An entertaining alternate history focussing on 2 characters who move to The Gay Republic of Berlin, 50 years after the lesbian and gay (sic) enclave founded by UN resolution in 1948 at the end of a slightly different World War 2.

We follow queer teens William and Gareth as they flee a UK even more homophobic than ours was — whereas in their reality, there was no Wolfenden Report leading to (partial) decriminalisation of sex between men in 1967 and all the queer big names fled to Berlin, in ours my first Pride was in 1994, the era of New Queer Cinema and the year Priscilla was released; in our reality the 1998 setting saw the launch of Will & Grace and plenty of queer films, even if they were indies we had to seek out in the specialist sections of large film and music stores, like Bishonen (美少年之恋), Fucking Åmål, Head On, The Opposite of Sex, Sitcom, Velvet Goldmine. (Yes, those are all recommendations.)

We also see a straight family with 2 sons: father Howard is a Gastarbeiter builder and Cissie is a housewife; they both grew up in conservative small-town Ohio with the definite implication that the sexual revolution didn’t happen and Middle America is still stuck in the rose-tinted 1950s that some Republicans think was idyllic for everyone, rather than just middle-class WASPs. In both cases we only really focus on 1 of the pair, with less attention given to their partners, which I found a little disappointing — I really enjoyed how William and Gareth settled into their own kinds of queerness in Berlin and would have liked to have seen more from Gareth’s perspective and more of Howard’s journey (and maybe more of Rob?), but I certainly wouldn’t’ve wanted to lose any of the time we spend with William and Cissie. (And I can’t believe it took me half the book to notice that the woman exploring the hidden community of trans outlaws is literally called Cissie!)

It took me a while for my pedantic arse to get into the excellent worldbuilding, which was definitely more about me than Barrett’s work — while I have a kneejerk dislike for “these kinds of people live over here and those live over there”, the rationale for doing so in Gay Berlin (with districts like Twinkstadt, Paw and Diesel) certainly makes sense in-world. After a moment to get used it, I also really enjoyed the increasing use of Polari, which also benefits from a very detailed glossary at the end (less obvious in an ebook until you get to it, frustratingly) and Barrett adds some interesting and well-thought-through expansions for a language still extant in their world.

As with all science fiction, the novel is a vehicle for exploring a contemporary problem through the lens of analogy; the analogy is pretty direct here and there are 2 related themes being reviewed in this regard. Despite the setting being the literal opposite of assimilationist gays, the Gay Republic polices a socially-conservative view of sexual orientation and gender, with the same kind of “respectability politics” that has plagued queer discourse for several years. In our world that has looked like a focus on blending in with the cis-hetero-patriarchy, such as equal marriage and adoption rights, and increased policing of deviance, such as “no kink at Pride”, “drag shows are indecent” and the increasingly fascist-connected transphobia so ubiquitous in British discourse. That policing of deviance is overt and explicit in Gay Berlin, with citizenship only available to same-sex-married couples; bisexuality and polyamory are both forbidden. Even the spartan accommodation offered to straight Gastarbeiter are nicer than the slums to which trans and non-binary residents are banished. I really liked that polyamory, transness and the queering of gender expression being favourably portrayed against the cryptofascist “respectability politics”.

The main story background, beyond the specifics of William and Cissie’s own arcs, was relatively straightforward but well-composed and all-in-all this was an entertaining read — and, having spent a lot of time reading alternate histories a little while back, it was great to read one that was not just queer-inclusive (as [a:SM Stirling|14002]’s Emberverse was) but queer-centred. I’ll have to keep an eye out for more of Barrett’s work.