This is the photo the Guardian used to illustrate an article on how women are overlooked in SF

[james_davis_nicoll]

Comments

[movingfinger]

Oh FFS...

[kaffy_r]

What, what?

[missingvolume.livejournal.com]

Lazy reporting and using star power to get get more clicks. Typical

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

I suspect that it's more lazy editing - the writer wouldn't have chosen the photograph or, probably, the headline.

And there's a hint of a connection to the article's topic, since Walter mentions Mary Shelley, and this picture is taken from the recent theater production of Frankenstein.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

And how many people think "this was written by a woman" when they see the play?

Intentional or not, it does fit the topic quite well.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

Honestly? I would have thought a lot, but I could be wrong.

And in a way I do think that the picture illustrates the article's point. I'm trying to think of a sufficiently recognizable woman whose picture would be even tangentially related to the article's topic, and I'm drawing a blank.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

You know there are people who try to claim she didn't write it? Because it's famous and women cannot have written famous books. Other people defend her authorship by claiming it's kind of a crap book and of course women can have written those.

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

Only, I wouldn't have realized the picture was from a Frankenstein production unless I devoted some time to puzzling it out.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I guess that might be sad for people who don't actually read the article, or at least the caption for the photo, and who also have no sense of irony.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

because if a woman was in charge, the stitchery on the monster would be so much better?

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

+1

[nelc.livejournal.com]

ulie Crisp of Tor books – one of the UK's leading SF imprints – added to the discussion recently with a data-driven blogpost that seemed to shift the responsibility back to women writers. Of 502 manuscripts submitted to Tor, only 32% were from women, and those which were submitted were predominantly fantasy – either epic or urban – not science fiction.

Well, that's strange, I thought it was because women sci-fi authors didn't sell in the UK?

Although, if the publishers have been putting that about — as they were at EasterCon a year or so ago — then it's no wonder that they're not getting many manuscripts from women.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

For this discussion, useful numbers that are not simply context-free statistics for the overarching categories of fantasy and science fiction (NB there is obviously slosh between the categories, but most works will trend toward one or the other) would include:

-M/F breakdown of slush pile manuscripts over, say, 25 or 30 years (to encompass pre-digital, traditional publishing)

-M/F breakdown of agented submissions, same time period

-M/F breakdown of acceptances, both of those categories

-M/F breakdown of high, low, median, and mean advances paid to authors

-M/F breakdown of in-house costs (to resolve the question of whether publishers support authors differently by sex), similarly with high, low, median, and mean amounts spent

-M/F breakdown of sales figures


Because this is really about money. About whether women are getting the same access to an income-producing opportunity as men, or whether bias is affecting the overall likelihood that a woman who writes science fiction will be published at Tor.


Don't tell me those numbers are hard to get. Money is tracked. With computers, even. The slush numbers will be tricky, but someone must keep track of names and initials-only authors can be either split down the middle between the two groups, excluded altogether, or assigned otherwise. If slush numbers aren't available, perhaps this is something a publisher should be thinking about looking at. If women are not even bothering to send a publisher work, that publisher may have a problem they don't want to own up to.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Someone on the flist pointed out, incidentally, that the production illustrated decided that Frankenstein would be improved by the Creature graphically raping Elizabeth before killing her.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

It used to be jello that there was always room for...

[chomiji]

Ow, ow, ow!

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

It is at least slightly more relevant than using a picture of China Mieville.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

There are probably still a lot of people who have no idea that China Mieville is a man.

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

I only discovered it after reading a couple of his books, the second of which had a female protag. Don't remember where I learned it, but it wasn't obvious to me just from the name.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

In that particular context, I'd assume the picture meant "Oh, crap! There's a WOMAN over there!"

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Frankenstein's monster was assembled from various bits, so how do we know it's a he?

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

The first unit, Adam, was not merely given masculine pronouns but was sufficiently operationally male that he wanted a wife, and Dr. Frankenstein thought this was biologically practical...although it eventually occurred to him that building a wife out of spare parts might not be a good idea.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

Early 19th knowledge of genetics betrayed him - if he'd known about DNA, he would be aware that if Adam and (Eve?) did manage to mate, they'd produce perfectly normal human brats.

(I once imagined a setting for a surviving race of Frankensteins: their kids are killed and revived at adolescence as a "rite of passage" not all of them make it through...)

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

He reportedly has an enormous schwanstucker.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Blücher!