Women Science Fiction Authors!

Being a guy, I have sometimes fallen prey to my guyness. I would like to think that I have always been a progressive thinker, always supported civil rights for all, equal pay, equal opportunities etc. And yet I must admit that when I was younger I did carry a bias against reading women science fiction writers. I mean, I was a guy. I was into guy things. I don’t think I even knew I had this bias at the time. I just never seemed to pick up anything written by women. I also don’t think I was alone in this. I think it was (and is?) common for young men to gravitate only to male writers. I don’t think the converse is necessarily true. I don’t think young women only try to read female writers, though never having been a young woman, I can’t say for sure.

I guess some chinks started to appear in my male bias armor when my roommate convinced me to read Ursula K. Le Guin. There was a PBS dramatization of The Lathe of Heaven, which I really liked (the one with Bruce Davidson from the horror film “Willard” fame). So I decided to start reading that one. I enjoyed it so I then went on to read The Dispossessed, which was okay, but nothing for me to get too excited about. Then for a college sociology class I read The Left Hand of Darkness, which I liked better.

Still after that, I was not reading an awful lot of female writers, until about ten years ago when I decided to take on a new project for myself. I decided to read every science fiction novel that had won the Hugo or Nebula Awards. The Hugo Awards are given out by the World Science Fiction Society, and the Nebula Awards are given out by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. These are the two most prestigious awards given for science fiction and fantasy. In setting the task of trying to read every novel that earned one of these awards, I was opening myself up to writers that I had never read before. This is a good thing, as one tends to get stuck in one’s own rut and read the same people over again.

Just because a book has won an award, does not mean that I am going to like it. In fact there were some of the winners that I did not care for (no, I am not going to tell you which ones I didn’t like). Doing this meant I was exposed to a lot of female writers because a lot of female writers have won one or both of these awards.  Again, some of them I did not care for and did not read any more from them. But some of them I really liked, and some of them I loved. I have now read almost everything that Connie Willis and Lois McMaster Bujold have written.

In the case of Willis, the first book I read was To Say Nothing of the Dog which was funny and engaging. I had no trouble falling for this book. It is in the middle of her Oxford time traveler series which I talked about in another blog. In the case of Bujold, the first book I read was Mirror Dance which is in the middle of her Vorkossigan series. With Willis’ series, I don’t think it matters where in the series you start. But if you want to read the Vorkossigan series, I do not recommend starting where I did. There was such a rich backstory that I was missing. It made it hard to fully connect. After Mirror Dance I didn’t read any more of Bujold’s books for a while. Then one day I was strapped for something to read and I found The Warrior’s Apprentice at the library and read it. Everything clicked for me with the series from that point on. The Vorkossigan saga is now one of my most favorite series ever.

So, what’s the lesson to be learned? Examine your biases, both conscious and unconscious. Take chances on writers that you have never read before. If I had not done so, I would have missed out on some transformative experiences. So examine your limits and stretch them. You will thank yourself down the road.  

. . . and . . . It's here! My novel Starliner is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, or Amazon.com. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out in October 2019.

Link to Star Liner