SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Stemming from a sidebar about nominations for the July 2021 Bookshelf, we are spinning off a debate on the make-up of the SFFBC reader population, SFF writer demographics, and, I guess I would call it, the "statistical tone" of the SFFBC bookshelf.

Mod/not-mod Anna led off with the following:
====================================================================
"(I know it says mod under my name, but this is not a mod post, this is an Anna post.)

"I'm looking at the group's 2021 stats. The last time this group read this many books (%) by straight, white (old) dudes was in 2016. The all time stats still favor men at 62% and straight white folks at 82%, so I would (again, as me, not as mod) very much love it if people kept that in mind when nominating and voting :)"
====================================================================

Mike, 7 hours, 20 min later:
====================================================================
Anna wrote: "(I know it says mod under my name, but this is not a mod post, this is an Anna post.)

I'm looking at the group's 2021 stats. The last time this group read this many books (%) by straight, white (old) dudes was in 2016. The all time stats still favor men at 62% and straight white folks at 82%, so I would (again, as me, not as mod) very much love it if people kept that in mind when nominating and voting :)"

In gentle counterpoint: Let's do a thought experiment. Let's make an invite list of SFF writers to a virtual convention.

We'd like to invite everybody, but the Clubhouse doesn't have enough blackberry brandy, chocolate, or broccolini, and the dead writers are a bit messy. We'll limit ourselves (1) living, (2) published something in the last 10 years, and the more the better, and (3) popular enough that our club would read them. So, basically, "recent" and "decent".

What's the breakdown of our crowd of recent and decent authors?Chances are it is less male, less straight, less white than ever before, but what are the numbers?

I don't know. My own gut feeling is that 60% (or 62%) male is likely, that more than 80% straight is likely (I can't guess about race but you are welcome to. Keep in mind that studies show you will likely OVERestimate the size of a minority population.)

So, no surprise there, I hope -- our choices align, roughly, with the spectrum of available choice. We're going to get some periods of the over-represented author groups, and some periods of the under-represented author groups.

So I would say, instead: nominate, like Anna, works that grow our author base, but vote not by author, but by whatever you want to get from SFF today. Even old straight white guys may have wisdom and inclusivity.
====================================================================

Anna:
====================================================================
Mike wrote: "So I would say, instead: nominate, like Anna, works that grow our author base, but vote not by author, but by whatever you want to get from SFF today. Even old straight white guys may have wisdom and inclusivity. "

I agree completely, it's just very frustrating to see the numbers default to old white dudes every time we stop pushing for something different :)
====================================================================

Mike:
====================================================================
Anna wrote: "Mike wrote: "So I would say, instead: nominate, like Anna, works that grow our author base, but vote not by author, but by whatever you want to get from SFF today. Even old straight white guys may ..."

I forgot to punctuate properly, like you: :)

Me too. And it's tough. I guess I could have been shorter and said "How much representation is enough?" although it sounds weird out-of-context. Where is there a "representation-neutral" point, where we know a book is written from a vantage of good inclusivity, but inclusivity lessons don't overwhelm a good story? Or do we all need books that teach right now, rather than books that please?

I don't know. I was raised old, straight, white, and male. I blame my parents. :)

Welcome AMG to the conversation:
====================================================================
Mike wrote: "Anna wrote: "Mike wrote: "So I would say, instead: nominate, like Anna, works that grow our author base, but vote not by author, but by whatever you want to get from SFF today. Even old straight wh..."

As a counterpoint to your counterpoint, I really enjoy seeing diverse nominations because I learn about excellent books that I never would have heard of otherwise because the genres are so dominated by straight, white men.

And because it's so dominated by that demographic, their books tend to actually be lower in quality, longer, less well-edited, and have fewer interesting ideas in my experience because they don't have to work as hard to get published/get attention. I'm obviously not saying every book by an white, straight male author is boring, but I personally haven't enjoyed most of the ones our group has picked nearly as much as the ones by other demographics.
====================================================================

Mike:
====================================================================
AMG wrote: "...I personally haven't enjoyed most of the ones our group has picked nearly as much as the ones by other demographics..."

I can certainly stand behind that.

AMG wrote: "... their books tend to actually be lower in quality, longer, less well-edited, and have fewer interesting ideas in my experience..."

...but this sounds like logical fallacy with a helping of confirmation bias to me.

AMMENDMENT to my original post here. Actually, my point is only half valid. Let's assume every* minority writing group is underrepresented in SFF. Or, more accurate, the need for the minorities' readers are not being met. NOW we definitely need to double-down. Like the real-life lunar landings, we overshoot the target at first, so when moon meets capsule at the end of the flight, we are in the right place. So, yeah, feed the hungry readers first, lean into the wind, whatever the metaphor, feel comfortable in leaning away from old, white, straight, male.

( * I know "every" minority gets us into reductio ad absurdium, pardon my Latin, because I don't know if we have, for example, any Armenian-American fantasy writers, or if an asexual protagonist would read any different than a 1950 Asimov protagonist (probably). But if the big minority groups get more, maybe we can healthier for every*one.)
====================================================================

And there it is... take the debate whither you willst!

In all honesty I more often than not, know next to nothing about a writers gender, age, race or religion and mostly I don’t care (the exception being writer’s who’s outspoken homophobic or racist)

I would never pick a book because the writer was of the same or not the same sex, race, sexual orientation or hair colour as me.

Somehow I feel this discussion diminish the effort of the writers, must be somewhat unsatisfactory to see readers being encouraged to read their work, not because it’s brilliant, but because it’s written by a member of a minority.

Lars wrote: "Somehow I feel this discussion diminish the effort of the writers, must be somewhat unsatisfactory to see readers being encouraged to read their work, not because it’s brilliant, but because it’s written by a member of a minority."

Why would that be unsatisfactory? Representation matters, and encouraging people to read books by under-represented authors can only be a good thing, especially for readers who would like to see themselves represented in the genre. If we have to deliberately read these 'minority' authors for the "wrong" reason in order to get them to a point of visibility for the "right" ones, I'm OK with that. But so often, that level of visibility is not there unless one knows exactly which corner of the rug to lift to find them.

I also question the "reading it JUST because it's by someone who is a minority author" thing. I don't think we've ever offered a situation where you could show you being "woke" by reading an objectively crappy book by someone out of the majority or read an objectively better book but be looked down on for choosing the white guys book. it's always been our attempt to offer books that are interesting. marketing is a recursive feedback loop of the majority leanings though, so sometimes you have to dig a little deeper than the award winners and front page of Amazon to find the good stuff "no matter race, gender or hair color" ;)

But I'm curious about your thought experiment, Mike. can you say it a bit differently? I'm not sure I follow entirely.

>Representation matters

This would be a stronger statement if we actively sought representation outside the axes of race, sex, and sexual orientation.

Baelor, I'm not sure what you mean by "we". I personally do seek that out in my own reading, and in the group's themes and mod polls, but we don't have stats of those, which is why I didn't include that in my original comment in the nomination thread.

you mean like age, nationality and religion? Good news! we do that too :)

oh and disability too. and gender/ queerness

Lars wrote: "In all honesty I more often than not, know next to nothing about a writers gender, age, race or religion and mostly I don’t care (the exception being writer’s who’s outspoken homophobic or racist)
..."

There is also a thought short-cut at work here. We talk about, in some form, the "author of minority X" when we also mean "the author who writes representationally about minority X".

So, true, it shouldn't affect us that Neon Yang is non-binary, that neither Andre Norton nor James Tiptree Jr. were ever male, or even that James S.A. Corey is actually two people (weird, huh?) But to have the author write about one's similar experiences in a very real way, that is good; those are the authors we want to read.

Does that change your position?

Over the years the majority of my SFF reading has been written by the proverbial straight white dude because that has been what tended to be presented to me. Now in my later years I thirst for stories that come from a different point of view, however that difference shows itself. What is a different POV for me might be an exact match for someone else. One of the many great things of this huge SFFBC is it’s diverse membership and the depth and breadth of it’s genre reading which brings fantastic recommendations and nominations of works that resonate with them. What I’m trying to say is that I’m all for encouraging the nomination and selection of a diverse range of quality books purely for the selfish reason that I want to expand my reading and know what my fellow SFF fans think and feel about them.

If you walk into any major bookstore you'll find all the most prominent authors nearly always in stock. Some of them will have multiple editions of the same book. Erickson, Sanderson, Goodkind, Tolkien, G.R.R.M., McCaffrey, Jordan, Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury, Jemisin, Rothfuss, M.Z. Bradley, Brooks, Rowling, Butcher, LeGuin.

Just of those random names I listed off the top of my head 5 are women, 12 are men, 1 is a poc. These authors are giants of the genre who are always guaranteed a spot on the shelf. It's a well-documented fact that women and authors of color have a much more difficult time getting published. Particularly authors of color. So, naturally there will be fewer books by them on the shelf. Bookstores, especially the big ones (I worked at one for years), are all about profit so they want to stock what sells and won't keep books that don't sell as well to take up valuable space. Lesser known books don't sell as well so they don't stay in stock as long and only one copy will be ever be in stock at a time. If someone buys it then it's not there for someone else browsing for something new to find. That means it misses out on potential sales and makes it even less profitable for the store. A lot of those decisions are made at a corporate level rather than the individual store so customer requests don't really make any impact.

So, it's much harder for lesser known authors to gain a following and much harder for readers to find out about them. Not impossible, but you often have to go looking for them specifically. Many of these authors are poc, women, LGBT+ authors who write specifically LGBT+ characters, and non-US/UK authors. How do they get a following? A big part of it is word of mouth, readers sharing exciting new books they've discovered, book clubs, and reading groups.

Does the author's demographic matter? I think in terms of perspective that a straight, cis, white, male majority is unlikely to have, then yes, it matters. Does that make it a better book? By itself, no, of course not. Does it offer the possibility of a fresh, original story? Absolutely it can. I personally get burned out on the same old thing; the same kind of characters, the same settings, the same mythology.

Well said Caillen, especially the last two paragraphs, couldn’t agree more.

Caillen wrote: "I..Does the author's demographic matter? I think in terms of perspective that a straight, cis, white, male majority is unlikely to have, then yes, it matters. Does that make it a better book? By itself, no, of course not. Does it offer the possibility of a fresh, original story? Absolutely it can. I personally get burned out on the same old thing; the same kind of characters, the same settings, the same mythology....."

This.
Thank you.

The real question is, *why* do we choose to read what we choose?

I don't read SFF to get more woke or to relieve feelings of guilt for being raised white in the US or because someone says that I should. I read SFF for different perspectives, interesting new ideas, explorations of alternate realities... and by definition I expect to see those wonders coming from authors with minority backgrounds.

If the author is not writing to the Sense of Wonder and the What If, it doesn't matter if she's a bisexual Nigerian or a deaf Tibetan or an autistic Peruvian... I'm not going to read their books just to get diversity points or to do my bit to raise their representation.


(I might read mainstream fiction for enlightenment about the experience of being 'different', and I definitely read as many of the new diverse picture-books that are flooding the market right now as I can, but that's a different discussion.)

I think we might want to think about the author's characters a bit, too.

Tiptree didn't write especially about women... in fact someone (Silverberg?) famously praised the new artist for having such a strong, masculine voice.

How old was Elizabeth Moon when she wrote Remnant Population?

How much does #OwnVoices matter?

Lars wrote: "In all honesty I more often than not, know next to nothing about a writers gender, age, race or religion and mostly I don’t care (the exception being writer’s who’s outspoken homophobic or racist)
..."

Echo above and add also mostly don't care about political bent or an agenda. Do I like the book or does it make me think and look up more depth on the topic? Lately my reading pattern has been tripping down memory lane (Rogue Moon, The Accidental Time Machine) and trying to find new material and different authors.

This group helps with that but I also found a long time ago that anthologies work very well for new to me material and authors. Are anthologies/collections hard to do as a BOTM?

Halfway thru The Best of World SF, Volume 1 which might be the first anthology I give a 5 star and recently finished A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers Almost all new material and authors with stories I like and that make me go to Google/Wikipedia.

Is the gender/race/sexual orientation/nationality of an author really important or even just relevant in what books we pick up? For me the answer is 'NO!'. Most of the time, I will concentrate on the general subject/concept of the book, its descriptive blurb and its cover in order to decide if I will buy a book or ebook, and will not research what kind of person the author is. The only thing I will check about an author is whether he/she is part of the short list of authors who disappointed me or infuriated me in the past and whose books I promised myself never to buy again. That is especially true about ebooks, where author biographical info is either limited or even unavailable.

John wrote: "Are anthologies/collections hard to do as a BOTM?"

Yes.

The question is not whether it changes the "value" of the book, but whether or not we are examining/following unintentional biases that make it harder for fans of the genre to engage, feel safe, and find voices that are meaningful to them. Of course we don't believe that any book is "worth" more or less due to immutable characteristics of the author, but I also don't believe that the only things worth reading are the classics, the popular, and the prolific. One version of equity-creation that is popular in American and British spheres right now is "harm reduction," which is to say what can I do to minimize the hurt caused unconsciously or structurally (i.e. culturally) to people who are not in the majority?

For us that's pretty simple, we just say hey, remember that new-to-the shelf authors from different backgrounds are out there and definitely worth getting onto a poll! Each time a group of our size pings library and commerce websites with the names/demographics that are not the big guns, we create a small tread that can become a path that can eventually turn into a well paved road to readership and success for those new to us authors!

Is the gender/race/sexual orientation/nationality of an author really important or even just relevant in what books we pick up?

100% YES. My scientist brain almost immediately went to all of the real world examples where mono-culture turns out to be extremely harmful: bananas, potatoes, cable companies, Hollywood movie studios, etc. And I realize this is likely to send us off on a wild tangent but this is the same thing.

The industry wants easy, we (most of us) want a choice. Unless we actively choose and promote different, we end up with easy( straight, white, male).

Making an effort to find and nominate non mono-culture books makes good long term sense. I think that is all Anna wants. We don't have to vote them in, we don't have to read them but if they aren't getting a mention they won't be there when we are bored with the status quo.

As a side note, we need some more male Romance writers too.

Hank wrote: "we need some more male Romance writers"

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall! <3

(I *know* you weren't looking for recs! :P )

Yes!! -isms hurt everyone! We need romance and YA written by men! We need hard scifi and military fantasy by women! We need NB and genderqueer folx to do all of the above! I want epic fantasy from every culture and subculture and cross culture and counter culture that can earn a wiki-entry! Find! Disseminate! Benefit!

:) I knew I was going to regret that last comment.

I will expect a 30 minute presentation on why Boyfriend Material is <3 <3 <3 by Hank next Sunday! (Altho I might have to miss this VBC, so next one instead?)

Michel wrote: "Is the gender/race/sexual orientation/nationality of an author really important or even just relevant in what books we pick up? For me the answer is 'NO!'. Most of the time, I will concentrate on t..."

It's only natural to think this way, but the thing is that even as a completely unbiased reader, one would still choose a vast majority of white male authors simply due to choosing among the things one is offered, sees reviews of, sees in bookstores, sees advertised, sees in the "customers also bought" window on amazon, and so on - simply because of how the system works:

For example, a few years ago, a female author made the experiment of sending her book concept/sample to a large number of agents, half under her own name, half under a male name (read details here: https://jezebel.com/homme-de-plume-wh...) The result: her fake male persona was apparently 8 and a half times "better" at writing the same book as she was herself. So this is the first point where the market filters your selection for you: agents.

Then come publishers who apply another bit of bias (not necessarily mean-spirited, could even be simple risk-aversion in terms of being afraid of publishing something a bit different, e.g. hard SF written by a woman). The calculation is simple and has been upheld since times that were much more sexist/racist than today: back then, e.g. male authored SF clearly written for a male audience and graced by half-naked women on the cover sold well. Open-minded publishers would also give some women a chance, but they didn't go all-out for those, usually: too risky financially. A small print run, a bit of publicity, let's see how it does.

Now how to magazines and book stores select which books to review/order? They look at the print run, along with prestige/status of author, and amount of marketing. The publisher doesn't believe in the book, has only printed a small number of copies, no publicity? Bookstores generally won't order it at all, and for certain won't display it in a prominent spot. In terms of magazine reviews: there have been many studies on how magazines, over many decades, have reviewed books by male authors much more often than books by female authors (add even more discrepancy between published vs. reviewed for POC).

Books by POC or about POC characters (or LGBTQ+ characters) were also often thought of as being "special interest", e.g. only interesting for a small number of readers, relegated to small special corners of the bookstore, tiny print runs, or simply not published at all.

This system tends to be self-perpetuating even when the underlying racist/sexist attitudes have changed, simply because businesses tend not to change winning systems. SF by men with male POV sold well in the past? Let's give this new similar derivative book lots of publicity, reviews, let's display it everywhere at airports, let's go all-out. Really good "diverse" SF book? "We adored this one so much, so let's at least print a small number of copies."

Same with literary prizes, by the way: lots of studies show that at least until a few years ago, women usually had to at the very least write from a white male POV in order to get them. And prizes yet again influence sales, influence printings, influence advances for future releases, and how much confidence publishers will have in similar works.

And this just goes on and on, it's self-perpetuating. It's like every book first has to pass through several layers of bias before you ever become aware of it. And even if you're the most unbiased person in existence, you'll just innocently think "oh yes, I've seen this book, I've read a review of this, the bookseller recommended it, everyone's talking about this one, let's see what the blurb says!" and out you go with your completely unbiased purchase - that was still influenced by so much bias you had no control over.

And as if this were not enough, there actually still are a few cavemen around who'll gleefully slap 1-star reviews on e.g. anthologies for SF written by women, along with a "cute attempt, lol". Causing Amazon to de-emphasize the book in your suggestions, moving it e.g. to page 1560 of your recommendations instead page 8.

So this is why so many people have been trying to counteract this self-perpetuating system a bit by deliberately focusing on books by diverse authors and women *in particular*. By showing publishers that we'll buy diverse books, showing reviewers that we want reviews of those books, by demonstrating that publishers can risk the financial investment of large print runs, big marketing campaigns, etc. *for the books they actually think are the best regardless of who wrote them* - otherwise nothing will ever change.

For so many years, so many people have been actively interfering with which books reach you and which ones were never published or you never heard about. Just look at e.g. Campbell actively excluding women's stories from anthologies, but even well-meaning people who simply didn't have much faith in your unbiased attitude and didn't want to risk putting a lot of money into books you might not buy.

I realize that in the short term, people will maybe be annoyed by the hyper-focus on the backgrounds of authors, and of course that's not the goal. Nobody wants to still have to constantly focus on someone's shade of skin color or gender etc.: that's the entire goal of doing so temporarily: so that it stops being an issue.

Anna wrote: "Hank wrote: "we need some more male Romance writers"

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall! <3

(I *know* you weren't looking for recs! :P )"

there are actually quite a few of them but they "hide" their names by using an alias.

For a while I was buying and reading predominantly female SF&F authors or books that had a female protagonist, but then I realized that I was guilty of being sexist and also potentially missing a lot of good books by ignoring male authors

Everyone should find their own happy medium, but the controlling definition of what constitutes majoritarian/sexist/racist/queer antagonist action now revolves around 1. different treatment on the basis of an immutable characteristic 2. a power differential between people separated only by that immutable characteristic. Ex. A straight white man vs. a straight Black man, a straight white man vs a gay white man and so on. That power differential is the thing we're struggling against--not the increase in one power OVER another group, but in a level playing field.

I'm also going to say that self-publishing has done a lot to level the playing field as an author does to have to get accepted by a publisher. I wonder what the statistics on Amazon for the number of authors ranked by male/female/binary is now compared to 20 years ago?

I feel like a lot of people see it as a restrictive thing, as if actively seeing out books by diverse authors means that you can't read anything else. That's not true at all. The majority of books I read are just whatever catches my interest and most of the time I don't pay a lot of attention to the author's gender or race or whatever else. I also put some effort into seeking out diverse authors in addition to what I would otherwise read. It all gets added to my tbr list and then, again, I read whatever catches my interest at the moment. If I only went by what was popular and most visible I would've missed out on so many really good books.

There isn't a quota, it's not white guilt, or wanting to be woke. Doesn't everybody love it what you find a hidden gem with a lesser known book? Making an effort to read books by diverse authors is just another way of finding those overlooked books, which very often tend to be by authors that are women, poc, LGBT+, disabled, international, and more.

Here here!

(PS, I am extremely pleased/proud/boastful about how great y'all are, that this club has differing opinions, folks who will considerately share them, and that no matter how an individual person conducts themself, their intention is to be kind and just. You give me faith in the internet!)

AMG wrote: "You said this so much better than I did. Thank you!"

Thank you! To be honest though, I only saw your post after I had posted mine and I felt redundant because I thought you said it better.

and I do have to say this forum has opened my eyes to some authors/books I wouldn't normally have read.

Eva wrote: "It's only natural to think this way, but the thing is that even as a completely unbiased reader, one would still choose a vast majority of white male authors simply due to choosing among the things one is offered, sees reviews of, sees in bookstores, sees advertised, sees in the "customers also bought" window on amazon, and so on"

Yeah, and I think when it comes to this, many people see reading as a form of entertainment, and when one's looking to be entertained, mindfulness when seeking out books with author/character representation can feel like "work."

Or it can at first, but after some time you know where to go trawling to easily find unique books by unique voices (that also happen not to be SWMs). Ideally we wouldn't have to trawl, though.

AMG wrote: "the way that Goodreads readers label almost every sci fi/fantasy novel by a woman as "young adult", even when the publisher and the author specify that it's a book geared toward an adult audience."

Even more prevalent when the author is both a woman and a PoC. It's appalling.

It needs to be remembered that people write books in a particular genre because they are themselves fans of the genre.

I've done no research into this but based solely on my own experience, I know lots of men who are massive fans of SFF but not many women. (My wife thinks it's weird.) I'm not for one moment suggesting this will be everyone's experience - clearly it won't - but it might be interesting to do some demo research.

What (for example) is the gender ratio of this group?

The question is further complicated by the fact (certainly in my country) that women are far more avid readers than men. Logically, there ought to be a lot more women published therefore, but it will differ from genre to genre.

Adrian, I remember a book discussion among my three sisters-in-law during a family gathering; they were gushing about these romance books. I chimed in about my love for sci-fi, fantasy and war stories; they looked at me as if I were a martian! Maybe it's just my generation, (I'm 52), who knows?!

Adrian wrote: "It needs to be remembered that people write books in a particular genre because they are themselves fans of the genre.

I've done no research into this but based solely on my own experience, I know..."

Is that really the cause, though, or is it an effect? I got into science fiction as a child and I had to get through basically all my childhood heroes who looked like me (women) being reduced to their body and to an accessory for a man's story at some point or another, the only remarkable exception being Ellen Ripley.
At that time, I had enough internalized misogyny to just roll with it, and as I grew, the genre grew, too. But things like that scare people off. Plus, there are still usually a few people in any scifi fandom who will tell young women their opinions are not valid or they cannot like a thing. I went though that myself and I can only try to imagine what it was and is like for poc or other marginalized groups.

And when I then, on top of it, read about the problems women (to stick with my example) have and had to be published, I really don't think it will solve anything to put the blame on them, as if they could do something about it. I mean, how many men do we know in the scifi genre who felt the need to publish their works under a female pseudonym or with abbreviated first names so that people would buy them? And how many women? There's your answer.

Also, I always bring up the existence of the "chick lit" genre. That's a whole genre that says "women write for women, men write for people". And I have read some serious low quality dick lit that was praised as the recent great fiction thing for all people. (Which is why I encourage everyone to create a "dick lit" bookshelf for those books, to make them visible.)

They've done some studies and found that it's generally 50/50 in SF and a female majority in Fantasy:
https://womensenews.org/2016/07/in-sc....
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1...

(Keep in mind that female readers - on average - buy more books per year, so that even in the second study on SF literature, which shows a demographics shift from 93.3% male in 1949 to 59% male in 2011, when one calculates in that the female SF readers buy more, the majority of SF books are bought and read by women now. Besides, 10 more years have passed since that study, giving rise to the phenomenon of booktube and tiktok reviews, and bringing many more female readers to the genre.)

Have a look at youtube and count the booktubers you read fantasy: despite of youtube being such a male-dominated platform, the vast majority of fantasy readers you'll find there are female.

In terms of the YA genre: this is also often chosen deliberately by author and publisher because it has somehow become a shortcut-label for "female/diverse" and readers who are seeking that will often just search in this genre instead of trawling for diversity in "adult" fiction.

Something that can also influence the results: many surveys group fantasy under "fiction" or "literature", or group Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, and romantic Fantasy or YA under "romance".

Overall, I'd say it's around 50/50 today.

Ines wrote: "I mean, how many men do we know in the scifi genre who felt the need to publish their works under a female pseudonym or with abbreviated first names so that people would buy them? And how many women? There's your answer."

...or end up having different pseudonyms/branding for different genres so their names don't "over-saturate the market"? or that end up having to change their nom de plume when their stuff under a certain name isn't selling well?

Ines wrote: "Adrian wrote: "I got into science fiction as a child and I had to get through basically all my childhood heroes who looked like me (women) being reduced to their body and to an accessory for a man's story at some point or another, the only remarkable exception being Ellen Ripley."

I did the same but as I was born in 1951, I had Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, Podkayne of Mars by Robert A. Heinlein, the Narnia Series, Princess Leia, The Witches of Karres, Anne McCaffrey, Jirel of Joiry by C.L. Moore and there were a lot of strong females in fairy tales and kids books like the Wizard of Oz series.

Beth wrote: "Ines wrote: "I mean, how many men do we know in the scifi genre who felt the need to publish their works under a female pseudonym or with abbreviated first names so that people would buy them? And ..."

Eleanor Hibbert is an example of having to have different names for different genres because the publishers didn't want her to release more than one a year. She was "Jean Plaidy for fictionalized history of European royalty; Victoria Holt for gothic romances, and Philippa Carr for a multi-generational family saga. A literary split personality, she also wrote light romances, crime novels, murder mysteries and thrillers under the various pseudonyms Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anna Percival, and Ellalice Tate". (Taken from Wiki and yes I know Wiki doesn't know everything and isn't a source but it is today). There are many other modern examples.

I didn't know that N K Jemisin was a woman let alone a poc when I bought her book on a recommendation. JK Rowling wrote under a male pseudonym with the Strike novels because they would have been judged differently if her own name was on them. And the JK on the Harry Potter books is no different.

And of course, CJ Cherryh. I read a slew of her books, and thought she was a male author.

I will echo Alison and admire the excellent conversation and then proceed to add no value to it....

@Michelle, are you a martian? Because that would be cool!

@Ines, I used the phrase "dick-lit" in a couple of my reviews and a few people had never heard it so I will make a consious effort to use it more although I avoid all chick/dick-lit as much as possible.

@ Eva - awesome statistics, thanks!

@AMG
I have read the REAL classics - they aren't very good
My science fiction is never hard enough (wow, that opens the wrong door)
I have issues with YA, lets not go there
What's a Valar?
I grok that last question

I agree that sci-fi/fantasy is particularly good right now, mostly becuase we are getting a ton of new voices :)

I was going to say my favorite SciFi writers are generally men. But then I started thinking through the books.. and some of my very favorite authors include Margaret Atwood, Connie Willis, and Jodi Taylor. Historically a lot more men wrote SciFi, but that has certainly changed over what, the last 20 years?

Jacqueline wrote: "Eleanor Hibbert is an example of having to have different names for different genres because the publishers didn't want her to release more than one a year."

my examples: Seanan McGuire, who wrote zombie SF and medical thriller SF as Mira Grant (and has another recent pseud that I can't recall). There are more obvious ones like Victoria Schwab/V.E. Schwab (though all her stuff gets dumped into YA anyhow because GR), Jennifer Armentrout/Armintrout/Jenny Trout.

changing pseuds due to flagging sales: Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison, Alis Rasmussen/Kate Elliott.

I'm sure there are many more for both.