Sci Fi Author Shocks World With GIRL Protagonist!

[james_davis_nicoll]

Your next book will have a woman as the central character. Given that “gender wars” in science fields is still a contentious topic, why did you decide to go with a lady lead? What kinds of challenges does your protagonist face, and does her gender play any role in those challenges?

I don’t take part in any political debates. So I’m certainly not trying to make a point by having a female lead. She’s just a character I came up with that I thought was cool, so she’s the lead.

The book is another scientifically accurate story. The main character is a low-level criminal in a city on the moon. Her challenges are a mix of technical/scientific problems, as well as juggling personal interactions—staying a step ahead of the local police, working with shady and dangerous people to do illegal things.

She doesn’t encounter any distinctly “female” challenges. There’s no love plot. And the story takes place in a future society where there is practically no sexism.

Comments

[colliemommie.livejournal.com]

A "lady lead"?!?

JFC.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

A future society radically unlike any other human society in history, then.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Gender wars is? Pffft. Everyone knows it's "gender wars be."

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Will some of Andy Weir's friends come and get your boy? Please? I know I know people in the Bay Area who overlap with him, who seem to have a damn lot more sense than he does.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

She doesn’t encounter any distinctly “female” challenges. There’s no love plot.

Who knew romance was a distinctly female challenge?

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

Where did the Smithsonian (the Smithsonian!) find an interviewer so blinkered by Golden Age of SF-era gender preconceptions that he thinks attempting to write about a "lady lead" is some kind of startling and unprecedented move? Weir himself sounds positively non-retro by comparison.

[loyseofverlaine.livejournal.com]

"a future society where there is practically no sexism"?

He pulls that off, and I'll buy it in hardcover. At full price.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

I confess my first a question in the book was "So how is Weir going to deal with the physiological effects of low gravity? "

Because I guess I'm just used to stupid questions about gender, it took a few minutes to register.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

This just in: SOME people are able to make a list of "favorite [people in my field]" that does not suffer from the usual sausage-fest fairy:

http://espn.go.com/espnw/voices/article/15291897/remembering-prince-promotion-celebration-women