Author Spotlight: Queer Cyberpunk Author Stefanie Carter (AKA Wayward Sparx/Fox N. Locke)
I’m an AuDHD trans femme enby (they/them) who writes queer genre fiction under the pen names Fox N. Locke and Wayward Sparx. An on again off again journalist, poet, comms professional, and amateur romancer of mech pilots.
Author Links:
Website: foxenlock.com
Bluesky: @foxenlock.bsky.social
Samples of Work: Samples for all my books can be found via my website – foxenlock.com – by clicking on the relevant book title.
For Trans_lucent click here.
Book Club/Reader Book Pitch for TRANS_LUCENT:
A collection of cyberpunk stories carving space out for Trans+ characters in near-futures ravaged by rampant capitalism, terminal environmental decline, state surveillance, poverty, and the rolling back of human rights.
Buy now from Barnes & NobleBuy now from Itch.ioBuy now from AmazonBuy now from Apple BooksWelcome to Stefanie Carter, writing as Fox N. Locke and Wayward Sparx, who is currently working on a nonfiction cyberpunk book, but who is here to talk about their Sci-Fi collection, Trans_Lucent. First of all, can you tell us what prompted the creation of a collection of stories with trans+ characters, and why pick Sci-Fi as your genre for this (instead of, say, fantasy or horror)?
Thanks for having me! I’ve loved cyberpunk almost as long as I can remember, but it was galvanised after watching The Matrix at the tender age of eight. In the aftermath, I wrote short stories that either flirted with cyberpunk themes or were out and out love letters.
It wasn’t until coming out as trans a few years ago that I started reading more trans authors and discovered a cache of incredible stories centring people like me. Aubrey Wood’s incredible Bang Bang Bodhisattva was like a lightning rod and has become one of my favourite books. I then embarked on my own trans cyberpunk story which became ‘Cumulative Realities’.
At the time, the intention was to try and get it in a magazine, but I quickly realised I had enough scattered shorts that I could redraft and refine to put a collection together. Some of them took so much rewriting they may as well have been new stories (think Ship of Theseus) while others were more effortless.
In particular was ‘Risingson’, co-written with my partner (Trans+ and disability advocacy journalist, William Elisabeth Cuthbert).
And then there’s ‘Venus as a T-Boy, Saturn as a Femme’ which started life as a novel but ended up becoming a short instead. It never occurred to me to tell these stories any other way, because cyberpunk not only provides a common language for Trans+ and queer readers, but is a perfect vehicle through which to explore transness in worlds that are becoming increasingly like our own. It’s such a great way to position allegory alongside explicit representation and get underneath big existential themes.
What sort of Trans+ rep can readers expect to find within the collection, and how did you develop these characters, were there sensitivity readers involved in the process etc?
I knew from the get-go I wanted to try and include a broad cross section of people in these stories, both in terms of gender identity but also racial backgrounds.
As an English writer, I’m also always keen to reflect the country around me. It would be so dishonest and unrealistic to not include people from Indian, Caribbean, or Eastern European backgrounds, for example.
A lot of this stems from lived experience, first and second hand. I’m trans femme and my partner is trans masc, we’re both non-binary, so it’s only natural those identities would crop up in the stories. But I wanted to reflect the wider Trans+ community as much as I can with characters whose gender expression fall outside of my own, incorporating things like neopronouns which aren’t something I personally use.
Shani, from the final story, might be my favourite character in the collection and fae’s a computer wizard with Caribbean heritage, a Brummy accent, and a love for football. All but one of the stories are set from a Trans+ perspective.
‘Progeny’ follows finance professional Alana Khoury, of Middle Eastern heritage, who grapples with reproductive rights and motherhood in a near-future where birth is strictly controlled by government programmes. The story is framed around the fallout of a terror attack committed by her progeny, who illegally left the programme, transitioned and became pregnant herself.
A lot of how I approach writing characters this far outside of my own experience is cumulative. I’ve worked with sensitivity readers on other projects, lived and worked alongside people from different backgrounds, read as much as I can, and pay attention. Some aspects are meticulously researched, finding first hand accounts, and some is approached from a position of empathy and intuition. I think belonging to any kind of minority group enables you to have a greater level of awareness for others – but by no means a full and total understanding of their lives. These are different, albeit often intersecting, experiences and backgrounds, and I’d never pretend or assume authority or total knowledge.
Do/How do these stories reflect present-day realities and anxieties for trans people and the wider queer community, and can you give some examples of these from the story premises/what inspired each story?
At its best, I think cyberpunk – and sci-fi more broadly – must reflect modern day realities and anxieties. Without, you end up with empty aesthetic and a story propelled only by superficial vibes. The stories are therefore filled with modern concerns around trans rights, bodily autonomy, and the power of community.
The most explicit here are the collection’s first and last stories. ‘Cumulative Realities’ is named after the Marsha P. Johnson quote that opens the story and is all about the importance, safety, and power of community alongside the need to preserve queer and trans art, otherwise it’ll be lost. It’s something we’re already seeing taking place as creators struggle to get their work seen and huge swathes of the internet are banning queer content on pornographic grounds. I’m trying to buy as many physical trans books as I can as part of an ongoing preservation project. There are decades of stories at risk of being lost if we don’t all try and help.
The final story, ‘Venus as a T-Boy, Saturn as a Femme’, made one reviewer so anxious they had to stop reading. But it was about an England where it’s flat-out illegal to be trans, so I knew it had to be heavy going. We’re already seeing things moving in this direction, so it wasn’t a stretch to imagine.
How does your collection approach themes of transhumanism & bodily autonomy, and within the fictional worlds of the stories, how are these aspects of selfhood developed and understood both within community contexts, and in isolation as something individual and personal?
The most explicit example of transhumanism and bodily autonomy is in ‘Risingson’ which concerns a trans masc cyborg called Calder.
As a cobbled together collection of parts, what does it mean to feel misaligned with the assigned – or remembered – gender of those parts? What does it mean to be trans when you’ve gone beyond the parameters of being human?
The scene in which Calder talks about exactly that was incredibly moving to write, beautiful and horrifying in equal measure.
Speaking of trans masc cyborgs, you should all go read Franklyn S. Newton’s Synthetic Sea.
Another story, ‘In Wait of Obsolescence’, takes a different route. Environmental disasters mean everyone is kept inside capsules 24/7 that see to all their needs. No one sees one another anymore, all communication is done through screens, the body has become a burden, and things would probably be easier if we were all digitised. Functionally, we’ve become transhuman. So, what does it mean to nurture the first flourish of one’s transness in this kind of physical isolation, to explore your gender presentation for no one else other than yourself?
How did you choose which stories to open and close the collection, and is there any thematic importance to the order, or can they be read out of sequence?
I wanted the two longest stories to bookend the collection. More than that, they’re both ultimately hopeful stories that showcase the power of community and depending on one another. They’re about survival.
Although length played a role, the sequencing is based more around emotional ups and downs, balancing the light and the dark, and being mindful of how I’m leaving the reader.
It’s a bit like an album, this is the intended way to read, but not the only. I’m happy for people to read in whatever order they like and, of course, skip over stories where most comfortable.
Finally, do you see cyberpunk as a subgenre being picked up more as a vehicle for telling these kinds of stories in recent years, and do you see its readership expanding among the trans+ and wider queer communities? What do you think the future holds for queer cyberpunk?
I don’t want to beat around the bush. Cyberpunk belongs to Trans+ people. So many people have decried the genre as dead, or passé, but they can’t see beyond the mainstream, where we keep getting derivative stories that can’t do much more than regurgitate what Gibson, Bethke, Stephenson, and Sterling et al were doing in the eighties. But look beneath the surface and there’s a vibrant world of incredible Trans+ writers, artists, game designers, and musicians making innovative, beautiful, frightening, and timely cyberpunk works. And we’ve been here creating and actively influencing cyberpunk for decades.
That’s why I’m writing an entire book about cyberpunk from a Trans+ perspective, covering the early years all the way through the thriving self-pubbed scene.
Trans in the Machine: Chronicling the New Cyberpunk Canon is the first book of its kind to tackle the topic and is due for release in 2027.
What always surprises me is how cis people assume trans art has no audience. How laughable is that? Look at the success of indie books like The Hades Calculus or Magica Riot or films like The People’s Joker to name a few. It’s no different with cyberpunk.
There’s a huge audience here hungry for more. And I genuinely think plenty of cis readers and viewers are bored with mainstream cyberpunk and want something that’s truly subversive and, frankly, more interesting. And who knows, maybe engaging with these kinds of stories is how some might realise they’re trans themselves.
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