Size / / /

Earlier this week, occasioned by the launch of the British Library's "Out of This World" science fiction exhibition (about which more another time, hopefully), there was a discussion on the BBC Radio 4 show Woman's Hour about whether, or why, science fiction is still a male-dominated genre. It was a good discussion, featuring Gwyneth Jones, Farah Mendlesohn, and Karen Traviss; the programme webpage is here, and you should be able to listen to the discussion here for a few more days yet. Part of the discussion focused on the relative situations of the market in the US and the UK, with Farah Mendlesohn arguing (rightly, I think) that the current UK market is not hospitable to women writing sf.

Earlier today, Damien G. Walter posted about the results of an informal poll of favourite sf carried out at the Guardian which, Nicola Griffith notes, points up the inequality quite dramatically:

Yesterday, in the Guardian , Damien G. Walter asked readers to list their favourite sf. And they did. In a follow-up blog piece, Walter estimates that more than 500 books were mentioned. I scanned the Guardian comments--yes, all of them--and counted only 18 women's names. Eighteen. Out of more than five hundred.

She calls for action, and for data:

Once this bias against women in sf was named in the Twitter conversation we were able to move on to the beginnings of what I hope will become a fruitful discussion of how to mitigate said bias. I want to continue that positive discussion here. To begin with, we need numbers: ratios of women/men being published as sf in UK, US, Canada, India, New Zealand, Australia, and other English-speaking territories. Ratios of historical publication of same. Reviews of same. Of book format. Of cover design. Of sales. Of awards. And so on. Anyone got any of that to hand?

Some resources have already been provided in the comments; more would no doubt be welcome. And next weekend, I'm going to be on a panel at the BSFA/SFF AGM event, with Shana Worthen, Tricia Sullivan and Pat Cadigan, about "Women writers, science fiction and Britain in 2011", which will be an opportunity to continue the discussion. The day is free and open to anyone, not just BSFA/SFF members, so do come along if you're interested.



Niall Harrison is an independent critic based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is a former editor of Strange Horizons, and his writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Science FictionFoundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books and others. He has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Guest of Honor at the 2023 British National Science Fiction Convention. His collection All These Worlds: Reviews and Essays is available from Briardene Books.
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
Issue 18 Mar 2024
Strange Horizons
Issue 11 Mar 2024
Issue 4 Mar 2024
Issue 26 Feb 2024
Issue 19 Feb 2024
Issue 12 Feb 2024
Issue 5 Feb 2024
Issue 29 Jan 2024
Issue 15 Jan 2024
Issue 8 Jan 2024
Load More
%d bloggers like this: