Introduction: BDSM + SF&F = Love

Abstract

This book is about an alternative sexuality known as BDSM and an alternative narrative genre called science fiction and fantasy (SF&F). It is also about the decades-long love affair between that sexuality and that genre. This love affair had certainly begun by the 1940s; William Moulton Marston’s “Golden Age” Wonder Woman comics prove that much. However, this love remained largely secret and closeted during the culturally conservative 1940s and 1950s. The love between BDSM and SF&F began to blossom in the 1960s and 1970s, initially in the work of brave pioneers such as Samuel R. Delany and James Tiptree, Jr. By the mid-1980s, the broader American culture was beginning to embrace (or at least tolerate) BDSM, which meant that SF&F could celebrate its love for BDSM more openly. It has done so ever since. For the past 70 years, BDSM and SF&F have been expressing their love for one another. Since they “came out” in the mid-1980s, they have been doing so more openly and directly. By now, their love is mature and secure, as are the expressions of that love.