I like this essay about science fiction’s woman problem — it really hammers home the distorted demographics of the SF community, and on the surface, it seems very odd. This is a genre of literature that emphasizes strange, new, weird perspectives, and we’re supposed to be fans of mind-bending cosmic novelty that the Mundanes and Muggles just don’t get; we tell ourselves that the whole point is to turn the lens of “what if…?” back upon ourselves, and see how people and cultures would change if one little thing were different, if the future were a tiny bit different from the present. And what do we get? Lots of repetition of White Imperialist Men in Space. That’s fine, I enjoy a good heroic space opera myself, but can we also leaven it all with some variety?
I’ve been consciously selecting my light reading lately to avoid the familiar white authors — again, nothing wrong with them — and what started out as something requiring intentional effort quickly turned into a genuinely fun and stimulating pastime. There’s a place for comfort food, but once you’ve been on a diet of mac-and-cheese for a long time, and you start trying new stuff, pretty soon you’re unsatisfied if you aren’t getting sushi or bibimbap or falafel for dinner, and they stop being “exotic” foods and become that really tasty goodness that you crave all the time.
So the latest two books I read: Everfair by Nisi Shawl and Engraved on the Eye by Saladin Ahmed. Fabulous! You like steampunk, Victorian fantasy and SF? Everfair has all that, but in addition, it’s set in the Congo of King Leopold II of Belgium (he’s the villain, obviously, but actually, the whole dang colonial system is the bad guy). Just moving the story out of the usual London setting is great, but having a nightmarishly wicked villain who was actually real, and even worse than the novel portrays him, makes the story seem just a bit more fierce. You like sword and sorcery? Who needs burly grunting Aryan barbarians when you can have aging, overweight Doctor Adoulla Makhslood to admire. I found it gratifying to finally have a hero I can actually physically identify with.
But here’s the deal: if you’re really into imaginative SF, shouldn’t you be avidly seeking out different authors and different ideas all the time? You don’t have to like it all, but jeez, shouldn’t it be a natural phenomenon that all SF readers would be exploring strange new worlds on their bookshelves?
I felt the same with RPGs, I feel quickly constrained by the usual damn tropes.
What happens if this NPC is a female instead? What happens if she’s fat and fierce but in love with someone too refined for her?
What if the powerful warrior’s totem is an ugly bug?
Why are arthropoid things always evil?
What if those who look more dissimilar from us are the good ones, and the ones that look like us are the bad ones?
What if humans weren’t the measure for everything?
Oh, and fuck black and white morals.
This stuff is not necessary, but it makes a story SO MUCH more interesting and involving (as witnessed by my players’ enthusiasm).
These are the same reasons reading some sci-fi (Hello Ursula le Guin) completely blew my mind.
Thanks for the suggestions PZ, I’ll check them out and yes, searching diversity in literature is well worth the time.
God help you if you’re a military sci-fi fan. If there’s even a female character, they’re almost always a space aryan that is either a faux action girl that needs to be rescued by Lt. Whiteguy, or a “I’M NOT LIKE ONE OF THOSE DUMB STUPID WOMEN WHO DON’T KILL THINGS” characters that nerd dudes seem to like.
Also there’s a lot of conservative ~space allegories~ where it’s the war in terror IN SPACE and now we get to shoot those evil brown people with lasers.
Thank you for the recommendations. I just picked up “Engraved on the eye.”
“Everfair” is on my list for later.
The thing is, most of these books on their bookshelves (and movies, records, etc.) come from a process that’s heavily commercialized/industrialized. That’s apparently just how it goes in a big modern world with billions of potential readers and an extremely fast-paced/competitive environment for the authors. Creative, imaginative, strange new stuff isn’t really the point, and it carries with it a lot of risk. What you generally get out of that kind of process (or what’s “natural” maybe), whether it’s science fiction or prog rock or lyric poetry or photography or whatever, is the same old “safe” product that has demonstrably worked in the past. (That is, something about the books has made the publishers tons of profit, and they expect more of that, not necessarily strange new worlds or originality or anything which isn’t guaranteed to bring dollar bills.)
There’s nothing particularly wrong with doing stuff that has worked before, if it’s the kind of thing you’re aiming to do. There are after all plenty of valuable traditions to carry on, nobody needs to reinvent the wheel, and so forth. But people are very often afraid of change, uncertainty, novelty, and so on — unreasonably so, in a way that interferes with their ability to make the kind of story (or film, music, painting, etc.) that they actually wanted make. The fact that it happens to be a work of science fiction doesn’t really have anything to do with it. Many people still do feel and act that way, regardless of what you think the genre is supposed to be about, what are its most important features, how it can uniquely contribute to literature or society, or whatever this ideal is that you’re imagining people should care about. Making this stuff is their job, and because making money at it can be very difficult, for all sorts of reasons having to do with the exploitation of writers/artists/etc. and the disrespect paid to the humanities, they often (very understandably) want to play it as safe as they can. Plus, speaking for myself, I have so much respect for the greats and so little self-confidence, so the idea of making something which will make it into the pantheon of all the greatest works ever seems impractical or unprofessional at best, if not downright absurd.
Of course, women are living on the same planet, and they’re working under the same kinds of constraints and pressures. To a certain extent, their works may represent things from a slightly different perspective, which like you said is always nice. But at the same time, there are also many other factors that play a role in what gets published and how successful it is (in terms of dollars, popularity, critical acclaim, influence on other works or society, etc.). So, while there’s clearly a problem with the under-representation of women in science fiction, I doubt solving it would do all that much to address the more general kind of stagnant conservatism that you’re worried about here. For that, you’d really have to do a lot to change the incentives of writers/publishers/etc., no matter what gender they happen to be.
It’s fantasy rather than SF (though both can be put under the generic “speculative fiction”), but Marion Zimmer Bradley edited a series of anthologies with a general theme of sword & sorcery fantasy with female protagonists–and many of the stories were written by women. The series was “Sword & Sorceress” and ran over 20 volumes.
In the military SF there is always the Honor Harrington series, though one might object that the quality isn’t all that high and the author really likes to show off the math he did when the nuclear missiles begin to fly. (My son refers to the series as “spaceship porn”.)
I actually really enjoy Honor Harrington, but like a lot of the “Modern Military SF” collections and omnibi are just the most generic shit, to the point where I stopped buying them and donated my old ones until the genre can put out something vaguely decent.
Protip to authors – If your plot is “Basically Avatar, but we treat the human military as the good guys”, you’re a hack.
Honor Harrington was a boring as fuck protagonist.
I’ve been watching two different TV shows that fall into the SF / fantasy genre. One is the BBC’s Orphan Black, which I highly recommend. One actress plays multiple clones, and it is good entertainment, but also allows for situations with a lot of social commentary on sexism and gender roles. Helena and Rachel especially get to display female strength and intelligence in ways that are rarely shown in media.
In contrast the other show is Penny Dreadful. While it is set in Victorian days with it’s depictions of sexual psychosis, it is galling that there are only two female main characters, both of whom are subject to all sorts of horrors for their sexuality, and so far are the only well developed female characters on the show. It’s not completely awful, but it really stands out as lazy and sexist writing in comparison to Orphan Black.
My problem with the Honor Harrington book is David Weber pushing his Libertarian views.
Canadian reviewer James Nicoll makes sure he reviews as many female authors as male ones. For example he’s current engaged in a year of reviewing Tanith Lee.
http://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/
WAit, there’s a new Saladin Ahmed?
He’s clearly not bragging enough. I knew he was getting better, but I didn’t knew the sequel was out. Thanks, now I know what to read next.
As for Sci-Fi and Fanstasy: Yes, by now I’m bored to death by formula books that are all basically the same with the excuse of “historical accuracy” (plus elves and magic) and a future in space where the first insult on a man’s lips will forever be “b*tch*
Vivec
Have you read Elisabeth Bear’s trilogy Wetwired?
@12
Nope, but I think I’ve seen the covers before. Are they good?
Vivec
I enjoyed them very much, though I don’t know if that’s much of a metric. Also Linda Nagata had a great one called ummm Red Light? The Red: First Light? My memory is betraying me right now, but it’s apparently the first in a trilogy? series? or something, and I enjoyed that one, too.
I read quite a lot SF & fantasy when I was a teen, but I lost interest because so many stories looked like exact copies of Tolkien or Asimov. Outright annoying was the “more is better” philosophy: some stories spanning multiple heavy volumes with countless characters. It seems things have changed for the better, or perhaps I haven’t looked well enough, but I’m picking things up again and find many books very enjoyable. Thanks for the pointers!
My reading lately is not that diverse, but I’m still avoiding most of the problem PZ brings up by sticking to Japanese fiction. There’s a good bit of speculative fiction out in Japan that is fun and very different. Alas, very little of it is translated into English, so I can’t recommend much. But it’s nice to be able to read stuff based on actual Japanese culture rather than wincing at Western authors’ inept exotification.
The twisted demographic of SF has certainly done a lot of harm, even genuinely non-conformist authors like Stanislaw Lem occasonally revealed scary misogynic attitudes.
On the other hand there have been brilliant exceptions. Not that “Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus” -which Brian Aldiss considers the first SF novel- was written by a woman.
“not” should be “note”.
One of the things I like about living in Santa Cruz, London, Dublin, and Bristol was all had good bookshops with large SF sections — London even had several which were exclusively SF, and Santa Cruz also had a lively “used” book scene — meaning it was easy to browse and pick up “interesting”-looking books. Sometimes they were, sometimes they just meh, and a number were awful, with a handful so bad I never finished them. With a few exceptions, I never gave a hoot who the author was, and would now be very Very hard-pressed to name the authors I read (albeit with roughly those same exceptions).
I miss being able to do that browsing (partly because I live in a village in France and prefer to read English), and hence my own SF reading has plummeted. (I cannot stand e-books and avoid them like the Republicans…)
I’ve actually been spending time looking through the internet trying to find new authors self-published or possibly even thus far unpublished but who nevertheless have good writing or show promise. This is partly for solidarity, since I’m kind of in the same situation. It turns out it’s kind of hard to find relatively unknown internet-based writers who are actually good, though. Which I suppose shouldn’t be a surprise.
Is it just me (and forgive me if I should know it isn’t – I’ve only skimmed the comments) or is anyone else thinking book club? :D
I started reading Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith recently. I don’t actually know how good it is yet, but it’s a promising start. I like the general feel I’m getting from the characters. I think I’m gonna have to read through this thread properly later and pick up some ideas for future reading. :)
BTW, one way I use to find new and exciting authors is anthologies, especially by good Fantasy and Sci Fi magazines like Lightspeed. You get a glimpse into the author’s style and can then browse for books.
Another way to get cheap reading is the Humble Bundle book bundles (e book only)
But doesn’t this run counter to improving the use of imagination?
Has anyone gone over Lionel Shriver’s speech on cultural appropriation? I’ve tried reading it, but my brain’s gone to mush after a day at work. It sort of reeks of bullshit to me, but I can’t put my finder on it.
Apologies if I’m thread-jacking, it seems relevant to the discussion.
This is a case of Original Sin. I forget who told me the story, but John W Campbell, way back in the 1930’s, famously challenged his authors to “show me a creature that thinks as well as a man, … but not like a man.” He got the immediate response “a woman,” but he rejected it out of hand.
Usually, when I imagine things, I imagine me doing them. Therefore, if a book has a protagonist with whom I can identify with a minimum of effort, my imagination finds it easier to accept the rest of the fantastical events of the book. That’s for people who already have a lot of practice in getting inside someone else’s skin (i.e. those readers who are not straight, cis, white, and/or male): it’s nice to relax every now and then.
As for trying to identify with a character not like yourself, this is easiest done when the character themselves is complex and interesting (and possibly the kind of person I would like in real life), because people like that usually have at least one shared character flaw/feature with me, and it’s kind of like a kicking-off point to imagining oneself as them. What gets tedious is the cookie-cutter boredom of the usual cSWMH, because they’re usually not a person I would like in real life and they’re just boring.
Plus, identifying with a character (or imagining yourself as the character) similar to yourself doesn’t diminish the character’s other features and abilities and most of all adventures; still plenty of room for the imagination, just a bit less effort to see yourself in the story. It’s also a huge deal for a kind of validation: yes, I am awesome enough for someone to write a book about someone like me. It’s a nice feeling.
Or something, I dunno, might be different for others, but that’s kind of how it works for me.
The first two books I wrote actually had a protagonist who was shy, nervous, and even kind of pathetic, something I expect a lot of people would relate to because I imagine most people at some point in their life was nervous and possibly shy about something. He was actually described by a friend as an “everyman”, except minus the “man” because he’s actually a tall slug-like creature, whiiiiich probably counteracts the relatable character flaws/features but that’s kind of the point of science fiction/fantasy.
Yeah, but if I can relate to the shyness, then I can accept the slug-like appearance. I just need a bit of a hook to invest the imagination for everything else that follows, if that makes any sense. And in that case, I’d probably read the story to see how a shy slug-like creature deals with whatever conflicts you-as-author choose to throw at them.
Sometimes, though, I just want to see a character a lot more like me, because it’s validating in a weird kind of way, and I do feel that a lot of genres are short of the kind of diversity that would let me easily find protagonists with whom I feel more of an affinity and not just an interest in seeing how a shy slug-like creature deals with Stuff. You know? Sometimes I want to see me (which is kind of where I saw PZ going with the Ahmed book). It’s still an exercise of imagination, just from a different direction.
Anyway. I feel like I’m doing a crappy job of explaining myself right now.
The reason the SF genre has been skewed towards males when it comes to authors is due to it’s evolutionary roots in the pulps and popular science magazines. Hugo Gernsback published the first SF magazine and popularized “hard” SF that was very tech focused. Later on the editor John W. Campbell, Jr. hugely shaped SF stories as catering to men as their primary readership. So it’s no surprise that it wasn’t until the 1960s that SF began to be impacted by social movements, and the 1970s for things to start changing in SF.
And this somehow means ‘skewed towards males’ exactly how?
+++
For some reason, I feel like this is relevant again.
Yeah, it’s not like the whole genre was basically founded by a woman
starfleetdude
What year is it on your planet?
By focusing on technical, rather than social subject matter. Before Gernsback got in to the SF pulps, he published radio magazines.
It was popularized by Gernsback and later Campbell, who both had a big influence on the genre.
Same as yours, where history also matters.
Yeah, everywhere on the fucking planet.
If you’d like to make a case for SF as a genre not being dominated by American publishers and authors, go ahead. Certainly British SF was important too, but it was also very male and tech focused as well.
Wow. You’re serious, aren’t you.
Sure. If you’re wanting to point out the sexism and racism of the time (1920s-30s) in general, that’s good. It was certainly pervasive and SF back then was also affected. Technological sexism was part of what kept SF a male-dominated genre back then too.
Gernsback, the Swede Otto Witt and a German guy I forgot the name of all studied in Heidelberg at the same time and all started SF magazines in their respective countries on return. But it was Gernsback’s magazine that really became the seed for a Magazine genre and a big grass-roots fan movement.
Gernsback was a competent (but cheap) editor, but a crappy author. He favoured a style that was geared towards male adolescents, and the SF fan movements have continued the bias. Philip José Farmer tried to break the mold and adress adult themes when he started writing SF/fantasy for Playboy Publishing, resulting in books like “A Feast Unknown”.
The details, especially from the sixties and onwards would t ake up too much space for even a brief summary. I recommend Aldiss’ Trillion Year Spree
Part of the reason why Gernsback was such an influence was the letters section of his magazines, which was where SF fandom was basically born though the interaction of readers there.
I never realized that H.G Wells actually had a real time machine that allowed him to bring the new trend of social issues in science fiction from the 1960s back to the 19th century. Clearly he also altered the timeline in a way that enabled Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and others to continue with that trend.
As an aside, I just finished the second book in N. K. Jemisin’s “Broken Earth” trilogy and the series thus far is every bit as good as it is supposed to be.
Starfleetdude is making the same point as one contained in the essay – technologically focused sf has skewed and still skews male in terms of authorship and readership. That isn’t claiming anything about innate abilities or preferences.
starfleetdude — clew alert — techobabble ≠ male.
Also, the claim technobabble (which Hugo Greenback apparently called “gadget fiction”) wasn’t the only major of theme of the time in question (roughly, the so-called Golden Era of SF). Other themes of the time were dystopia (famous example: 1984) and social alienation.
And, of course, SF did not start with Greenback / Amazing Stories, it considerably predated it: Jules Verne, HG Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe are three famous previous authors. And you can go back much earlier than that — e.g., Mary Shelley, who I note, was a woman.
Nah. “We”, “Brave New World”, and “1984”, respectively, were SF that wasn’t SF because they were lit-rah-chhur. Such high-brow works weren’t even pitched as uncultured sci-fi by their publishers. So their influence on the genre wasn’t that great.
blf – historical note –
The “New Wave” of SF in the 1960s included dystopian works by J.G. Ballard and P.K. Dick. They owe less to Orwell than you might assume, and more to their own personal experiences.
They’re still SF, never mind how they were classified. Margaret Atwood actually writes SF (see Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake) but there’s a weird thing where she’s usually classified as literature, and I wonder why that happens.
So it’s SF that doesn’t get marketed to the ‘usual’ SF audience, therefore they miss out on it, and people who read Atwood aren’t considered readers of SF because of the literature aspect. Funny how that works out!
microraptor@#7:
Honor Harrington was a boring as fuck protagonist.
I got a lot of exercise throwing those books around the room.
C J Cherryh’s done some good stuff, and Lois McMaster Bujold has gone a long way toward convincing me that humans are the weirdest aliens of all.
Marketing. Booksellers (and publishers) know what sells where, and how they shelve books they sell reflects their buyer’s preferences. That’s the same reason you don’t find books like “Handmaid’s Tale” even shelved with SF at your library.
sfd: I fail to see how books not being marketed as SF means that they weren’t influential on the genre unless you think that budding SF writers only ever read things that are marketed as SF.
specialffrog, here’s something to note about J.G. Ballard’s influences, which weren’t generally U.S. science fiction:
What books did JG Ballard enjoy?
I do note how Ballard mentions how many British SF writers were imitating Americans.
@whywhywhy, 23
In the sort of situation where you physically identify with practically every single hero in fiction? Yeah. Not so big of a deal when the opposite is true, though – there are still plenty of straight white cis guys available on the hero shelf.
@starfleetdude, 35
When you say “male and tech,” do you consider that to be a single unit? Are you saying it is male focused, and so it is tech focused – or that it is tech focused and therefore male focused – or are you telling us that it was male focused, and incidentally including the tech focus for reasons unknown?
Quick recommendation: On youtube, Preston Jacobs’ Thousand Worlds Book Club, where he goes through some of the earlier works of GRR Martin. Especially, I like the analysis of themes and consequent speculation on where Martin might be going with ASOIAF.
And since I’m doing recommendations, I should also just mention the Escape Pod, which includes numerous stories by authors who are women or non-binary.
birgerjohansson:
I second that recommendation, though I first read it so long ago that it was still called Billion Year Spree.
In todays episode of starfleetdude, watch while our brave hero boldly splains SF to a snickering horde.
(I secretly can’t help but wonder if starfleetdude is related in some way to tardisguy.)
Man, I’d really like to see starfleetdude develop enough self-awareness to recognize the implicit bias in that comment.
I’m in a science division in a university. Over half the faculty in biology are women; more than half the computer science faculty are women. Why would you assume that “technical” is aversive to women?
Why would you assume that “social” is aversive to men? I don’t find “hyper-competent engineer” stories all that interesting, and I happen to be a man.
“social” and “technical” are constructed categories that our culture tries to hammer people into based on the shape of their genitals. Don’t you find that silly?
Because it was back in the 1920s and 1930s, which is the period where SF as a genre got its start.
sfd: I can’t tell if that last comment is agreeing with me or disagreeing with me.
That doesn’t remotely answer the question.
@starfleetdude, 56
That doesn’t seem to match up with reality. Emmy Noether, Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie and others were all technical (and women) in or before that period. And, ok, yes, they were outliers, but the amazing thing about their embracing of the technical is in their making it – not in their having an interest in the first place.
Only in a marketing sense. What is your point? A good start might be clearly answering Athywren@50’s question:
Perhaps I’m being charitable, but I read “technical being skewed towards males” as meaning “the technical community was not accepting of women”. Which as far as I know, was indeed true in the 1920s and 1930s (and still is true, to an extent, given all of the posts PZ has made about harassment and erasure of/bias against women in the STEM fields).
The existence of outliers does not argue against the point that there was a bias.
@Owlmirror, 61
I’m not arguing that there wasn’t a bias – I’m well aware that there was and still is a bias, which is why I said the amazing thing is their making it in technical fields. What I’m arguing is that a thing being technical doesn’t mean that women won’t – or at that time wouldn’t – be interested in it.
Erm… I seem to have gotten the tone wrong on that last comment. I just meant to clarify my point, not be defensive and weirdly aggressive.
Are Sherri Tepper, Connie Willis, and James Tiptree “science fiction” writers?
I don’t find “hyper-competent engineer” stories all that interesting
Was Mark Twain’s “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” the first of that long line? Because, if so, it started out well and ended dreary.
Yes, when women were computers, obviously not a very technical skill at all..!.!! Therefore anything technical is male skewed!
Also, that thing about marketing? That is exactly the point. I don’t think anyone ever tried to market technical SF to women – and it’s not because there were/are women uninterested in the genre. Or not involved in technical fields.
Sherri Teppers ‘Grass’ is definitely SF, but others are more in the fantasy/ magic vein. Connie Willis is in that section in the library, but her writing is not replete with spaceships or hero with a big gun tropes. Anne McCaffrey is rumoured to have written an entire series of SF books while being a woman.
I concur, to which I would add interested females (read: female SF readers / fans) do not seem to be outliers, even at the time. Numbers, however, are rather hard to come by (more on this below).
There are some numbers for published speculative fiction authors during the time:
That same link also discusses the number of female readers, but points out there is a severe lack of data (from the time). It also gives several quotes from the time indicating there was a considerable number of female readers / fans (the following is one example of several (edits in the original in {curly braces})):
Ever? That seems a bit too strong, but I do suspect there is considerable truth in that for much of the so-called Golden Age of SF (and that the qualifier “technical” can be dropped (and I’m not too sure what that qualifier means here?)). For instance, the Startling Stories editor’s quote in @63 suggests surprise at the number of female readers, from which an inference they didn’t try much (if at all) to market to females seems plausible.
There is a (poor-quality) PDF scan of the quoted Justine Larbalestier article “The Women Men Don’t See” on the ‘Net; however, I am not providing a link as I have doubts about the legality (I presume there is a copyright violation).
Oops! The “@63” in @69 should be its preceding comment, @68. Need to clean my glasses…
This might be a good place to (re)post this link:
Susan Wood’s “People’s Programing,” 1977
Even when women were, to some extent, accepted in SF fandom, there was always some condescension involved.
There’s also this:
I’m currently reading everything Nnedi Okorafor has written. Right now, Phoenix. Lagoon was fantastic. She writes with an indigenous mindset, and I find it familiar and comforting.
Other people might be fine with Colonial Imperialist White Male fiction, but I’m not. It’s past time for that shit to die. Colonial white male thinking has dominated everything for much too long, and here on the ground, people are continuing to pay for that in very unpleasant ways, I don’t need to read that sort of shit for “enjoyment.” It can all burn into dust as far as I’m concerned. It’s beyond me why anyone would think perpetuating that viewpoint is in any way a good thing. FFS.
From the linked article:
Re. Giliell @11:
“Engraved on the Eye” is a short story collection, which Ahmed released in 2012. The Kindle version is currently available for free as a promotional: https://www.amazon.com/Engraved-Eye-Saladin-Ahmed-ebook/dp/B009CVYQG2#nav-subnav .
The collection includes a prequel story to “Throne of the Crescent Moon”, about Adoullah and Rashid’s first meeting one another. And Adoullah is just as awesome as ever. [ raises cup of tea in salute ]
I have not yet read “Everfair”, but it is on my to-read list.
Marcus Ranum@65 asks:
No idea. Some preceding stories (e.g., Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), The Time Machine (1895 (Ok, slightly later)), and Frankenstein (1818) — just to name some famous examples) have some elements of that type of story. So the idea was, in a sense, certainly kicking around.
It’s not clear to me if this is referring to Twain’s story specifically, or to the “long line” of “hyper-competent engineer” stories? I would certainly agree if the latter; if the former, no comment, as I cannot recall Twain’s story well enough!
As good a place as can be to give this anthology a signal boost: http://www.starshipnivan.com/blog/?p=10004
To Shape the Dark is Andreadis’ second anthology focusing on woman protagonists doing science that goes beyond Hollywood (or all too much mainstream SF) mumbo-jumbo-ing.
I’m sorry to say that I’ve not kept up with the bleeding-edge of the present diversity wave of new non-default SF talent, but I think I can recommend a work that goes against the less than wholesome tropes of the genre.
And it’s even military SF!
Yes, as noted upthread mil SF is by and large a subgenre in the tight grip of toxic masculinity, blind unironic jingoism and generally subpar prose. Enter Walter Jon Williams. His Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy (The Praxis, The Sundering, Conventions of War) are among my favorite SF books.
Thousands of years ago a race of immortals conquered the known universe. Since they considered their GM agelessness a curse (they had to built ever greater mainframes to store their memories) they committed suicide one after the other. In their totalitarian empire they instituted the doctrine of the eponymous Praxis, which outlaws technical progress (probably so his franchise doesn’t turn into another “heroes whip up last-minute magical gadget that solves every problem” story). It’s also an aristocratic society with elevated families from the subjugated races, the Peers, acting as intermediary between the rulers and the masses. (They’re explicitly stated to be the 1% owning almost everything, all the way back in 2002.)
The plot kicks off with the last alien ruler choosing death and the first conquered race staging a rebellion to claim leadership based on seniority. The co-protagonist is a young female Peer pilot and mathematical prodigy who finds this whole society to be pretty pants, but comes up with a revolutionary new system of tactics that promises to turn the tide of the war. Just too bad any kind of innovation is verboten under the Praxis…
Duth Olec @ 20 – could I recommend the fascinating novels of KB Spangler (KBSpangler.com) ?
Synopsis of the first book: five years after being made into a cyborg ruined her life, Rachel Peng is the official cyborg liaison to the Washington DC police department, tasked with showing that cyborgs are not a threat, either to the general public or to due process.
Sorry I’m late to the party. It was busy at work yesterday. Anyway to add my two cents…
My theory is that since for decades the SF&F field have been dominated white males we consider it “ours” and we’re not that keen on sharing. (This is OUR escapism – go find your own!) The existence of female fans and authors (including the founder of the genre) are conveniently forgotten about at worst and considered anomalies at best. It’s parallel to the “gurls can’t do science” cultural meme that’s been around for decades.
To be clear, I don’t agree with those attitudes – that’s just my thoughts on how SF&F got to unfriendly to non heterosexual white males. I’m with PZ in that I want to see more diversity in this fandom so it can grow and thrive. When I go to cons and there’s a sea of Caucasians I feel discouraged. The one time-victims of social isolation have become the victimizers, unwilling to let other disenfranchised groups in to find the same comfort and dreams we enjoy. I want more diversity. This isn’t a zero-sum game where more books by non-“traditional” authors means fewer books by “traditional” authors and those books aren’t going to go away. This is the 21st century. We have ebooks! If any of us wanted we could go to Amazon right now and within a few hours become a published author.
Sometimes I think the idea presented in SF&F where we’re free of sexism and racism is just lip service. There almost seems to be a disconnect between what “we” want to read about and what “we” want in real life.
Oh and sorry about the broad strokes. I put those words in quotes to indicate they are meant to represent the dominate face of SF&F culture for so long as popularized by our culture. I, for one, am glad that is changing.