This is going to be an angry column.
So, I don’t know if any of you remember that National Review article complaining about the Bechdel Test and comparing the representation of women in movies to cowboys. I won’t link to it. You can find it if you want to, but it doesn’t really deserve the air. I will, however, include Genevieve Valentine’s tweet (below) with a screencap of some of this rank nonsense.
https://twitter.com/GLValentine/status/884545178262007808
In the course of complaining that women complain too much about not being represented, the author also erases the current flourishing crop of authors WHO AREN’T MEN writing science fiction and fantasy.
My language may get a little heated. Fair warning.
This kind of erasure is old hat. This article came in the same week that Vice, tweeting about the potential television development of award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor’s award-winning novel Who Fears Death, couldn’t even be bothered to use her name in the tweet. (They in fact appeared to have deliberately cropped it out on the book cover, too.)
Wow, these people have even removed my NAME from my novel's cover in the tweet. Woooooooow, mschew.
. They don't even know details. https://t.co/HacaZKMRQi
— Nnedi Okorafor, PhD
(@Nnedi) July 11, 2017
Let’s get real, people. We constantly face the need to push back against the perpetual rewriting of literary history. (And indeed of history in general.) People are forever “forgetting” the achievements and even the existence of black women and queer women, people of colour and trans people, disabled people and nonbinary people and people who are all these things at once. (The author of that ridiculous National Review article ignored the existence of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, both written by white women who present as cis and straight.) It is really difficult to do your job while also all the time having to resist being rendered invisible, being written out.
I don’t follow best-of lists the way I used to, but Twitter user Sandstone has a thread on her worries for the future of discoverability for writers who aren’t men. Spoiler: without constant pushback, there’s probably going to continue to be a problem. It’s a self-reinforcing issue, a feedback cycle. It takes work to break.
Anyways, my point (so far as I have one) is that I worry that we're heading for unprecedented discoverability issues for SFF not by men :/
— Sandstone (@quartzen) July 11, 2017
My entire critical career, it feels, has been pushing back against the erasure of women’s voices and women’s work. And while I’m really glad to be writing Sleeps With Monsters for Tor.com, keeping on top of all the new books published by people who aren’t men—while also trying to keep the history of women in SFF in mind—is more than any single human can manage.
This erasure shit is old, guys, and I’m thirty-one years old and already tired of it.
What can we do about this? (Assuming you care, and you’ve read this far, so I hope you do.) Look, you know, I don’t actually know how to make change happen on a larger, cultural scale. All I’ve got are the things I’ve been doing all along: reading women, pushing back against erasure as much as possible, valuing women’s voices and the voices of nonbinary people too.
It’s a long slow slog, full of people who keep trying to tell you that this doesn’t matter—that women’s voices of all sorts are valued equally with men’s, that it’s about talent when they don’t make best-of lists rather than a dozen and a half social and cultural reasons to do with bias—and it hurts. It hurts to always worry that you’re not doing enough, that you can’t keep up. It hurts to know that this shit keeps happening.
If only women wrote really awesome science fiction and fantasy novels that could be adapted for film and television! If only.
There are a dozen, two dozen, half a hundred, novels that I’d love to see adapted that wouldn’t pose significant stylistic or technical problems with the adaptation. KB Wagers’ Behind the Throne and April Daniels’ Dreadnought, Ruthanna Emrys’s Winter Tide and Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory, Cassandra Khaw’s Food of the Gods or Michelle Sagara’s Chronicles of Elantra, Hillary Monahan’s Snake Eyes, Ellen Kushner’s Serial Box multi-author serial Tremontaine or Robyn Bennis’ The Guns Above—and these are just the most recent possibilities that immediately spring to mind. There are so many. Not counting the ones already in some kind of development, like Okorafor’s, or V.E. Schwab’s.
There’s a deep bench here, is what I’m saying. Stop pretending that we can’t field a team.
Liz Bourke is a cranky queer person who reads books. She holds a Ph.D in Classics from Trinity College, Dublin. Her first book, Sleeping With Monsters, a collection of reviews and criticism, is out now from Aqueduct Press. Find her at her blog, where she’s been known to talk about even more books thanks to her Patreon supporters. Or find her at her Twitter. She supports the work of the Irish Refugee Council and the Abortion Rights Campaign
My personal experience is the SF and Fantasy shelves of your average bookstore is FULL of women writers. But do you really want Hollywood messing with them?
Bujold, Bear, Czernida, Huff, Lackey, Jemisin, Kowal, McGuire and that’s only from my decidedly shallow library.
And yet… at this same moment I feel like we’re in a golden age of women SF writers (there’s always been more representation in fantasy, with SF having the ‘hidden’ CL, CJ, Andre, and James among the rare Kate, Anne and Ursula).
The authors I’ve started reading in the last couple years include Ann Leckie, Johanna Sinisalo, Nnedi Okorafor, N.K. Jemisin, Charlie Jane Anders, Emily St. John Mandel, balanced on the y chromosome with just Matt Ruff (although my “auto-buy” list of authors still includes a lot more dudes).
Is more work needed? Yes. But I’m not having any trouble finding women writing SF — I just have to open up the Hugo or Locus nominees list.
I have quite a few books by women authors in my scifi and fantasy collection. I pretty much grew up on Tamora Pierce’s small quartet and wild magic books. Also Trudi Canavan has some excellent books! Both of these series and worlds would make amazing shows and movies if done correctly.
I didn’t realize this was a problem until I looked at my copy of “Frankenstein” and saw that someone had changed the first name of the author to Percy!
Dang!
I’m reading through the SFMistressworks list over at worldswithoutend.com, and I have been shocked to see how many of these books are out of print, and have been for ages. I’m trying to collect them, which in the age of the internet, is pretty easy. This is…telling.
Which bookstores is that idiot going to????? *shakes head*
Thank you for not linking directly to it. Does not deserve the hits….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke) is one of my top 3 books of this century. That one book managed to get its own BBC mini-series, but they made a hash of it.
Mic Drop!
Thank you for sharing this,. Liz. I can only but try and do better with which authors I pick to read, every time I pick up a new book.
This is still a studio problem. Full stop.
There have been, and will continue to be, financially successful women writers in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Studios simply choose to ignore them.
In fact, the first Star Trek non-movie novel to make the New York Times Bestseller List was “Yesterday’s Son” by Ann C. Crispin (though it is not lost on me that she had to publish as AC Crispin). Her “Starbridge” series was an indie commercial success. I would add that series to the list of easily adaptable material.
And when women’s writing gets adapted . . . adapters still erase. Even leaving out one speech erases the most important parts of the character.
This isn’t sci-fi or fantasy, but I remember being irritated (ok, I’m still irritated) that the adapter of the most recent version of A Raisin in the Sun omitted Beneatha’s speech about why she wants to go into medicine. That speech was the key to her character, and left her being seen as the flighty, flit-from-interest-to-interest character people see her as, and Joseph is not the exception; he comes off as being condescending, because he’s older than she is, which does not excuse his condescension. And George Murchison sees her as arm candy (and he also has a stupid but typical attitude to higher education: he doesn’t realize that–*gasp*–a degree should actually help you get work!!!)
I could easily fill my entire SFF stack at work with women authors who are currently in print. And if I included YA (which, btw, many women SF writers are now writing), at least two more stacks. And for the love of avocados, someone please option Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes for a movie or tv series – it’s just begging to be on the big or small screen.
The original cowboy article is complete and utter tosh.
stubble: Indeed. I mean, these are the same studios who are justifying not doing a female superhero movie because of Catwoman and Elektra, which are now over a decade old, and ignoring The Hunger Games, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and now, of course, Wonder Woman. Idiots.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I don’t think we can do anything about the deliberately clueless or dismissive. We can only find outlets to speak our truth.
In the mid-Eighties, women mystery writers decided to do something about the lack of award nominations and reviews of women writers so they formed the Sisters in Crime organization. They proved their assertions by doing the stats of female versus male reviews, etc., and the results were appalling. They also did massive promotion together.
Very slowly things began to change, and readers became aware of the great female content to the extent that women writers and female protags took over the market, and some of those male writers had to write female protags to keep readership.
I highly recommend reading SinC’s history.
http://www.sistersincrime.org/page/Mission
Whether this strategy would work in today’s world of the Internet, I don’t know.
Hey, Lena, I’ve also been reading my way through the SFMistressworks list! I even named my kitten Minh after the cats (and everything else) in Black Wine.
Unfortunately both my local Waterstones contribute to erasing science fiction by women. I can find Fantasy all right but the science fiction seems to be book by Joanna Russ I already have, book by UK Le Guin I already have, trilogy by Ann Leckie I already have, and maybe one other book that I immediately seize upon but which is never reordered. Bah.
I’m twice your age and “tired” is not even the word for it. I wrote an article very like this one thirty years ago. That’s when fantasy was fluffy girl stuff and science fiction was hard and manly. I still have my pink “FFW” convention button. My generation of women authors was Smurfetted (Bujold) and otherwise erased, and come the ‘teens the articles were all, “Women never wrote this before and SUDDENLY! Here they all are!”
WE. WERE. HERE. BEFORE. YOU. WERE. BORN. We have always been here. We were never not here.
Try being not-young AND not-male AND not-Smurfette. We fight this battle every day, week, month, year. All we can do is keep pushing. The pushback is ferocious but inch by inch, author by author, award nom by award nom, it works.This years’s Neb and Hugo slates warm my heart. We fought for that, and we won’t stop fighting. The genre can only get better, the more voices are heard.
Someone has already pointed out that women have been writing science fiction since its inception (Mary Shelley). Women were a minority during the “golden age” of science fiction (1938-1946), but they were certainly there (Leigh Brackett). However, by the 1970s, speculative fiction written by women was plentiful (by such authors as Ursula LeGuin, CJ Cherryh, James Tiptree Jr.[Alice Sheldon], Marion Zimmer Bradley, etc.). As many commenters have pointed out, there are many, many contemporary women science fiction writers to choose from. N.K. Jemison and Ann Leckie are both recent Hugo award winners. And that doesn’t even include women fantasy writers. I’d be curious to see the gender breakdown of SFWA membership. I would guess women aren’t even a minority anymore. Anyone who tries to argue that women don’t write science fiction, or don’t write good science fiction, is not very widely read in the genre.
I’m going to be honest here when I was done reading this I looked at my bookshelves and found that I have a lack of Female Authors in SF/F. I mean I’ve read books by V.E. Schwab, Robin Hobb, N.K. Jemisin, Marie Lu, and a few others, but I have sorely lacked into reading books by female authors and it makes me ashamed of not doing so.
capriole raises an excellent, and incredibly depressing, point: This isn’t new. I remember reading articles just like that idiotic National Review piece when I first started in the industry 25 years ago and was reviewing SF/F for Publishers Weekly (and more than half of what came in for review had a female byline). It was nonsense in 1990 and it’s nonsense now.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I honestly didn’t realize this was a thing people thought until I saw that article and the subsequent uproar on Twitter (not that I’m suprirsed – it just had never occurred to me before). About 95% of the books I’ve read so far in 2017 fall into the SFFH category and so far less than 20% of the authors were male, which means over 80% have either been women or NB authors. So I’m just standing here very bemused because what actually are people talking about? WHAT. ACTUALLY. ARE. PEOPLE. TALKING. ABOUT. I can’t even walk around my house without tripping over a SFFH book written by a woman or NB author.
My way of combatting this is obviously raising a stink when people say something this blatantly ignorant, but also financially supporting women and NB authors currently writing through book sales and Patreon, recommending them to library for purchase, recommending them whenever someone is looking for something to read, etc. All these little acts can add up and get more books by women and NB authors into the hands of people who might not have sought them out otherwise.
I recently saw a post on Twitter that said to pick one book that has less than 50 reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. and make it your mission to support that book until it hits 50, which is something that I’m adopting going forward as a method to spread great books by authors who don’t get the advertising budget of the Orson Scott Cards and Brandon Sandersons of the world.
Almost scared to comment on this, but here goes…
First off, I agree that everyone should have an equal shot at telling their stories, and that authorial excellence should be recognized regardless of the shape or colour of the body that houses said author’s brain. Vice blundered badly with their announcement – GRRM didn’t write the book in question, Ms. (Dr.?) Okorafor did, and she deserved top billing.
I read a lot of SFF, and it just so happens that much of what I enjoy is written by women: Lois McMaster Bujold, Ann Leckie, Joan Vinge, Elizabeth Moon (“The Deeds of Paksennarion” cycle would make a great movie, too), Barbara Hambly, Martha Wells, Tanya Huff… all well-reviewed and mainstream, I think, and all authors whose work I tend to admire. If anyone dares to make the argument that there are “no good women authors” then I’m happy to engage in troll-stomping. With my examples being just the tip of the iceberg, it’s not even hard. I certainly recommend the heck out of these folks whenever anyone asks.
That said, I don’t do a lot of research on authors, so in most cases I have no idea what their backgrounds are or what they personally believe to be true. I don’t think I should be required to care, though, should I? The relationship between an author and a reader is transactional – they write a story, I buy and read the story. There’s no personal relationship there. I get to enjoy or be challenged by their words and they get to enjoy a (hopefully) fair chunk of what I paid for their manuscript, but we’re not going out drinking or helping each other move apartments afterwards.
I “vote” for work that I enjoy by paying for it and recommending it when I can. Is that enough? Should the average content consumer be expected to do any more?
If your answer is “Yes, you should!” then I guess my question to you is “Okay… what?” The notion of vetting authors personal lives for acceptable levels of deviation from some societal norm before I’ll read their work makes me uncomfortable, and it also seems like a lot to ask of somebody who just wants to enjoy a good book. Or am I being too lazy? Or privileged?
gherkino, I get your point, but the problem is that studios prevent us from “voting” for female-driven and female-lead works with our dollars. For every failed Electra or Catwoman, there are a dozen failed male-centric SFF films. In many cases, those male-centric properties are given chance (after chance, after chance) to “reboot” their franchise, while the *idea* of a female-centric property is panned with the oft-used excuse, “There is no market.”
So, while your point philosophically is sound, its practice within the open market is woefully flawed.
Man, I’d LOVE to see Ancillary Justice as a film. (Also any of Jemisin’s stuff)
Women have been the top selling authors for centuries. You want to talk erasure, they were deliberately left out of history and print, belittled and demeaned by their fellow authors for the past 500 years. Popularity is no assurance of posterity.
Great article, and thank you so much for writing it. Anyone who says they can’t find female/NB SFF authors in a bookstore (or even an online store) is just being deliberately obtuse.
My knee jerk reaction is that the problem is in movies, not publishing. My perception is the democratisation of publishing has come at the expense of the the gatekeepers. To write only requires one person. It’s easier with a support network, but you can do it. Once a story is finished is when the gatekeepers get a chance to veto. Agents, publishers, marketers, wholesale book buyers (for chain stores, etc), reviewers; I’m probably missing some, never having dared (so far) present my work for refusal. From my perspective, the marketplace has fragmented, with the smaller publishers more willing to take risks than the old monoliths that prefer cis het white males. Possibly because the gatekeepers are less likely to be cis het white males. Digital publishing has broadened that trend, meaning what was once a vanity project could potentially find a paying audience, not just the friends and family you burden with the manuscript.
Contrast this with the movie industry. Risk adverse monoliths dominated by cis het white males in turn dominate the industry. These gatekeepers stand in the way before you even start making your movie. Making the movie requires a team effort, making a coherent result harder to achieve. Many of your team are likely to have their own agents, who in turn act as gatekeepers. Then, if you actually finish a movie, you must face the gatekeepers in marketing (for every Wonder Woman we’re forced to actively seek out due to mid-marketing, how many films do we miss because we don’t even know to look?), distributors, the buyers for the cinema chains (who determine how many screens it’s shown on), reviewers; again I’m sure there’s gatekeepers I’ve missed from not being involved in the process. Unlike publishing, it seems to me that movies haven’t been subject to the same democraticisation that books have. Sure you hear about films “finding their audience” once they start streaming online, but when was that something other than a studio film?
crowdsourcing at one point looked like it might break the logjam the financing system for films represents; but it somehow hasn’t had that affect.
Honestly not got an answer, other than supporting half-decent films when they come along by seeing them (and sometimes actively seeking them out) in the cinema.
I can’t suggest trying to make films, given how stressful making them seems to be…
This looks more like a case of people not knowing what they’re talking about, rather than a deliberate attempt to exclude female authors. It’s the type same thing we saw when people who aren’t familiar with the genre piled on Game of Thrones for depicting a violent, misogynist society in Westeros. It reminds me of the lawyers and activists who tried to portray video games as evil and violent without actually knowing anything about them.
It’s easy to find enough facts to make the National Review piece look silly and out of touch. It’s what I hope the publication’s editors would have done. My shelves are full of great books by talented authors, female and male.
Stubble, I think we mostly agree? I wasn’t trying to defend the status quo of tired reboots and carbon-copy sequels. Even arguably decent ones, like 007 or Spiderman, are mostly tapped out in my opinion, and I think we’ve had enough to last us a while. They’re fun, occasionally, but necessary? Not so much. Groundbreaking? Really not. There are other lands that could be explored.
As much as I’d love to help greenlight a major film or nurture a budding author, that’s way outside my capabilities, so what I was trying to ask was an honest question: As an (admittedly lazy) consumer of entertainment in, as you say, an open market where I sit at the tail end of every production chain, what can I do to help even the playing field?
In Mexico, me and a bunch of people have been fighting to bring Elena Garro’s work into focus. She’s the best writer Mexico has ever had, but she’s a woman and nobody cares. Gabriel García Márquez even plagiarized several parts and ideas from her first novel, Recollections of things to come (written a decade before magic realism was invented; except that, well, Elena Garro was talking abou magic realism a decade before it was invented), but Márquez is a man and a woman can’t oppose a man… well, she tried to oppose Mexican patriarchy and the goverments, because she was a feminist and pro-laborer activist, and she was tried to get murdered. She left Mexico and went to Spain and France, whe she lives for several decades befor returning Mexico, poor and ill, to die.
It’s not easy to find her works in translation, but it’s worth a try.
This happens in literature in general. There has been a major effort expand the literary canon beyond cis het white men, but it’s slow going. Pick up any Norton Anthology (the major literature anthology for college and some high school English students) and you’ll still see a preponderance of cis het white men in the table of contents.
I remember being in a graduate course on Transatlantic Modernism and giving a class presentation on some female modernist poets to counter all the time we’d spent discussing the male modernists. My (white male) professor basically dismissed my discussion of Amy Lowell, Gertrude Stein, and a few other women, saying, “We need to consider quality of writing and these women’s work doesn’t measure up to T. S. Eliot’s.” Not only is this a terribly subjective statement, it’s the exact same thing I hear over and over and OVER as a “rationale” for erasing women’s writing. If ONLY a woman could write as well as a man, we’d pay more attention to women writers! It’s not our fault for directing our attention and critiques towards men – it’s *women’s* fault for not being as good! *SIGH*
I teach English at the college level and I periodically teach a class on Science Fiction. One thing I do in that class (well, in all my classes actually, but I feel like the erasure of women is especially egregious in SF) is to deliberately assign works by women. We always start the semester with “Frankenstein” and you might be astounded by how many students, even SF fans, just don’t know that the first modern SF novel was written by a woman! Octavia Butler and Caitlin R. Kiernan are permanent entries on my class reading list. I’m teaching the class again this fall, and I’m going to spend some time during the rest of the summer checking out some more contemporary SF (my personal reading list has gotten a little dated recently) by women that I can assign as well.
PS: I just read Smith’s follow-up to the original article and I do NOT recommend. It’s directed at the criticism the original article attracted and is snarky (not in a good way), aggressive, defensive, belittling, and even more “man-splainy” than the original article, if possible.
It’s not going to happen. Because we are not going to let women authors be erased. I just did a quick, totally non-scientific poll of the books in my SFF section (I own a bookstore, these are the books I sell) and two thirds of all my titles are by women. Most of my customers are women. Every day I go out there on the floor and work, I handsell, I read and I buy. I am going to keep whispering in the ears of my customers, I am going to keep offering women authors, I am going to keep buying and selling the books that I love and I read and by all the gods, I am not going to let women authors be erased.
http://www.tor.com/2010/12/13/how-to-suppress-womens-writing-by-joanna-russ/
As it happens, every two weeks I post to my site a list of twenty core (subgenre here) speculative fiction works every true SF fan should have on their shelves, chosen entirely on the basis of merit and significance to the field. I have been astounded at the diligence people have demonstrated in policing the gender balance of those lists. Curiously they only do this on the odd occasion when works by women outnumber works by men.
I noticed the steadfast effort in the 1980s to consign the women SF writers of the 1960s and 1970s to the memory bucket because I lived through it but I was surprised — why, I don’t know — to discover there was a similar effort to delete women writers from the magazines and then history in the 1930s and 1940s.
gherkino, I did believe that you were asking an honest question. If my tone seemed combative in any way, it was not my intention. I’ll do better.
I agree that we seem to be circling the same conclusions, that within the structure of our current society, we have limited options to combat institutional misogyny. The National Review article is a product of that systemic oppression of women creators. So, at the risk of sounding like any kind of authority on the topic, here are some of my personal thoughts/beliefs on how consumers like us can help.
The simplest first step (of many) is don’t “buy their product”. Like Keith stated earlier, “Thank you for not linking directly to it. Does not deserve the hits…” Don’t buy their magazine. If you visit their site, use an aggressive ad-blocker.
A simple second step, that you are already demonstrating today, is go to publisher sites like Tor and participate in the community. Follow women authors through their social media. Most authors do pre-order campaigns, so buy their books then (it arguably helps authors get on best seller lists). Write positive reviews on your own social media, and encourage your friends to do the same.
A not-quite as simple third step is use whatever privilege you possess to defend those that don’t share in that privilege. This step is the most difficult to do online, but it can be done. In my case, as a male, I should re-enforce and encourage the viewpoint of women participants. It gets really difficult in cases like this post, as *I* shouldn’t be the one to say how I should re-enforce and encourage. My voice should not be the first or the loudest. And if I make a mistake, especially if a woman calls me on my privilege, I genuinely apologize, thank them for their patience with me, self-evaluate how I could have done better, and do better. Sometimes the most powerful thing a guy like me can do is show up and shut up.
And the one that I have the hardest time remembering myself is remain positive. Enjoy the fiction that makes you happy, even if it is male-centric. Share that happiness with others. Never question someone else’s love for a fandom, especially one that you share. Finally, welcome those who are not the target audience with warm enthusiasm.
I see a number of people mentioning Shelley as the mother of science fiction — but let us not forget Lady Margaret Cavendish, whose Blazing World is often given the accolade of first modern science fiction novel.
@gherkino – I want you think about the bit where you wrote “The notion of vetting authors personal lives for acceptable levels of deviation from some societal norm before I’ll read their work makes me uncomfortable, and it also seems like a lot to ask of somebody who just wants to enjoy a good book.”
Women make up more than half the world’s population. We don’t “deviate from the societal norm”, a line up of authors or artists or any profession that includes only men is a deviation from reality. People read women’s work all the time and then forget. I bet you anything the person who wrote that NY Mag article read the Harry Potter books at some point. The problem isn’t that there aren’t enough women writing SF/F, it’s people not wanting to give credit to them.
Sometimes it seems we as fans make too much of authors and their personalities. I wouldn’t advocate something like Barthes’ “death of the author” or Derrida’s “there is only text.” Those French critical fads faded decades ago.
But maybe we need something similar in fandom. I wish I could hear of a story and decide whether to read it simply by the description. Why does the author’s identity have to be weighed in? All I would need is a marker to identify similar work by the same author.
Some of what gets published, or made into films, may be art, but this is still a commercial enterprise where it seems we need to know details about the private lives of those who produce our entertainment.
I saw this article (I think in Ann Leckie’s twitter feed) a few days ago, and my response was to stare incredulously at my monitor for ten seconds.
There are tons of great female SF/F authors! I’d even say that most of the best ones currently writing are women.
BRB, peering at bookshelves…
Ann Leckie, Yoon Ha Lee, Lois McMaster Bujold, John Scalzi, Sylvain Neuvel, Ada Palmer, Trudi Canavan, Katherine Addison, Brandon Sanderson, C. J. Cherryh, Ben Aaronovitch, Anna Smith Spark…
Yeah, in my personal ‘best authors’ set, we’ve got seven women and five men. And it might well skew more towards women if I started including authors who aren’t currently writing (or at least aren’t writing enough to show up in brick-and-mortar stores).
So yeah, I don’t know what kind of crap bookstore that guy is going to.
@35 uckelwoman
Wow, I’d never heard of that! I always maintained that Voltaire’s Micromégas was the first sci-fi novel, but 1666 beats out 1752 handily!
This article reminded me of a group of participants in the Women’s March dressed in Edwardian clothes with a sign that said “Same Sh*t, Different Century.” Some of us, me included, have been pushing back so long we’ve developed a lean. Nevertheless, we persist.
@@@@@stubble
Which makes it rather bitterly ironic that a lot of the best performing science fiction or fantasy films of the last few years have been female led with Wonder Woman being the big example (especially compared to the other DCEU films).
teg
Anne McCaffrey : Pern and/or the Crystal singer trilogy
Liz Williams: Inspector Chen series [I can imagine these produced in anime style film]
Ursula Le Guin: Lathe of Heaven [done] ; now let’s have an Earthsea saga done properly!
Robin Hobb: The Fool saga or the Soldier Son trilogy, please
Flicker, good catch on my non-specific writing. Women self-evidently don’t deviate from a societal norm, and I didn’t intend to include women in that thought-stream. At 50%+ of the population they pretty much define some flavour of “norm”. What I was attempting to reference were other writers (e.g. indigenous writers, LGBTQ+, etc.) who and have some difficulty being heard. That discussion might be off-topic for this thread.
As someone who is a good twenty years older than Ms. Burke, I understand her frustration, in spades. Especially, as many others have pointed out, women have been writing SFF since the beginning. We just have to keep pointing it out, to quote Tor.com “NEVERTHELESS, SHE PERSISTED.”
This is sad. :( However, I see a tendency – men talk about men characters and writers, women – about women characters and writers, and in general English speakers talk about English speakering characters and writers, Mexicans – about Mexican characters and writers, etc. I am simplifying of course, but this seems to be the dominant trend. And it may not be all bad – this probably has something to do with the old idea that people read to discover something about themselves.
Perhaps, the editors of tor.com can make something to break this tendency, e.g. start a column where they invite people to talk about what they like in characters or writers who are different than themselves in some important aspect – it may be language, gender, age, politics, whatever.
I am sure it won’t be easy to find contributors, but it may help to span some bridges.
Like so many have said already it’s movie production problem not publication. I’m a white, straight dude, so maybe I’m not allowed to make the call but seems like to me that the Sci-fi/fantasy community aka Geeks, seem to be a fairly diverse crowd -well now that I think about it, I have heard some pretty disgusting stories of racist and sexist behavior at some of the cons too, so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.
But we’re talking about the same companies that are still white-washing movies based on Asian Manga books.
@eteronautics: I’ve got a long train ride coming up tomorrow and I just downloaded Elena Garro’s “Recollections of Things to Come” in English (translated by Ruth L. C. Simms). I can’t wait to read it!
@keiteag: You go! :)
@stubble: I agree with you 100%. I’m a member of various activist organizations and one thing they emphasize is to try to create change on whatever level is realistic for you, even if that’s a very local level. Those of us who teach can put more SF and lit. in general by women on our class readings lists. Those of us who work in libraries or bookstores (like Keiteag) can promote and recommend books by women. Heck, even telling a friend about a great SF book by a female author and tweeting about it and/or posting it on Facebook can make a difference.
@uckelwoman: Thanks for reminding me of “The Blazing World!” I think it gets overlooked because “Frankenstein” is so iconic and more “accessible.” However, I’ll be sure to tell my SF students about “The Blazing World” this fall and maybe even assign an excerpt from it.
@Sunspear: You ask why the “author’s identity needs to be weighed in.” I don’t think anyone is advocating that we start reading badly-written or boring stories based on who wrote them. Certainly if I pick up a book that I don’t enjoy, I am not going to continue reading it, no matter who wrote it. However, representation is important. If all you read is literature by cis het white guys, you are going to internalize (1) whatever baggage, ideologies, prejudices, etc. these writers have included in their work as a result of their identity, as well as (2) the potentiality that it’s not possible for someone who *isn’t* a cis het white guy to write effectively and interestingly. I don’t mean to offend you, but the argument that “the author’s identity shouldn’t matter that much,” to me, comes perilously close to the dismissive “I just want to read good literature – if women wrote good literature, I’d read it.”
@elhersomo: As a Queer woman who has been a member of “geek culture” in one way or another for most of her life, I can say from personal experience that there are still corners of geekdom that are very inclusive and accepting. However, “geek culture” is rapidly becoming mainstream and as such I am increasingly seeing bigoted mainstream attitudes about sex, gender, race, culture, sexual orientation, personal identity, etc. appearing in geek culture. I’ve personally been insulted many times by self-professed male geeks because of my physical appearance, my choice of fandoms, whether or not I am a “real” geek, my focus on female- and Queer-friendly spaces and fandoms, etc. Sometimes my opinions and participation arejust dismissed out of hand because, as a “girl,” I couldn’t possibly be interested in this stuff. So yeah, it’s an ongoing problem.
I think the discussion of racial/cultural erasure may be outside the scope of this discussion, but that is a MAJOR problem as well. Hence “intersectional feminism:” the erasure of women in general is intimately linked to the erasure of Queer and non-white people.
Yeah, that National Review article is awful. I’m mostly mad at the line about Tolkien. Keep him out of this. Tolkien did not share that author’s attitude. He might have been cranky about a lot of things, and would probably be appalled at what some have done with the genre he’s inspired, but I also think he’d love a lot of it, and especially those who participated in it. I think he’d have been surprised, and then delighted, to find so many women involved.
And on a personal note, I love that my first real introduction to fantasy fiction came from the labor of love from both a woman and a man. You rock, Weis and Hickman!
jaimew: I don’t know how practical this would be, but what if you assigned some short stories to your students and asked them who wrote a particular story. You may be surprised at the assumptions that arise about the authors. Deconstructionism may be ultimately a dead end, but I had some fun with it in school.
” If all you read is literature by cis het white guys, you are going to internalize (1) whatever baggage, ideologies, prejudices, etc. these writers have included in their work as a result of their identity, as well as (2) the potentiality that it’s not possible for someone who *isn’t* a cis het white guy to write effectively and interestingly.”
My personal selection mechanism happens to be ideology. We all make choices on what to read. There’s simply not enough time to read all I want to read, until the day we download texts directly to our brains. Ideology is not exclusive to either sex, so an author’s gender matters little. If they express right of center views, I avoid them.
As to (2), I would never do that. The past couple years have shown that genre readers don’t like an aggressive political agenda shoved on them. Look at the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. There’s lots of recognition there.
It’s strange that we’re having this discussion at a time when Wonder Woman is a huge success and a female Doctor was just cast, both of which I’ve wanted a long time. (Compare Guardian and Daily Mail reactions to Jodie Whittaker to see the ideological divide.)
I may not have expressed it well, but my original question was meant to address the way we market authors. Also how rapacious fandom can be in absorbing an author’s identity. Why do publishers promote them like movies and TV promote actors? We sometimes act as if we know them. Just like with actors, that is an illusion.
@Sunspear: I’ve done that exact same thing, but not recently – thanks for reminding me of it as a classroom exercise! IIRC, the last time I did that in my SF class, a majority of students thought one of Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles” stories was written by a woman, and one of Kiernan’s SF stories from “A is for Alien” was written by a man. The reasons they gave were sadly predictable; Bradbury’s story didn’t have a lot of realistic science behind it (“soft SF”) while Kiernan’s did (“hard SF”). I wonder if I’ll have different results this fall..
Don’t quite write off deconstruction yet; things tend to go in cycles in literary criticism and, at least in the classroom, people still DO talk about Derrida. I personally tend towards feminst/gender/Queer critique in my own work, with some historicist criticism thrown in there just for fun. ;)
When I talked about “internalizing” the author’s ideologies – well, I make my living by reading, thinking about, and writing about literature, so I perhaps see it as a disproportionally important force in shaping people’s lives and minds. However, no author writes in a vacuum, and many authors (consciously or not) reflect their own prejudices in their writing. I disagree that “ideology is not exclusive to either sex.” (Please also bear in mind that sex and gender are not binary.)
Take T. S. Eliot for example (one of my favourite poets ever). He was a privileged upper-class white man and his personal identity shaped his personal ideologies and prejudices. Let’s even leave aside his career as an editor and publisher on “The Dial” and other important modernist publications (he systematically worked to keep modernist female writers like Rebecca West from being published and wrote to Ezra Pound that he “distrust[ed] the FEMININE in literature.”) A huge section of the original manuscript of “The Waste Land” was a *very* insulting commentary on modernist Nancy Cunard (who eventually left England for France due to Eliot’s attacks on her – this was edited down to the beginning of the section “A Game of Chess”). is work contains numerous vacuous women (Madame Sosostris in “The Waste Land,” Lil from the same, the woman in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – I’m amazed Prufrock didn’t complain about being “friendzoned!”). His racism makes its way into his work as well (look up his collection “Tales of the March Hare” for some of his most racist work – in “March Hare” he has a line that reads, “a Negro…all teeth and smile” and you do NOT want to know what he says about the “black monarch Bolo” in another poem!). His anti-Semitism shows up in “Gerontion.” There is also a weird moment with Mr. Eugenides, the “Smyrna merchant” in “The Waste Land” that kind of seems to encompass racism, Anti-Semitism, and homophobia all at once. :(
I call Eliot my one of favourite poets DESPITE his negative ideologies and I don’t let anyone “hand-wave” away his faults – as many critics have done and continue to do. But when I read “Prufrock” and “The Waste Land” when I was a teenager, I didn’t understand why these depictions were a problem. He was a Great Poet, so if the women in his poems were silly and ineffectual, maybe women actually WERE! I could go down a laundry-list of other authors (both within and without the SF genre) with similar attitudes about women. The effect on me was that I became determined to be “different” from other women. I wouldn’t be a sidekick, be silly or hysterical, vain, “promiscuous,” or obsessed with romance. Those may be fine resolutions personally, but the danger occurred because that is *how I saw almost all other women.* Media representations of women didn’t help. It took me years to change the way I thought and yes, reading literature by talented women (including the very same women Eliot lambasted) DID help with that.
I am SUPER psyched about “Wonder Woman” and the upcoming female doctor! However, recent examples of strong female characters and female-centered narratives does not suddenly mean everything is equitable. I live in the U.S. and I clearly remember how, when President Obama was first elected, (mainly white) people ran around saying, “Racism is over! We’re now in a post-racial society!” Obama’s election was inarguably an historic moment for civil rights and racial equality. However, if you’ve been following the U.S. news *at all,* you know that racism is very very VERY far from “over” in the U.S.
I think we’re (slowly) moving in the right direction when it comes to the representation of women authors and characters in SF and literature in general. However, we still have a long way to go. And recent advances like the Wonder Woman film and the female doctor have elicited a whole new wave of opposition from fans and readers who want to preserve the white male heteronormative status quo.
Honestly, I have never cared about the gender of the author so long as the story is good.
I am a lot older than Ms. Bourke and so are a large number of the women writers in SF. I heartedly so sick of the critics and awards committees who have consistently ignored, belittled, and otherwise made certain that women authors both receive less acclaim and less promotion than their male counterparts. (“Just not hard enough.” “it’s very feminist, not much of a market.” etc. etc.) Both of which directly affect the writer’s bottom line and her ability to publish the next novel. Never mind that the world actually knows that the greatest writers of a generation were all women whose work is literary legend far, far beyond this genre: LeGuin, McCaffery, Butler, Vinge, Atwood … there are more on that list.
I’d think Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan series would make a GREAT batch of movies.
The Anita Blake novels sell in huge quantities, and while the last several have had a mixed reception, the first dozen or so were hugely popular. I imagine she’d make a great kick-ass movie heroine.
And didn’t J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series break all kinds of records, get people to read who didn’t used to like reading, get bookstores to stay open until midnight on the days new books in the series were released, and just generally become a huge cultural phenomenon?
Anyone who thinks that women don’t write genre fiction or don’t write filmable genre fiction has their eyes deliberately shut.
Let me add another candidate for filmdom. I would definitely pay good money to see Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series hit the screen, it could outdo Game of Thrones. Shall we start with Shards of Honor, perhaps? Cordelia Naismith rocks.
Clearly, the author of the National Review article hasn’t bothered to read Kameron Hurley, whose Bel Dame series is as violent, gun-toting, and battle-scarred as any Hollywood flick out there (John Wick?). But thinking about it in more detail, movies such as John Wick were barely in theaters–I think the second went straight to DVD–and my understanding is that the moneymaking is in worldwide DVD distribution. Ie. it’s disingenuous to pretend it’s an American/North American writer issue when the issue is a money-making machine that’s marketing to a worldwide audience.
Note: link removed by moderator, per Tor.com’s moderation policy.
things of this ilk annoy me greatly…I’m old as dirt, people. I grew up on Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, Tolkien, Edgar Rice Burroughs and pulp fiction like Doc. Savage/The Shadow/The Avenger. Mary Stewart’s ‘Merlin trilogy’ was formative for me and C.J. Cherryh, Ray Bradbury, Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, Louis McMaster Bujold were my friends in late High School and early college years. This INSISTENCE that women can’t world-build is, to put it bluntly ‘ka-ka’!
The majority of my favorite authors are FABULOUS world builders! I’ll put Elizabeth Bear’s “Hammered” series, C.J. Cherryh’s “Chanur or Kutath” series, McMaster Bujold’s “Vorkosigan” verse, V.E. Schwabb’ “Magic” verse, Anne McCaffrey’s Pern, Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar, Maria V. Snyder’s “Poison Study” or Maggie Stiefvatter’s Raven Boys world building right up there with Tolkien. And there are sooooooo many others that i’m sure i’m forgetting. Emma Bull’s Elsewhere, Holly Black’s Tithe series, Robin Hobb’s Liveships and Fitz Farseer, jeez! Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels…all WORLD BUILDING!!!
I’ve been reading since I was 5, i’m from a family of readers and i’m almost 60 years old and so sick of B.S. like that National Review idiot. Nevertheless, I persist…
I also adore threads like this because I can comb thru and find sooooo many NEW (to me) authors to check out and support!
Currently re-reading Octavia E. Butler after I came across e-book versions of her books. And I find that most of my favourite sci-fi (and fantasy too) were written by women.
I would encourage more women authors (all authors really) to make sure their in- and out-of-print books are available in affordable e-book versions (all formats) so that more of us can find them. Reading one will lead to reading more.
@47, while I don’t condone the white-washing of asian characters in films, I find the manga/anime industry do it themselves. When I used to watch anime with my daughter, I found it strange that so many caucasians were living in Tokyo.
@Jamiew
“I don’t mean to offend you, but the argument that “the author’s identity shouldn’t matter that much,” to me, comes perilously close to the dismissive “I just want to read good literature – if women wrote good literature, I’d read it.””
FWIW, with 45+ years as an avid reader of SFF I’ve followed the “author’s identity shouldn’t matter to me” opinion in my book selecting (not as a conscious policy decision, but just because it *didn’t* matter to me), yet I seem to have managed to include quite a few female authors in my reading list and personal library.
As a teen in the mid 60s one of the first authors I was aware of enough to seek out their books was Norton, and even at that age I knew Andre was a woman. As time passed more female authors like Cherryh, Bradley, Lackey, Le Guin, McCaffrey, etc. Now, my more current reading includes authors like McGuire, Okafor, Leckie, Kurtz, etc.
Some people may use the “shouldn’t matter” argument as a way of masking their avoidance of female or non-het-male authors, but for those *truly* making it a non-issue as a reader makes it almost impossible to not read non-het-male authors.
It’s great to see all the comments. In the interest of reading the original author’s words, I found the original article, and the follow up. I’m in complete agreement that it’s not well-thought out, and there’s a lot of glaring omissions, and there are quite a few sentences there that just exist to get a reaction from people. So let me be clear in saying that I do NOT support his conclusions, nor do I fail to recognize that there are significant problems in both film and publishing.
But at the risk of getting lots of negative comments, I’m curious if people think the Bechdel Test is still the best measure of measuring feminism and/or representation in film (publishing is a little different in that it’s a much more robust canvas for character development). I guess I wonder if it isn’t long past time for someone to propose a new theoretical framework for how we judge the art medium of film. If we as conscientious consumers of literature or film want people to view them through a new lens, isn’t it partly our responsibility to help define that lens? What are some positive representations in film? What are some negative ones? What makes them different? Shouldn’t we design a “test” whereby the films we value pass the test and the films we don’t fail the test?
Maybe I’m thinking too much about this, but if thinking and talking about about film in a thoughtful way has any chance of making change in terms of what’s good and what’s not, then isn’t it our responsibility to start explaining why certain things have value and why certain things don’t? As an example, while much of the conversation last year was about La La Land or Moonlight or Hidden Figures, I actually preferred Arrival. While I enjoyed all four films, I thought Arrival was more cohesive and told a more interesting story. That doesn’t (and shouldn’t) diminish the other films, but I can have a conversation about why that is without bringing up the Bechdel Test.
That said, I’d be much more interested getting a conversation going as to how we can better critically evaluate films and maybe change the mainstream conversation a bit.
I wouldn’t get too worked up about a National Review article – a paper full of articles by old white guys, for retired old white guys – which is becoming increasingly irrelevant, like VHS or a hand held camera. Is the Bechdel test a useless way to judge the quality of a movie? Yes. As is the Cowboy test. Are the gross simplifications populating the last paragraph suggestive of anything regarding good (or even commercially successful) movies? No. Such broad generalizations may have some statistical use in the abstract, but they are worthless (and can’t honestly pretend to be otherwise) in the individual and specific.
Seems to be a lot of signalling for respective “sides” of the argument, with the core issue – what makes a good movie or story and how do we bring those works to the attention of the general public? completely lost in the messaging. Messaging that in some cases may turn away potential consumers. I want my entertainment dollar (and I assume most others also do this with their entertainment budget) to buy (or rent for a time, in the case of movies) me an experience I enjoy, not as some signal of culture or virtue on my part. No part of me cares about the gender, color, sexual orientation, drug use, or number of partners the creator of the work may share a bed with – my only concern is whether the work is, ultimately “good” in my opinion. Was my money well spent, did I enjoy it?
Hollywood has brought numerous successful (and less than successful) movies to screen based on works by women, about women, “for” women. They have done the same with books by women, about men, “for” men. if your sole judge is “how much money did it make”, then of course women will appear under-represented. The Hollywood Blockbusters are, by and large, big budget special effects spectaculars with limited message, some catchy one liners, and a really thin plot – escapism at its best. The “buddy” film is so formulaic “Deep Blue” or “Watson” could likely crank out successful scripts the way they crank out pop music.
When looking to get your story across, don’t tell me I have to read/see something because the author is a woman, or somewhere on the LBGTQ+ spectrum, or because its “important”, just as you shouldn’t tell me to avoid a movie/book because the author is “cis het”. Tell me I should because its good and I’ll likely enjoy it, or avoid it because its predictable and one-dimensional. Ayn Rand was important, but her writing is atrocious. The same could be said for Melville, whose seminal work should have been a short story…
But if we are going to focus on some accident of the author’s birth, we must not forget it says nothing of quality – see the success of J.K Rowling and the “Harry Potter” series, but don’t shrug away the failures of “Fantastic Beasts…” Hunger Games, Divergent/Insurgent/Whatever-gent, Rice’s success with “Interview” and the disappointments of “Queen of…”, the steady downward slide of “Twilight”. The flip side is also true – C.S. Lewis and Narnia, Steven King generally, Lucas’ Star Wars IV-VI vs I-III, Tolkien (and Jackson) LotR vs the Hobbit.
A bad book doesn’t become “good” simply because of the gender of the writer, or the conditions they grew up in, or who they share their bed with. Neither does a work become “important” and somehow worthy simply because the gender of the main characters got swapped – look how that worked out for “Ghostbusters”. Starbuck of Battlestar Galactica brought something new to the role as a female character – a character important for who they were, not what they were. Gender was a part of that, yes, but it didn’t define it. The STORY is everything.
L’Engle is coming to the screen (again), Auel has been there, as has LeGuin (hopefully returning) and Bradley (also due for another remake). Would I like to see Kurtz, Lackey, Hambly, Hobb, Marillier, Norton, Pierce, bear, Moon, Huff, Cherryh, and a host of others (but not McCaffery’s Pern, it seems poorly suited to the medium) brought to small or large screen? Yes, but only if done well. I’d also like to see Jordan, Sanderson, Lynch, and eventually Rothfuss given the same treatment – but only if done well. Not because the authors are male or female, but because they weave good stories which, it seems to me, could be successfully translated, message intact, profitably to the screen. The Hollywood “problem” is that their stories come from two places – remakes of the very very old (how many King Arthur movies have their been now???), and quickly filmed (often low budget and poorly acted) pieces looking to capitalize on whatever is hot in the reading market right now (50 Shades, Twilight, etc) before the mob moves on to something else.
Good art takes time – and by the time authors (of whatever gender) we love finish their trilogy, quadrilogy, pentalogy, etc the crowd has already moved on – particularly for those who have been steadily crafting sci fi and fantasy for decades. For every Collins or GRRM, thousands of other stories worthy of being shared fall by the way side, never to hit that magic something that makes them a mass market sensation.
Those of us who are readers can do our part not by insisting that people read a work due to some combination of the author’s genes, but simply because its good. Just as we should call out when its not, regardless of the author’s personal life.
It occurs to me that another factor may complicate getting stories from book to screen in the SFF genre – many of the classic (and under represented) authors we respect and grew up with were first published from the 60s thru the early 80s, often paperback only. Excepting small (niche) publishers, the 60s and 70s were much less likely to risk the expense of paper publication and distribution through shopping mall booksellers for divergent viewpoints than the more inclusive (though still struggling) marketplace we have today, and much less likely to be commercially successful at it. Those small publishers have since (mostly) gone bankrupt. Copyright issues have prevented many of those works from making it to reprint or even digital (Kindle), much less the screen.
So we are today working through not only the bias of the past generations in what came to print, but the copyright issues that have taken worthy stories out of the public space, due to the bankruptcies of their owners and the loss of confidence in where the publication rights now lay. Which may help to explain why certain authors of the recent past always associated with larger publishers (Brooks or LeGuin, for instance) and thoroughly modern authors (Collins, Paolini, Meyer, Rowling, Goodkind, GRRM) have had an easier time making it to screen than someone published under, say the “Ace”, “Lancer” or “Avalon” labels.
Or we could just write under pen names like Andre Norton and James Tiptree Jr. Tongue stuffed in cheek.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. We’ve been fighting this battle for a long time. On my SFF book shelves, the only male authors present are the truly OUTSTANDING writers. Most are by female authors, who HAVE to be OUTSTANDING writers to get published.
I’ll throw out there that growing up, k.a.applegate rocked my world and formed my love of sci-fi and hopefully made a lot of money at $5 a pop for over 50 animorphs books.
The hippogriff in the room with that silly article is one of the most bestselling book and movie series ever, and j.k.rowling is laughing her way to the bank at it. I mean, I’m typing this on my phone and my autocorrect fills in “hippogriff” for me, it’s so mainstream. Not so much “nazgul.” (Now, I do love Tolkien, and I love Harry Potter too, and they are so different there’s not really a comparison–a pure win for me ’cause I get both!)
Second the shout out to Octavia Butler. I did not hear of her until sadly recently, and did try her out because I had not heard of a woman of color writing sff before. the concept of a fresh perspective was part of the attraction, and I could feel that perspective woven through her work. Her voice made it “good” to me and her identity of course shaped her voice, how could it not? yet surely isn’t the only thing influencing my perception of the “goodness” of her craft. How do you even untangle that for any author? That’s what feels not quite deep enough to me about the “indentity shouldn’t matter as long as its good” argument. To me personally a part of what is “good,” about sff is fresh ideas and insight into humans, presented with adequate literary skill through interesting characters and settings I can care about, and I get that best when reading authors who have a wide variety of perspectives, so I do factor in author identity or background, among other things, when seeking out new material. Happily for me, there has always been lots of sff work by (white, at least, still lacking voices of color, or perhaps that’s a case of erasure too or of shuffling other ethnicities into differently marketed sub-genres) women available to me so I’ve never felt like I lacked amazing options here. But yes, it is really frustrating to find articles still talk like this isn’t true. You have to be trying NOT to look, to be able to reach such a conclusion!
This angers and saddens me in equal measures, but I’m going to take this opportunity to maybe give you a small sliver of hope. When I first found Tor.com, several years ago, Sleeps with Monsters was the blog that drew me in and kept me reading. I vividly remembering a two-part series you wrote about why this conversation is important and why you focus exclusively on women writers for this blog; because it’s important to draw attention where it’s most needed. I even read through all of the comments and the ensuing conversation was so wrenching and eye-opening to me. There was one guy who kept saying that it shouldn’t matter what gender or sexuality, the only thing that should matter was the writing and the quality of the story being told; and your response that some writers and their works never get the publicity and attention to draw in readers struck a chord. I went home and looked at my rather (possibly ridiculously) extensive book collection and realized that, to my chagrin, there were very few women on my bookshelves. In the last few years, I have not only corrected this wrong, I have also introduced these concepts to my husband, who was also slowly but steadily coming to the realization that he was not as pro-feminist as he had always imagined himself to be. It is frustrating, having these arguments and conversations and screaming matches over and over (and over) again, but never doubt that you ARE doing good in the world.
It is unfortunate that literary critics with a Y chromosome just can’t get past the 1960’s, when SFF was L Ron Hubbard, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury. Any number of Octavia Butler’s, Catherine Asaro’s or Marion Zimmer Bradley’s would make excellent series. Kenyon’s Darkhunters is being made into series. Perhaps we need to drag the men who believe women of all shapes, size, colors, and types aren’t capable of making or writing a movie into the 21st century.
Kyle Smith is a movie reviewer, not a critic of SF literature. I’m guessing he read a little SF as a kid, thirty years ago, and has no idea bookstore shelves no longer look the way they did back then. I’ve never tried measuring it but I would guess that more than half of the shelf space in the science fiction section is now occupied by women authors. Just as women authors now dominate the science fiction awards. My impression of the YA SF&F section is that it’s 90% women authors, but that’s probably an exaggeration.
On the other hand, when Smith talks about his area of expertise, his comments have some validity. As others have pointed out above, the Bechdel Test is more an exercise in provoking thought than a tool for judging quality or even political correctness.
Wow, just wow!
People writing that few women write SFF really need to educate themselves. Unfortunately, a large majority of the population is so under read sadly it does not surprise me.
If the group of authors is more Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, and Paranormal, rather than just Science Fiction, then the number of female authors expands exponentially.
What’s funny to me is that most people who complain about womens role in various things don’t actually like the various things. I’m a straight Hispanic 26 year old male and i don’t give a flying fudge cake who the writer is. When i discover or am on the hunt for new books 99.9 percent of the time I’ll Google the author find their wiki and see how long the series is because that’s my basic criteria. Idc if a freaking serial killer or someone else wrote it the bottom line is do like the premise if i do i find the first book and dive in. I read the first trilogy by Robin hoob and had to Google her name after to find out if she had more and thought huh it’s a female that’s nice and never gave it another thought as i started on the next trilogy of hers. That 0.1 percent where i care if it’s a woman who wrote the story is when people point it out in reviews and i still try the book because most reviewers on Amazon tend to be idiots. Bottom line is most people care about content and substance not if the writer has the right parts. Anyone who doesn’t read stuff by Brandon Sanderson because he’s a straight white guy is an idiot.
I’ve just finished a two book series (though it could be a dozen, the world is that big) by Foz Meadows—AN ACCIDENT OF STARS and A TYRANNY OF QUEENS. First of all, it starts in Australia, which is relatively new territory for me, who mostly inhales Statesian stuff, so that was a nice flavor as an appetizer, and then it goes all Gateway, and we see a lot of new things from our first heroine. There are a lot more than just one heroine, too, though the few male characters aren’t disenfranchised, either–there is just a lot going on, and mostly women are involved. It’s a wonderful fantasy world(s), and I love the worldbuilding. The second book could have gone all conventional Hunt the Villain, but it goes a lot of different directions that I was delighted in. The Australia portions are sad, in their way; the heroine’s parents sadly blame the victim for what is not her fault, and Stalker Boy is going to end up beaten up in a dark alley someday, and he won’t understand why, but oh well.
Ummm…I’m babbling, but I just had to talk about those two books. Hope this isn’t deleted. :)
Robin Hobb and Octavia Butler, please. ^_^
Stuff we’d like to see adapted: Marion Zimmer Bradley’s great Darkover series. And on the subject of whether women can write good action stories, let’s remember Hunters of the Red Moon, which was more or less ripped off by one of the “Predator” movies (the one with Adrien Brody).
From some of the comments above, I got to wondering whether I approach male and female authors differently. I had to wrack my brain. All I could come up with is I tended to expect women authors to write richer characters, while men were more likely to get the science right. This may have been because, historically, a larger proportion of male SF writers had science or engineering backgrounds. I’m not sure if this is still true today.
You must have read a more diligent collection of male authors than I did :) The books by men that I read included stuff like psionics (everyone who was ever downwind of John W. Campbell), bungled relativity (Heinlein), implausibly rigid planets (Niven), and dubious solutions to the classic two men trapped in a frictional concave object (Rocklynne). Not to mention ftl drives powered by “otherwise our plots won’t work.”
Good God, I’m glad I missed this when it all came out and also glad you didn’t bother to link the article. So many others have made good points so I won’t reiterate, but let me throw Sharon Shinn and Juliet Marillier as SFF authors I have greatly enjoyed throughout my life as a genre reader. Sometimes I have shied away from recommending them in the past (because they are ‘romantic’ or write relationship/character heavy stories) but you know what? Who cares. I don’t know why ‘relationships’ are leass interesting anyway and they do also have their share of intrigue/action and interesting female characters who drive the plot in other ways too.
To add to your list, The Handmaid’s Tale seems to be doing very well as a TV show also.
Unfortunately, I think this kind of dumbness is ingrained in society. I once had a female co-worker who liked crime novels who told me she flatly refused to read anything written by a woman. When I asked her why, she said that she didn’t think they were any good. I asked her how she knew they were no good if she never read them. She didn’t answer. I then pointed out such authors as Kathy Reichs, PD James, Val McDermid and the, still popular after decades, Agatha Christie. These authors sell millions of books! She then got huffy and said she didn’t care she would read what she liked. How on earth do you change that kind of close-minded attitude?
@chris I’m not sure anyone ever thought the Bechdel Test was the best measure of measuring feminism and/or representation in film. It’s a simple test that’s more useful in the aggregate than for any individual film.
If a given film fails, that’s a warning flag you might want to review it but it’s not an insta-fail on representation (nor is passing the Bechdel Test an insta-pass). It does however tell us something about the industry overall if a large proportion of films fail this (very) simple test of representation.
@writelhd Point taken and agreed with, but I need to point out that Rowling did not invent hippogriffs. They date back as far as the 1st century BC in Virgil’s Eclogues and were probably popularised more by Dungeons and Dragons and the like than by Rowling.