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

Randall Garrett (with Vicki Ann Heydron) The Steel of Raithskar series

[(Anonymous)]

Writing tone is a tricky issue. On one infamous occasion, John Campbell Jr.’s story list for Amazing/Analogue was overcrowded with Randall Garrett stories. So Garret submitted a story under a nom de plume. He was delighted when Campbell pointed it out and told him, “Look at this story by a brand new writer. I wish you could come up with something that fresh and good.”

Personally, I never felt the Raithskar books tasted like Randall’s work. Not that that says much…see above.

As for joint authorship, look at the dates:
The Steel of Raithskar 1981
The Glass of Dyskornis 1982
The Bronze of Eddarta 1983
The Well of Darkness 1983
The Search for Ka 1984
Return to Eddarta 1984
The River Wall 1986

What professional writer will write a six book series entirely on speculation, without publishing them as soon as possible? (Yes, Lee and Miller did, during the interregnum. But that was because they couldn’t get them published. This was not Randall Garrett’s problem.) Invest all that effort in a series that may never bring in any money? Write six or seven books in the seventies and make no push to publish any of them until the eighties?

Writers don’t make a living that way.

Raymond