Women in Science Fiction & Fantasy Month, 2015

May 3, 2015 4:24 PM

Every April for the past several years, Fantasy Cafe has published a series of guest posts for Women in Science Fiction & Fantasy Month. This year, the article that generated the most discussion was "'I am ... ?': Representation of Mature Women in Fantasy" by Mieneke from A Fantastical Librarian, who asked, "So where are the older women in fantasy? Mature women who are the hero of their own story?" The many other guest posts this year offered an interesting range of questions, observations, and reflections--often by well-known names in the field.

Week 1

• In "Some Assembly Required: Recommendation Lists for a More Inclusive Fandom," Renay from Lady Business encouraged readers to update the Big Giant 2014 List of their favorite SF&F by women.
• Rachel Hartman, author of Seraphina and Shadow Scale, explained a key point from her world-building process in "The Gods Roll the Dice: Inventing a Gender System."
• Genevieve Valentine, author of books such as The Girls at the Kingfisher Club and currently the writer of DC's Catwoman, contributed "The Right Hand of Light, a personal appreciation of Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness.
• In her recap of Week 1, Kristen from Fantasy Cafe mentioned two items of interest: Kari Sperring's Strange Horizons article, "Matrilines: The Woman Who Made Fantasy: Katherine Kurtz," and the fact that the 2014 Tiptree Award Winners had been announced (along with a noteworthy Honor List of other works to consider).

Week 2

• Brenda Cooper, author of The Silver Ship and the Sea among others, presented a few relevant reading recommendations in "Women Kick Science Fictional Ass."
• A. C. Wise, SF/F short fiction writer and columnist on women in SF/F, had some suggestions about new authors to look out for in "Women in SF&F Month: Debut Authors."
• In a post that's both a book review and a "love letter to science fiction," Tiara from The Bibliosanctum commented especially on The Feminine Future: Early Science Fiction by Women Writers, a recent anthology collecting stories published from 1873 to 1930.
• Urban fantasy author Nicole Peeler considered how much Mercedes Lackey's Diana Tregarde series had been inspirational to her in "I Knew I Wanted to be a Witch When I Grew Up."

Week 3

• Posting on "twelve women whose comics work I love," Memory from In the Forest of Stories highlighted women creators whose comics are both old and new, well-known and obscure (including Rachel Hartman's early work, Amy Unbounded).
• Alison Croggon, author of The Books of Pellinor series, remarked on #womenwritefantasy and the reasons it had to be said once more.
• In "Mind of Her Mind," Wendy from The Bibliosanctum expressed her appreciation for Octavia Butler and the ways Butler's work shaped her own point of view.
• Michelle Sagara, author of the Chronicles of Elantra series and much more, published an essay that began "I don't write romance," expressing respect toward romance as a genre and exploring dilemmas that genre categorizations/associations have created for her as a writer and as a person.
• In "So You Think Women Don't Like SF/F ...," Lisa from Over the Effing Rainbow listed five bloggers/writers/podcasters that deserve a following for their reviews, interviews, and commentary on current SF/F.

Week 4

• Marjorie M. Liu, writer for several Marvel Comics titles, author of two series of urban fantasy / paranormal romance novels, and writer/creator of the upcoming Monstress, assembled a short list of "comics written and drawn by women — books that I absolutely love."
• Leah Petersen, author of the Physics of Falling series, addressed the value of representing mental illness and disability in SF/F in her short essay, "Finding the Fantastic through Depression."
• Genevieve Cogman, author of The Invisible Library, reflected briefly on her gradually dawning realization, as a young reader, of what the issues were with the representation of women in SF/F.
• In "Science Fiction Book Covers — Are They Different for Female Authors?" Kelley from Oh, the Books! raised an interesting question and left the answer to the reader to contemplate.
• Karen Miller, author of a number of fantasy series and Star Wars novels, contributed "Women Writers Are Awesome," which listed a great many of her personal favorites both as a child and as an adult.

Week 5

• Karina Sumner-Smith, author of the YA Towers Trilogy, responded with mature hindsight to a comment a man made to her in a bookstore when she was a girl: "I Don't Read Books by Women."
• Frequent Hugo & Nebula nominee Aliette de Bodard offered a personal appreciation of Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles and, in particular, the impact that The Game of Kings has had on her own work.
• Danielle L. Jensen, author of the YA epic fantasy Malediction Trilogy, remarked briefly on different audiences and audiences for difference in YA vs. adult fantasy.
• In "Epic Female Protagonists Written by Women," Cecily from Manic Pixie Dream Worlds and the SF/F short fiction feed @SFFMicroReviews listed a dozen great female protagonists in SF/F by women--mostly recent work and a good mix of novels and short fiction.

posted by Monsieur Caution (22 comments total)

My tablet and I will be very busy the next few weeks. Thank you for putting this together.
posted by Fizz at 4:45 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

The idea that women only write romance—and, by extension, do not write real science fiction or fantasy—was (and remains) ridiculous.

[...]

Neither is male-authored SF a genre without romantic entanglements.

From the article by Karina Sumner-Smith.

This is an attitude that I've encountered before -- women write romance, and that makes their works trivial and feminine. But romantic subplots in stories authored by men are somehow not counted as romance; instead, if they're noted at all (or if you point it out), they're just part of what makes a story more epic, characters more human, or whatever.

If you really press, people might claim that woman-authored books present romance from a feminine point of view. I've never really had success in arguing that even if that's true, male readers should be open to different points of view. People always resort to "it's just a personal preference," as if that personal preference is totally divorced from the way our society views male viewpoints as universal, and female viewpoints as "for ladies."

Besides, I'd argue that -- at least among writers with a skill for characterization who don't write horribly male-gaze-y "Ariana considered her young, perky breasts in the mirror" type scenes that totally fail to get into female characters' heads -- it's pretty hard to distinguish who's male and who's female, beyond relying on the statistical probability (if there's a difference, like in romance).
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 4:54 PM on May 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

Ctrl - Fs for CJ Cherryh

finds nothing

googles 'grumpy emoji'

her Chanur series is actually really good and gritty political sci-fi in the Traveller vein and manages to present a sophisticated analysis and refutation of societal sexism through the medium of ragingly misandrist giant space cats.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:16 PM on May 3, 2015 [13 favorites]

Rosemary Kirstein!
posted by triage_lazarus at 5:19 PM on May 3, 2015 [5 favorites]

Thank you Monsieur Caution for this great post and your recommendations in the Hugo thread. I just finished two new books you recommended and feel like my reading life has been revitalized!
posted by Measured Out my Life in Coffeespoons at 5:41 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

the medium of ragingly misandrist giant space cats

So sort of like the opposite of reading a Man-Kzin Wars anthology volume?
posted by brennen at 6:13 PM on May 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

Thanks for posting. This post is a fantastic (in both senses of the word) resource.
posted by misterbee at 6:19 PM on May 3, 2015

I should be entirely unsurprised that someone else beat me to the obligatory Man-Kzin War gag.

This post was good and you should feel good, Monsieur Caution. Lots of reading to catch up on...
posted by Alterscape at 7:10 PM on May 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I already interrupted things I was reading in order to read things from the other thread! (Thank you!)
posted by rtha at 9:06 PM on May 3, 2015

Let me try this. I think I know how this works.

Metafilter: manages to present a sophisticated analysis and refutation of societal sexism through the medium of ragingly misandrist giant space cats.
posted by rankfreudlite at 9:17 PM on May 3, 2015 [7 favorites]

So sort of like the opposite of reading a Man-Kzin Wars anthology volume?

Um, no. More like a series written by someone with intelligence and empathy.
posted by SPrintF at 11:36 PM on May 3, 2015

I'm too busy to post, but this is kinda relevant to the topic: RIP Grace Lee Whitney, Star Trek's Yeoman Janice Rand.
posted by Mezentian at 1:48 AM on May 4, 2015

a sophisticated analysis and refutation of societal sexism through the medium of ragingly misandrist giant space cats.

#notallgiantspacecats.

It's of course also Master of Orion fan fiction.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:44 AM on May 4, 2015

this is a good post and you should feel good

some mature heroines that come to mind: Thursday Next, who after the first 2 books basically skips a significant portion of young adulthood and has teenage kids (I am not sure if that counts as "mature" but she is seriously juggling life/work/kid stuff so I think it should), Clara from The Dagger and the Coin (one of my favorite characters in anything I've read recently and I read, like, all the time), Avasarala from Caliban's War (badass grandma who is regularly the only woman in the room and has to get warmongering dudes to cut their shit out). Those are all written by men though! There are others that I can think of who feel like, you know, actual adults and not the young adults who are standard heroes or the teenagers who are the standard YA heroes, but I am not sure what "mature" means. I feel like Toby in The Year of The Flood should count?
posted by NoraReed at 3:38 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I am still to work my way through these links, but Ruby, the Galactic Gumshoe seems relevant.

In "So You Think Women Don't Like SF/F ...,

Is this a thing? Because the whole Fake Geek Girl thing aside, I have never known this to be the case since high school.
posted by Mezentian at 3:53 AM on May 4, 2015

I am going to have to take some sick days if I want to work through all of these links!

Also, WRT to women characters written by women, there are a lot of important women in the Vorkosigan books (which are written by a women), but perplexingly few in the Earthsea books by LeGuin.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:26 AM on May 4, 2015

In "So You Think Women Don't Like SF/F ...,

Is this a thing?

A lot of it relies on defining "real" SF/F in a Sad Puppies kind of way: "Oh, sure, women like that True Blood crap, but that's not real SF/F; it's just romance novels with vampires."
posted by Etrigan at 6:31 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's of course also Master of Orion fan fiction.

Now if we can just get some Master of Magic fanfic up, my dream of literature based on old Microprose 4X games will be realized.
posted by zombieflanders at 6:48 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

I think the "So you think women don't like SF/F ..." article takes off from a loose translation of a gloss of a specific comment someone made several years ago, so I'd explain the title as esprit de l'escalier framing that leads in to some reasonable recommendations. But I don't doubt the framing has a referent. In support of one of the other articles, I'll add that I had an SF/F-reading colleague drop the "I don't read books by women" bomb on me just last year in exactly those words.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 7:15 AM on May 4, 2015

W/rt the "Women don't like SF/F" thing:

I was standing in front of the SF/F section of a used bookstore some years ago, scanning the shelves for anything that wasn't the same old regurgitated crap. Probably looking for Cherryh or Bujold, or for something that reminded me of Cherryh or Bujold.

Some guy came up next to me, and without even saying Hello, announces, "I bet you're just looking for fantasy novels, right?"

I was kind of flabbergasted and of course couldn't think of anything to say other than a weak, "Looking for something well written, actually..." and moved away as soon I gracefully could.

(The sad thing is, I suspect he was hitting on me, which I gotta say, guys: THIS IS NOT THE WAY TO DO IT.)
posted by suelac at 11:13 AM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

Ctrl - Fs for CJ Cherryh

finds nothing

googles 'grumpy emoji'

In a different thread I indicated my appreciation of her works. In the early 90s There was a period in which I made sci-fi my main read. CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station was the novel that instigated it. I also recommend Angel with the Sword, if you like believably constructed settings and cultures. This novel is set in a Venice-like society, modeled in time-frame, seemingly, like 14th century Europe.
posted by rankfreudlite at 3:46 PM on May 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

" Representation of Mature Women in Fantasy":
my current roles models are Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg from Terry Pratchett's Disc world series.
I give his Tiffany Aching witch books to every young woman in my life.
posted by Mesaverdian at 5:31 PM on May 4, 2015 [3 favorites]