First off, Squiders, an announcement: starting Tuesday, I’m going to be running a series of posts (on subsequent Tuesdays) about fantasy races. I’m really excited about this one, because I’ve got the posts from the people who know the best: the people that choose to write them.
It’s really interesting to see why authors pick which fantasy staples they want to include, and how they change them to twist cliches and fit the story they want to tell. We’ll start with zombies next Tuesday.
Secondly, twitter led me to this post by Chuck Wendig about sexism and misogyny in writing and publishing. (I admittedly don’t regularly read Chuck’s blog, but I have always found it insightful when I do end up there.) The emphasis is sort of science fiction and fantasy in some places, especially the posts Chuck links to.
This is kind of one of those elephant in the middle of the room topics that people like to pretend isn’t there most of the time (along with the fact the covers tend to be “white-washed,” i.e., that even though the main character may be some minority, a white person is put on the cover because marketers apparently think that people only like to read about white people, or something). I admit I don’t think about it very often myself, so I’m interested to see what you guys think about the topic.
I’ve seen posts on the internet about women “ruining scifi,” and I occasionally run into that sort of people at conventions or other nerdy things (to which I say “Bah” because women have totally been into scifi forever), but it seems to be a small, vocal minority consisting mostly of angry older men. Other than that, it hasn’t seemed to affect me much. It may be because I’m just a small fry right now, doing indie and small press stuff. I have full control over things like my cover art. I may find, as I start reaching wider audiences, that this will become more apparent.
Anyway, thoughts, Squiders? Have you had negative sexist experiences, either as a reader or a writer? Do you feel like anything is changing, for good or bad?
