"I want to go back to the bookshop"
February 28, 2014 1:26 AM   Subscribe

 
I've never read McDougall but I am a sci-fi/fantasy reader. For the past year or so I have been noting down whether I read male or female authors, just so I can see the balance myself. I know as a teenager my reading was virtually all male, Robert Jordan, David Eddings, Raymond E Feist, with the occasional Le Guin thrown in. It wasn't that I was specifically looking for men to read, it was that was all the book shops stocked in the sff genres.

Now with the internet of course my options aren't as limited, but still, the book shops are where I might spot an interesting cover and their marketing is hugely important in the success or otherwise of a book, so this is an important issue.
posted by Fence at 5:03 AM on February 28, 2014


An author she quotes says, "I have challenged staff in bookshops about this, to be told ‘women don’t write epic fantasy’." Ugh, seriously? I mostly read sic-fi/fantasy for a few years as a kid, and made no attempt at all to search out female authors, and yet just by following good writing to good writing ended up reading a bunch. This prevailing attitude is frustrating even to observe from a distance and I can't imagine how it must make her feel.

(I could have sworn I just read an article about this in the NYTimes, but a search there isn't bringing anything up. Puzzling.)
posted by Dip Flash at 5:34 AM on February 28, 2014


We have a problem in comics that's a strange sibling to this one: a great many women creators, some of them astoundingly successful and many of them quite visible on bookshelves and rec lists, contrasted with an ongoing refrain of "Why aren't there any women in comics?" In interviews, in articles, the lack of women in comics is often lamented. Frequently this is due to a sort of tunnel-vision ignorance -- if you only count Marvel and DC (as well as Dark Horse and Image, if you're being sophisticated) then sure, the numbers aren't great. But even that ignores the frequent and notable contributions of women creators who work with those publishers -- Fiona Staples, Carla Speed McNeil, Gail Simone, Faith Erin Hicks, it's a long list. All while ignoring major imprints like First Second and Graphix, which regularly publish best selling comics made entirely by women.

There's absolutely progress left to be made, both on the editorial and creative sides of the process, before we reach anything like parity. But it's surreal and discouraging to have the major successes of women like Raina Telgemeier -- who has spent YEARS dominating the graphic bestsellers lists -- either ignored entirely or brushed aside in a sentence fragment as if it's just a fluke.

Then they go back to talking about the New 52 or the Walking Dead -- the comics that REALLY matter. (That was sarcasm, just to be clear.)

What do you do when you've "made it" by every possible measure, and still the larger community pretends you don't exist? Or worse, maybe -- that you don't count?
posted by Narrative Priorities at 5:45 AM on February 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


Have faced this problem as well as an author. Even book reviews skew overwhelmingly toward books written by men (One Canadian review a couple of years ago pegged it at about 30% of reviews in major outlets had female authors review).

It is frustrating, infuriating, and mystifying -- but bring it up and people think you are a crank...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 6:02 AM on February 28, 2014


Jim C. Hines has been hosting an (IMO) excellent series of guest bloggers on the representation of non-"default" (roughly speaking: white, male, straight, cis) authors and characters on his blog for the past month or so. It's a response on a run of assholery in the SFF world recently, some of which has been a more or less continuation of the Beale controversy, with an added dollop of moral panic and muscle-flexing over being "forced" to think about things like non-binary gender (spoiler: no one is being forced to do anything). There's a lot of overlap in those involved, of course, because not being the default threatens a lot of people For Reasons.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:18 AM on February 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


As an additional read, Quaint Magazine complains about attempts by non-marginalized people to use their privilege to draw attention to POC and women writers.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:27 AM on February 28, 2014


An author she quotes says, "I have challenged staff in bookshops about this, to be told ‘women don’t write epic fantasy’." Ugh, seriously?. I mostly read sic-fi/fantasy for a few years as a kid, and made no attempt at all to search out female authors, and yet just by following good writing to good writing ended up reading a bunch.

I think this may be a result of the same syndrome that has men confidently asserting that women can't write poetry, and then writing off every female poet they encounter as a versifier, because women can't write poetry. So, Tamora Pierce is pigeonholed as YA, Mercedes Lackey as romance und so weiter.

(Which kind of applies to Narrative Priorities' point as well, now that I think about it - best-selling, critically acclaimed comic creators like Alison Bechdel and Marjane Satrapi are excluded from consideration, because they never drew Wolverine.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:21 AM on February 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


That's less a complaint and more of a warning though, that it's incredibly easy for those with power (or privilege) to usurp or co-opt a message.
posted by MartinWisse at 7:24 AM on February 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


best-selling, critically acclaimed comic creators like Alison Bechdel and Marjane Satrapi are excluded from consideration, because they never drew Wolverine.

Yeah, that's straight out of How to Suppress Women's Writing:
“She didn’t write it. But if it’s clear she did the deed… She wrote it, bit she shouldn’t have. (It’s political, sexual, masculine, feminist.) She wrote it, but look what she wrote about. (The bedroom, the kitchen, her family. Other women!) She wrote it, but she wrote only one of it. (“Jane Eyre. Poor dear. That’s all she ever…”) She wrote it, but she isn’t really an artist, and it isn’t really art. (It’s a thriller, a romance, a children’s book. It’s sci fi!) She wrote it, but she had help. (Robert Browning. Branwell Brontë. Her own “masculine side”.) She wrote it, but she’s an anomaly. (Woolf. With Leonard’s help…) She wrote it BUT…”
The cover even.
posted by MartinWisse at 7:27 AM on February 28, 2014 [10 favorites]


Yes, MW., a warning is a more accurate description. And it's a very self-aware one.
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:57 AM on February 28, 2014


when I think of contemporary epic fantasy, three of the four names that come to mind are women:

Robin Hobb
Kate Elliott
Lois McMaster Bujold

and GRR Martin as the one male epic fantasy writer I've read other than Tolkien.

I'd recommend any of the three to Martin fans - Bujold is my favourite, but Hobb and Elliott's work is more similar to Martin's. (Bujold is too concise to be Martin-like, which is a virtue in my taste).

Joan Vinge's Snow Queen series is also delightfully epic, but it is science fiction rather than fantasy.
posted by jb at 8:07 AM on February 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


It does depend a little on your definition of "epic fantasy", but I'm guessing that, say, Leigh Bardugo, Patricia Briggs, Janet Lee Carey, Jacqueline Carey, Kristin Cashore, Jane Fletcher, Shea Godfrey, Nicola Griffith, Barbara Hambly, Rachel Hartman, P. C. Hodgell, N. K. Jemisin, Gwyneth Jones, Alethea Kontis, Melina Marchetta, Laurie J. Marks, Patricia A. McKillip, Sherwood Smith, Catherynne M. Valente, Jo Walton, and Martha Wells might also disagree with the notion that it is never written by women.
posted by kyrademon at 8:20 AM on February 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


Nicola Griffith?

Are you counting Hild as epic fantasy?
posted by MartinWisse at 8:22 AM on February 28, 2014


Yes, I was, although I realize that is questionable on both counts.
posted by kyrademon at 8:24 AM on February 28, 2014


If you want to define epic fantasy fairly rigorously as "the supernatural definitely exists, the society is entirely pre-firearms, the events depicted are on a historic scale, and it does not fall into another obvious category (e.g. fairy tale fantasy)", I would probably take Nicola Griffith, Gwyneth Jones, and Alethea Kontis off for one reason or another. But I'm pretty sure the other 18 I listed all have at least one book or series that still qualifies.
posted by kyrademon at 8:35 AM on February 28, 2014


Hild is on the nomination list for Nebula Best Novel, in any case.

In fact, despite all of SFWA's recent awkwardnesses, all nominated works for written Nebula categories this year are 50% or more woman authored. (The glaring category exception at 0%, Bradbury, is for dramatic presentation, aka film.)
posted by foxfirefey at 8:38 AM on February 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


The problem isn't that SFWA has been having issues with gender, race, and sexuality; it's the people who think that SFWA is giving too much attention to women, POC, and GLBT for what they feel are the wrong reasons.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:43 AM on February 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


(And, obviously, my list wasn't meant to be an exhaustive list, or there would be dozens more on it. You'd want Le Guin for Earthsea, you'd want McKinley for The Hero and the Crown, etc., etc., etc.)
posted by kyrademon at 8:47 AM on February 28, 2014


Nicola Griffith is vast. She contains multitudes.

Also, shout out to Kameron Hurley, whose hardboiled God's War trilogy is fantasy that feels more like SF.

And the fact that nobody has mentioned R. A. MacAvoy yet makes me sad. The Lens of the World trilogy is one of the greatest things ever.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 8:50 AM on February 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Not my field at all, SFF, but now that we are entering the age of of every writer his own publisher, at least in genre fiction, I would be curious to know how things are shaking our sales and readership-wise in the self publishing world.

Not that I care about a given writer's furry parts or erotic impulses, but if there is ever going to be a level playing field, then that would be it.

Anyone tracking this sort of thing?
posted by IndigoJones at 9:26 AM on February 28, 2014


Oh my goodness, an R. A. MacAvoy shoutout!

The Book of Kells still stands as the best single volume fantasy I've ever read almost 30 years later, and MacAvoy remains the only fantasy author I know who has had the primordial strength and courage it takes to draw down the lightning of true religious inspiration and ground it right into her books.
posted by jamjam at 9:38 AM on February 28, 2014


I read so much YA that I rarely have this problem until I feel like reading some books for grown-ups; it gets a bit harder at that point.

Though it is telling that the only exclusively YA author everyone is allowed to take seriously is John Green and not Susanne Collins or Tamora Pierce or someone like that.
posted by NoraReed at 10:12 AM on February 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Also, shout out to Kameron Hurley, whose hardboiled God's War trilogy is fantasy that feels more like SF.

Because it is science fiction. Pretty good sf too, even with all its problems.

Oh my goodness, an R. A. MacAvoy shoutout!

Which reminds me that I still got Tea with the Black Dragon laying around unread.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:29 AM on February 28, 2014


Hugh Howey, who made his splash self publishing, then used his new stature to be rude and sexist at a convention, has a somewhat flawed report on self publishing out.

S. L. Huang, another author who self publishes, poured some cold water on the findings.

For a very detailed insight into the realities of one person self publishing, Ian Sales put his earnings on his three books online. Then go on an buy his books, if you like hard science fiction alternate history based on the continued existence of the Apollo programme and the extension of the cold war and find terms like F-108 Rapier intensily exciting.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:37 AM on February 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


« Older Democratic and demanding   |   Sing, kitty, sing. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments