem to understand what genderqueer means.As other reviewers have pointed out, there are not actually many genderqueer characters here. The editor doesn't seem to have understood that genderqueer is a gender identity . It has nothing to do with what anatomy a person does or does not have. Almost all of the transgender

The stories in this collection cover quite a range, both in terms of the non-binary representation and the sort of speculative fiction. Some stories center on gender and sexuality, but plenty don't. I appreciate that there are a fair number with happy endings, or just more hopeful narratives than usual for trans folks. For example, Sandra McDonald's "Sea of Cortez" is much less depressing than I'd expect a story about gender variance in the Navy in WWII to be, and Kelley Eskridge's "Eye of the S...

I can only agree to most of the other reviews written for this book, while the short stories per se aren't bad, they just don't tell the stories the book/anthology as a whole wants to tell - as they ate still so much within binaries instead of going beyond that. And if you are so, so much excited for the possibilities if this book...you are just going to be so much disappointed. :/

For a book called "Beyond Binary," this book was ... really binary. There were two or three stories where the narrator or main character is not assigned a gender but most are either male or female - and often it's not a particularly large component of the story if the character identifies or is identified as trans* in any way. Beyond that, I wasn't particularly impressed with any of the stories. There were a handful I enjoyed but none that really stood out to me. It was kind of a struggle to kee...

Over all, the writing throughout the book is decent, but not at all "genderqueer," "sexually fluid," or "speculative." if you're looking for that kind of thing, you won't find it here. further review as follows:warnings: transphobia, cocsa, lesbophobia, ...- trans fetishism, a misunderstanding/misrepresentation of trans experiences- there isn't a single non-binary character, only fetishised binary trans characters- calling binary trans people genderqueer or non-binary is misgendering them.- lite...

I was so excited when I first read about this book and the early reviews.But no.There are a few good pieces in here. "Eye of the Storm" by Kelley Eskridge was both amazing and mind-blowing, and made up for so much of the rest of this book. But at that point, you should probably just pick up her own personal anthology, Dangerous Space. A few of the stories toward the end were good, too, although none super stand-out.Aside from the one story above, the best thing I can say is that most of these ar...

Well, that was overwhelmingly binary.When an anthology is subtitled "Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction", I'm naturally going to go in assuming a fair number of the stories will be about genderqueer or otherwise nonbinary people, you know? But the vast majority of these stories were either about cisgender queer people (including cisgender queer people whose narratives gave no hint of them being actually sexually fluid) or about binary trans* people. And don't get me wrong, I love...