For a long time, I’ve been interested in reading fiction, preferably fantasy, by an autistic author.
The reason for this is that I want to be a writer and—I don’t know if I have autism or not—but if I, theoretically, did have autism, would people be able to tell just from my characters and writing style that I’m autistic? If I was, theoretically?
So, I want to read fantasy by an autistic author, just to see if it feels natural or different or whatever. I’m not looking for a book ‘about’ autism, just a typical book whose author happens to be autistic.
I wouldn’t feel insulted or whatever if readers could tell from my own work—if I was autistic—but I still want to see if I can…well, ‘tell’. I want to know if it is obvious or not.
by Bluemoondragon07
7 Comments
Tao lin
Have a look at Ada Hoffmann’s Autistic Book Party. They’re all fantasy or SF, and there’s a category for books by autistic authors that don’t have a major autistic character.
[https://www.ada-hoffmann.com/autistic-book-party/reviews-index/](https://www.ada-hoffmann.com/autistic-book-party/reviews-index/)
My feeling on this is that there are trends and voices that come through that are correlated with or even specific to autistic writers, but not a clear delineation.
Emma Newman is autistic. The Planetfall series is great.
There was a fantasy writer name Caiseal Mor who was very autistic. Though he had an autobiography about autism most of his literature is not. He has written several fantasy series, mostly set in ancient Ireland.
Seanan McGuire is autistic and writes multiple series as well as tie-in IP work. I particularly like the October Daye books.
And in my opinion, it’s not obvious either for her or for the other autistic authors I’ve read. I would expect someone like Temple Grandin might be more obvious but I think her books have strong biographical qualities to them, so that makes sense to me. But you’re not going to read McGuire and immediately know that she has thousands of My Little Ponies.
Martha Wells realized she was ND (though I do not believe she has specified a diagnosis) after writing the Murderbot Diaries and autistic readers kept seeing themselves represented in the main character. It’s the only non-human autistic rep (sort of rep) that I like, probably because it was accidental. She didn’t set out to portray autism as inhuman, she just wrote how she would think or feel as the character. Again though, not sure if she’s actually autistic or if she falls somewhere else under the ND umbrella.
I so understand where you’re coming from. There is no evidence online to confirm this one way or another but if Clive Barker isn’t on a spectrum I’ll eat my boot. His writing is otherworldly, his art looks like an LSD experiment (I believe his special effects in Hellraiser were a testament to that) and even though he is out and proud his female characters are beautiful and intimate in a way that makes me think this guy experiences the world just so, so differently than us neurotypical peasants.