No, No! Not Another Project! (Part II)

[faustus]

An interesting synchronicity:

There was a time in the 70s when it suddenly seemed that women writers were calling the shots, getting the attention and winning the awards. Le Guin, McIntyre... the list seemed endless at the time. The fiction was a series of telling subversions of that underlying dream. It was a bit like moving overworked muscles in a new direction, a relief.

We seem to have reverted to type. It's time at least to ask the question: is there something fundamental to the SF tradition that excludes many things women live through and write about? Or which tolerates those writers and their works while delivering an essentially masculine dream? Maybe in ORDER to deliver that masculine dream. Is this dream so deep and enduring that no amount of conscious political correctness can undo it? Is it the case that men find SF easier to write? Or do fine writers like Liz Williams, Gwyneth Jones, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Suzy McKee Charnas simply write material that is regarded as fantasy or slipstream and so doesn't make the cut?

Geoff Ryman on the male dominated Hugo shortlist. Something to add to the mix.

A form is beginning to take shape - I've got about 15 chapters to hang things on, if I decide to go thematic. (My mind has gone blank on 1970s American SF TV, but fortunately there's a book on TV SF which doesn't seem aware of non-US material so I can put that right.) I can't bear the thought of "In 1971... In 1972..."