Tipping the Velvet. Fingersmith as well, but there is less of it, and it's a much darker novel.

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I've heard of that novel, and then I keep forgetting it exists. I'm fairly sure I can get it through the library. Thank you!

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If you can get your hands on the miniseries, do so.

I... .... .... yeah.

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Have you read A Door Into Shadow / The Tale of the Five? My favorite fantasy series ever.

All of the lesbian sex in it (I think) is in the form of either flashback or telling stories, and everyone does sleep with men too (bi is the cultural norm), but there's a fair amount of background lesbian pairings and she doesn't go explicit with any of the sex period. The two most important female characters had a love affair as young women and they revive it in the happy-ever-after-ending.

I feel like there should be SF books that fit your criteria without any hedging period. And yet I can't think of any.

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Thank you for the recommendation!

I feel like there should be SF books that fit your criteria without any hedging period. And yet I can't think of any.

And yet, I can name SF books where male characters have sex. Not always happily, but at least there's not the implication that, wow, women are so odd to choose women!

*bitter*

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One of the things I like best about main female character in TotF is that she's perfectly matter-of-fact about thinking that sex with women is better. :D

I scanned the LT tagmashes for books that are both "lesbian" and various subsets of SFF: here's the list that came up (Which doesn't really vary whether you look at sci-fi or fantasy.) Haven't read any of them, except a few of the graphic novels, but a few of them seem worth a look.

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See? That character attitude would be so refreshing to me. (And now I am irritated and sad that it would be so refreshing. It's not that I mind female characters being bisexual instead of lesbian, it's that I mind they 99% of the time just "happen" to decide that sex with men is better and fall in love with a man. I don't think it erodes their bisexuality; it does play into that pattern of always pairing the woman with a man, though. Meanwhile, some gay male characters are allowed to stay with their male partners).

And thanks very much for that link!

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You said "series" and "recommend." You have just caused two serious problems for me.

Michelle Martin wrote a singleton Regency, Pembroke Park, which was pretty good (though, in general, it helps if you're not really demanding about, um, historical accuracy or usage of titles when reading Michelle Martin).

MZB's (I know; I know) Renunciates subseries (I know; I know) of the Darkover novels has Magda and Camilla. Though I can't recall if they ever have sex "onscreen" or not.

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Actually, "series" is a misprint for what I meant to say (I really am tired and should go to bed), so I'm going to change it in a minute. I don't mind books without sequels.

I may be persuaded to give the MZB books another chance, just because I originally tried to read the Renunciates subseries when I had just finished trying to read The Mists of Avalon, which I loathed, and so probably didn't give them a fair chance. So thanks for the recs.

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Well, speaking as someone who read most of her books in junior high and high school, Marion Zimmer Bradley is always Marion Zimmer Bradley. :/

You've posed a surprisingly difficult problem for me. I'll see if I can think of other examples.

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I think I still might try them. I've liked a few of Bradley's books far better than they probably deserve (Stormqueen!, The Heritage of Hastur) and I always did like the Darkover setting the best of any she wrote in. Plus, Joanna Russ made The Shattered Chain actually sound interesting when she described it in an essay on feminist utopias I read not long ago.

Please do. And god, it infuriates me that this is a problem, when I can think of three gay-male-oriented SF novels (well, one SF and two fantasy) I read in the last eighteen months without trying, and many that are older. I have no idea why so many female SF authors seem content to portray gay male characters but OH LESBIANS NO.

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While I certainly would not call it good, there's a series of fantasy novels by S.M. Stirling and Shirley Meier. "Saber and Shadow" is one of two from the series that I read, and it's - readable, though definitely not great. "The Cage" is a sequel to it, and has a better cover, but a less well handled plot. I looked into the earlier books set pre-relationship, and found little of interest.

The two main women involved are lovers, and have PG-rated sex in the two books I read. Some problematic elements (cliches, one of the women has been abused, one is a giant warrior and the other is little and mageish - etc.) though I did like that the emphasis on the book was more the plot than the fact that the two of them were lovers.

According to Amazon, you can get a copy of Saber and Shadow for 16 cents. I'd buy it for that price if I needed a copy.

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I actually have read that one, and while the clichés irritate me now, I enjoyed it at the time. Thanks for mentioning it, though.

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Touch, by Gayleen Froese.

(Actually, rereading your post the lesbian sex is all off screen, so maybe not, but this is a great book that includes both canon lesbians and is a "buddy movie" with women as the buddies. And it's written by a friend of Don's.)

You can get a sense of her writing style here.

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That does sound interesting. I will probably at least look for the book in the library, and probably order it if they don't have it. Thank you!

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I think there's some in Elizabeth Lynn's The Northern Girl but I don't remember exactly; I do know the protagonist was in a relationship with an older woman. It's been a long time since I read it.

I've read about 3 of Ellen Hart's Jane Lawless mystery series, and the protagonist is a lesbian with lots of lesbian friends, and she's starting to date again after her partner died, but there hasn't been any sex yet. (I'm mainly reading the series because Jane's best friend Cordelia pretty much made my Favorite Characters Ever list instantly.)

I was going to order some lesbian romances when I got around to ordering this 365 Days of Baseball photobook I've been severely wanting, so I'll probably report back on that in a few months.

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Ooh, I have The Northern Girl on the pile of books I borrowed from my parents' local and recently enlightened library! (They had quit buying SF and fantasy for a long time, and recently started again). I know it has two other books in the series before it, but I've got them too. They just moved up the pile. Thanks!

I don't really mind a lack of onscreen and deeply detailed sex (though of course it is often a plus), but I do hunger for the acknowledgment that this character prefers women. Thank you for mentioning that series.

I'd be interested in hearing about any romances you find; thanks.

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Not sci-fi, but a lot of the books by Jeanette Winterson? Her 'Oranges are not the Only Fruit' is a classic.

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Ooh, thank you for the reminder! I'd heard that some of her novels included lesbian characters, then had someone tell me that a lot of the characters were into "lesbian chic" but not actually interested in having sex with women. (It sounds like that last person was wrong). Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a book I actually own, though, so I could easily start with that one.

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You said SF/F, but there's a horror novel called Walking Wounded. The main character is married, but bi, and ends more attached to the woman she's having an affair with.

The horror part comes from her power -- she can heal -- and what she does to her husband after she discovers he's cheating ...

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The author is Robert Devereaux.

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Thank you! I don't mind horror, and at this point I would be really interested in a bisexual woman who actually ends up with a woman.

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How strong a recommendation do you want?

Varley's Titan is the first book I remember reading in which two women have sex. (I was young enough, and lived in a conservative enough place, that I was amazed you were allowed to write such things.) Cirocco Jones is a terrific heroine, too.

But. Even at his best, Varley always wanted to explain away lesbianism as the sad result of men's violence to women. While Cirocco and Gaby don't get quite this treatment (but they are stuck a long way from other human contact, Gaby's had some brainwashing that affects her character, etc.) this idea is in full flower with the other lesbian characters in the book.

Varley's mix of insight and conservatism on sexuality would be a whole 'nother thread. It's sad, though, that my first thought was "Titan counts, but there are tons of better examples, like ... well ..." And then I had to sit and scratch my head.

Kushiel's Dart had lots of sex between women, though I couldn't finish it because there was too much Sue.

The Female Man has characters having sex, though I'm at a loss to come up with a pithy summary of such a complex book.

It's been a while since I read Sally Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground - it's set in a lesbian-separatist utopia, but I don't remember whether any of the characters actually have sex or whether you just get the too-common curtains-blowing-in-the-wind copout. An amazing book when I read it as a teenager, but I've often gone back and looked at books I read then and realized that I was providing a whole lot that wasn't on the page.

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Thank you for thinking about this! I probably will avoid the Varley, just because I do think I can find books now that are free of the "All lesbians are lesbians because men raped or abused them" shadow.

I have read Kushiel's Dart, but lost ground in the sequels and never finished the trilogy. The amount of detail spent on sex between women is miniscule compared to the amount spent on sex between men and women, though.

I have read The Female Man, and it was wonderful.

I think I saw that you can get The Wanderground as a free e-book, so I'll try that. Thank you!

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I can make a case for other things in Varley - much of his speculation about sexuality is thought-provoking and relevant today - but I wouldn't base that case on his handling of same-gender relations. (The man posits a world where sex-reassignment surgery is as convenient as getting a perm, then declares that most people are always heterosexual as defined by the body they're in. Who you're attracted to is a function of the current shape of both your genitalia.)

While my hate for Kushiel is great, I do want to give it credit for its depiction of women who can have purely sexual desires, some of which are directed towards other women. I've read about too many FF relationships which are defined as Women Understand Each Other In A Way A Man Can't, or Women Are A Welcome Break From The Male Main Event (Firefly, I'm looking at you), or whatever - where the idea that a woman can desire another woman in her own right isn't acknowledged.

Kushiel hedges a lot about this - Phèdre no PheiquePhrènche gripes about how being touched by a god means she's forced to enjoy all this hot sex, and in the 600 pages I got through she didn't display much agency. The plot was contrived so that she didn't choose all that kink. (I didn't care that she was clearly going to end up with Percival Perfectknight, since they were both wet whiny twits.) Still, the fact that the book was willing to let the heroine have satisfying sex without throwing in True Love or even its possibility as a justification ... that's just not something I see enough of.

ms_treesap mentioned one of the lesbian-lit classics. I'd add Rubyfruit Jungle, another book I was amazed existed when I found it as a teenager. (It's going to read differently now, since it broke ground for thirty-five years of lesbian and feminist literature to follow, but I still recommend it.)

On Our Backs magazine - that link is NSFW - bills itself as a lesbian sex magazine by lesbians for lesbians (though it's friendlier to bisexual women than that description might suggest). They've occasionally run SF/F themed erotic fiction over the years. Circlet Press does erotic fiction anthologies that cover a variety of orientations. There are other erotic SFF publishers out there, but I don't know as much about them.

Speaking of porn, there was a wonderful story in the xXxenophile comic about a troll princess who steals her father's treasure and rescues an enslaved human spelunker she's fallen in love with. (This sounds like a spoiler, but it's all in the first few panels. xXxenophile premises would often have been terrific SF/F stories in their own right, and they were all set up as the beginning so you could get straight to the sexual consequences.) The troll girl wants to get married in a human church and become human, despite losing her "beåutiful tåil," because her troll strength will continue increasing and endanger her human lover. But the human lover is a woman, resulting in the following exchange:

Human woman: "The church won't let women marry women. The priest won't do it."
Troll woman: "Will eat priest!"

And then there's a charming, witty, logical resolution.

Though it's porn - there's explicit sex, and nudity on every page - the story makes it clear that the two women love each other and have a committed relationship. They're not just making do until a man comes along.

I wouldn't recommend the rest of the series in the current context - in general I'd describe the book as very well-done heterosexual porn with a more-enlightened-than-usual view of FF relationships (i.e., throwaway lines about a character having two mothers). Most of the FF sex that's explicitly depicted is part of three-in-a-bed romps. I'm not criticizing it for that, but I want to make a clear distinction between stories where women having sex is the spice in a setting where heterosexuality is dominant, and stories where women having sex is central in its own right.

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