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

[hakuen]

There seem to be more men capable of writing romance that doesn't suck on the Fantasy side of SFF. I can think of a few there. But on the SF side, it's like a wasteland of either very dry stories or very badly executed female characters, and likewise bad attempts at romance with them.

I've looked through a few "greatest SF books of all time" lists, and they're 95% stuff that bored me to sleep or pissed me off (mainly related to how women were treated in them). About the only book tending to show up on those lists that I like is Ender's Game.

If short story writers count, James H. Schmitz could be added to the list? They were pretty Nancy Drew-ish, but there was some good romance in there as well as a lot of the stories just kicking butt in general, in their charming old-school way.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Good call! The Witches of Karres is generally considered SF, I believe.

[jedai.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

Did you try to read Jack Vance ? Marvellous teller of tales from all I could read, and there's a lot of relationship stuff in his works though he's especially great at world building.