Comments on: Science Fiction: Women Do It Better

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:26:52 +0000

The science fiction community has all but ignored it, giving only passing mention of its James Tiptree Jr award win.

The fact that it won one major SF award and was shortlisted for another (the Arthur C Clarke Award) doesn’t sound like it was ignored by the community to me.

By: Erin

Erin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:25:32 +0000

I have long been quietly griping about wondering if I should look for Oryx and Crake in Scifi or Plain ‘ol Fiction?
Admittedly though after reading Stranger in a Strange Land I avoided the scifi section through most of my teenage years because I HATED the way women were portrayed, and unfortunately it delayed my introduction to Ender’s Game and Dune.
Daughters of the North is now definitely on the to-read list.

By: Emma

Emma — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:29:30 +0000

Interesting. There used to be a great science fiction comic for girls in the 70s or early 80s called Misty - maybe only in the UK, I’m not sure. It was drawn in the style of a teen romance comic but full of stories about inventor’s daughters who were actually robots etc. I think it was pretty popular - perhaps because it never openly labelled itself as sci-fi in terms of its aesthetic. The covers emphasized a sort of witchy Gothic horror instead.

By: Joanne McNeil

Joanne McNeil — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:46:44 +0000

That is a very good point. Maybe because horror movies are thought of — rather amusingly — as teenage date movies? It is an interesting comparison, especially as the list of women writing and filming horror is very, very small

By: Peggy

Peggy — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:09:57 +0000

Sounds like I’m going to have to find a copy of Daughters of the North - and Scott Westerfield is already on my “to read” list. The idea that girls (and women) don’t like science fiction is really self-perpetuating. It’s sometimes hard to admit to enjoying things that are considered outside the norm, so it becomes more socially acceptable for girls to disdain sci-fi than to admit to liking it. It doesn’t help that there is still a lot of marketing (especially for movies and TV shows) that is clearly aimed at young men. Interestingly, it doesn’t seem like horror is considered as “unfeminine” as sci-fi, even when it’s filled with gore. I’m not sure why that is.

By: Joanne McNeil

Joanne McNeil — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:09:13 +0000

Thanks for the recommendation! I’ll definitely check that series out

By: Guy Hermann

Guy Hermann — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:39:51 +0000

I am just reading a series of books my 13-year-old daughter loved–Uglies/Pretties/Specials by Scott Westerfeld. This is science fiction, but not technology fiction–the science is biology and psychology and appeals to a 13-year old girl because it is all about how appearance isn’t everything in a world where appearance is everything, but is also not what it appears. And this from a guy who started out writing “hard core” space opera. Lets have more like this!

By: Molly Lambert

Molly Lambert — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:47:05 +0000

yes yes yes, all of this is so right on

James Tiptree herself was subjected to the double standards. They worked in her favor because people took her writing much more seriously assuming she was a man. When her sex was revealed in 1977,

“Several prominent science fiction writers suffered some embarrassment. Robert Silverberg had written an introduction to Warm Worlds and Otherwise, arguing on the basis of selections from stories in the collection, that Tiptree could not possibly be a woman. And in an introduction to Tiptree’s story in his Again, Dangerous Visions anthology, Harlan Ellison opined that “[Kate] Wilhelm is the woman to beat this year, but Tiptree is the man.”