Germantown artist and event planner Malachi Lily was one of the first to submit their incredible squish-slime smut myth The Violet Island during the open call for Venus Saturn Square, and it was through them that I learned of Other Publishing and their QPOC scifi fantasy smut anthology, FUTURE PLEASURES. They had what looked like a thoroughly enchanting release party in New York City, with all sorts of bewitching live performances. I’m sorry to have missed it but grateful to bb_basura for bringing me back a copy of the book!
I was excited to notice that this book is entirely hand cut and bound––sike, Other Publishing let me know they used Blurb. Still, as a self publisher myself and meticulous Virgo rising, I appreciate the details and clues of construction. The book is slim, floppy, and the paper inside is alllmost newsprint.
Shame as the antithesis of pleasure and potentiality and without mastering ourselves and our fears to overcome the shame that has been formulated by the powers that be of white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism, cis/heterosexuality we could never have realizations of our own powers and queer histories of resilience without queer pleasure.
There’s five stories from four contributors: Bri, Malachi, Candex, and Rin. All non-binary and a mix of Black, Taiwanese-Toisanese, and mixed Korean identities.
The smut is juicy. Takes place in spaceships and forests, between palace guards and nymphs, plant-thromorphs and galactic demon lords. I was thrilled to see these stories taking place in fantastic settings with complicated worlds and backstories we only see the tip of. It felt like I was reading fanfic for series that I have yet to familiarize myself with, and jesus do you now how long I’ve been searching for the intersections of trans-queer x scifi fantasy x smut writing? When my scifi collective METROPOLARITY started, we were the only people using the #queerscifi tag on social media, and it wasn’t even all smut either. But it wasn’t long before a hardbody shirtless white gay centric account came to dominate the tag.
Over the years I’ve watched a literary industry begin to suss out markets for trans and queer fiction, but like most of the publishing industry, what comes out is overwhelmingly white and kind of whatever in a lot of been-there-done-that ways. Rather, being OF this wave, it bothers me to know so many underground writers who just don’t get the attention or play––and that’s ALL because of the lackadaisical racism of the apparently insular publishing industry!
So, whenever I see fantastic queer smut by Black and Indigenous and People of Color, I try to buy that shit.
Shout out to you, Other Publishing!