In Which Yr Hmbl Hostess Has Not Had Enough Caffeine

[rolanni]

Bruce Sterling is trying to make a point over here.  Mind you, I’m not sure what his point is.  It sorta smacks of the old assurance from A Certain Male SF Writer that his female colleagues didn’t have to write fantasy!  They could, with only a little research, learn to write science fiction, too.

Lack of caffeine, right.

Anyhow, Mr. Sterling provides a list, lifted from a Must Read SF posting at The Galaxy Express, with the note that there is not a single male author appearing.  One of the authors listed is Steve Miller, who, last time I checked — quite recently, in fact — was male.  And an author.

When this was pointed out to Mr. Sterling, he amended his editorial to exclaim that there was a male author of half a book! on the list.

Since there were three books listed by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Mr. Sterling clearly can’t do arithmetic, either.

Back to the point of the thing.

If there is only a single male author of SFRomance on the list compiled by Galaxy Express, does that mean there are no men writing SFRomance?  I confess that I can’t think of a name — ref. lack of caffeine — but perhaps someone else can?

And!  If there are “no” men writing SFRomance, does that automatically make SFRomance an Inferior Form, as Mr. Sterling’s commentary seems to suggest?

Discuss.

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reminding me -- I just suggested:

ust for fun... what about

Poul Anderson, Operation Chaos
E.E. Smith -- Galaxy Primes, Skylark series?
Christopher Stasheff -- The Warlock in Spite of Himself series

Operation Chaos has a love relationship at its core -- and boy, is their relationship tested!
E.E. Smith -- both of those have some relationships involved. Admittedly, they are not very detailed about what goes on behind the scenes, but...
Stasheff, again, is based around a relationship -- between the interstellar agent and a witch (but it is not fantasy, exactly).

I know, I'm probably pushing the edges of what people consider SFR, but...

[(Anonymous)]

The first SF romance that came to my mind is the Warlock series. I also don't think it is what most people have in mind when they think of SFR.

Tanya

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

True -- but both of them are hiding secrets (I'm an interstellar agent, I'm a witch), they certainly have troubles, and they finally overcome and get together (as I remember -- it's in a box right now). And they live more or less happily ever after (although the rest of the series is about that more-or-less). I think it fits, kind of?