Proof Copy of the Day

[coalescent]

Item one: the difference in spelling between the front cover and spine.

Item two: "Female SF writers are a rarity; good ones even scarcer!"

If anyone wants to play guess-the-publisher before clicking through to the photos, feel free. That said, I'm still looking forward to reading it.

Comments

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

I realise that it's highly unlikely, given the gender wars that still seem to dominate the SF world, but could it be that the author's gender just isn't relevant?

Interesting that you don't seem to think they'd need to indicate if the author was a man :-p

[wishus.livejournal.com]

I know the author's gender isn't relevant to me, but I have a friend who, in his youth, wouldn't touch a book written by a woman, because he had read one book by Anne Macaffrey and "didn't like it". I always thought that was a weird way of making a book choice myself, but I read statistics in Mslexia about the reading habits of boys and I think his case is probably typical.

I think the lack of indication of Alex Bell's gender may be a case of 'don't tell, don't ask'.

... That said, my friend and I were talking about what he'd been reading lately a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him if he had read anything by China Mieville. He said he'd seen her name bandied about a lot but wasn't sure if she wrote his sort of thing.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

inamac thought the same, and I made no judgements at all about China's gender until I heard him on Radio 3. The fact is that I had heard of a couple of females called China but no males until Mr Mieville. Thinking that he was a she is not in the least surprising.

[ktempest.livejournal.com]

we live in a world where the shoulda coulda wouldas sadly do not dominate the sphere. It SHOULDN'T matter whether she's a woman or a man, but it totally does. And unfortunately the way to get to a time where author gender won't matter in some way isn't to merely declare gender unimportant and go blindly forward. (Not that you suggested such, I am just sayin')

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

My point wasn't that Alex Bell's gender is relevant -- I don't really think it is -- but that these are both debut novels from the same publisher, and one is marketed on the author's gender and the other is not. The point is not that Alex Bell's gender is relevant, but to ask why Gollancz thought Jaine Fenn's gender is relevant.

That said, having looked at all the Gollancz proofs I have sitting around, it is the only one not to mention the author's gender. Admittedly most of the others have non-gender-ambiguous names on them, but still.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Linguistic point...

I think the word you should be using here is sex not gender.

Sex is biological. Gender is a societal construct. I think you're discussing the sex of these authors not their gender.