Niall (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
coalescent) wrote2007-08-29 10:18 am
coalescent) wrote2007-08-29 10:18 am
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Have people learned NOTHING!!!
I am not asking for anti-sexist gender parity, nice as that would be. CYA anti-sexist gender parity would do just fine.
I am not asking for anti-sexist gender parity, nice as that would be. CYA anti-sexist gender parity would do just fine.
In trying to second guess you I note that the two "mistakes" I put in were women. I thought Maureen F. McHugh and Gwyneth Jones were more likely to help sell a collection than Lucius Shepard or Jeffrey Ford. (I've never even *heard* of Ford!)
But I am not going to assume there was definitely sexism involved. There could be many other reasons for chosing those names which might be perfectly innocent.
(stupid, ignorant, but innocent.)
But I am not going to assume there was definitely sexism involved. There could be many other reasons for chosing those names which might be perfectly innocent.
(stupid, ignorant, but innocent.)
Hmmm, the writers themselves were roughly 50/50 split between male/female AFAIK.
What gets me is it looks to me as though there was some effort made to solicit stories from women writers -- I mean, Maureen McHugh and Eileen Gunn are not (alas) hugely prolific, so I'm guessing they were asked for stories. But it's a bit pointless doing that if you're then going to slap a boy's own cover on the thing.
Huh, 4 for 5, my mistake being that I put in Lanagan instead of Nix. The lesson I take from this being that the choice of names is even more strongly oriented towards the US market than I'd thought - though this should've been obvious to me.
I think the logic was probably "put the biggest names on the cover". Whether or not the names chosen are indeed the biggest names, or whether it might have been better to sacrifice one or two of them to avoid leaving half the audience feeling shut out, I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Good grief ... back to the days of evry fule kno gurlz don't write science fiction.
There are fifteen stories, seven of which are by women. (Nine men in total, because one of the stories has two writers.)
That was roughly why I put Nix in :-)
Also, we've gone from zero original unthemed sf anthology series to three (Fast Fwd, Eclipse, and the Solaris book of SF) in under 12 months ...
Hah! Five for five! The best part is that, once I was done with my selections (which I made based on who I thought were the most recognizable names on the list), I looked them over and thought 'huh, no women.'
(By the way, Torque Control appears to be eating my comments. Any idea why?)
(By the way, Torque Control appears to be eating my comments. Any idea why?)
Nix is big over here, so far as I can tell. I know at least three people who are big fans of his, despite not being SF/Fantasy readers in general. By strange coincidence they're all women...
True; very good news. Now let's see if they're all sustainable.
(By the way, Torque Control appears to be eating my comments. Any idea why?)
No idea. I've rescued it, though.
No idea. I've rescued it, though.
A useful datapoint in itself. :)
I've never read a single story by Nix, but his name never fails to make the covers of anthologies he's in, which was why I ticked it.
This is where I reveal my ignorance: who is Peter S Beagle?
A fantasy author that Americans like. :-p
I've read one short story that appeared in (I think) F&SF, and I read Mister Monday and whatever the second one in that sequence is a couple of years ago. I wasn't blown away and have felt no need to pick up anything else by him. But the Sabriel/Lirael/Abhorsen trilogy is spoken well of by several people I know.
Huh. And isn't Nix a children's fantasy author?
So is this Eclipse 1 essentially a magazine in book form? Are we going to see 2, 3, 4, etc? Is this the future?
So is this Eclipse 1 essentially a magazine in book form? Are we going to see 2, 3, 4, etc? Is this the future?
"put the biggest names on the cover".
This was how I voted.
This was how I voted.
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