He twisted his fingers together as though emphasizing his alienness, every one of them looking like a slender thumb, and she thought his hands looked like a big, black spider wriggling at the end of its thread.

To find out, I compiled a database of stories published in the Big Four from 1980 through 2001, identified gender for as many authors as I could, and examined trends.

As it has been five years since I collected data for the original article, I decided to reexamine the topic of women publishing short fiction by obtaining actual submission data.

If Superman stands there and proudly declares his devotion to one particular faith, a lot of readers might not be all that thrilled, and might stop reading—though if he proclaimed a belief in the Kryptonian gods, it probably wouldn't matter as much, since they're entirely fictional.

The seeds immediately sprout acres of jays