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

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

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

That was the publicity story, but unfortunately (I loved his books) he became severely disabled by an encephalitis attack in 1987 and was unable to write after that. He plotted out the Raithskar books with Vicki Ann Heydron and wrote much of the first, but that was it.

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

[(Anonymous)]

Jonquil:

I remember hearing the news about Randall in the late seventies. The world lost a great Rabelaisian spirit, and a source of dreadful puns, when Randall was struck down.

Wikipedia says the encephalitis hit in 1979, which sounds about right to me. It lists 1987 as his date of death.

Raymond