Anthology bashing is sometimes necessary

Feminism, science fiction
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The debate about science fiction and fantasy’s inherent gender imbalance (particularly acute in the UK) is rumbling on and one of the latest flashpoints has been the editing of the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, yet another anthology series heavily skewed towards male contributors. Rose Fox has probably the best summing up of the whole conflagration, the ebb and flow of which is intensely familiar to everybody familiar with Racefail two years ago. The editor of the series is called out, defends himself, more people chose sides, rhetoric gets overblown on both sides and it all gets a bit heated with the original point obscured. Which in turn prompts Cheryl Morgan to go meta and explain why these sorts of contratempts are counterproductive:

Before going into the specific issue at hand, let me say that I think anthology bashing is not terribly helpful. Looking at a single anthology, you have no idea where the real problem lies. It could be the editor, it could be the publisher, it could be the submissions, you can’t tell. Also, just as an individual’s reading and voting habits are more likely to be a product of cultural conditioning than of conscious sexism, so an individual editor is more likely to choose stories based on cultural conditioning than a deliberate intention to exclude a particular group of writers. The objective of pointing out gender imbalances (or any other sort of imbalance) should be to encourage people to examine their cultural conditioning, not to decide who we are going to burn at the stake.

I disagree.

Yes, these confrontations are unpleasant for everybody involved, but if you are worried about the gender imbalance in science fiction and would like to see more women being published, than you do need to rake editors over the coals when they produce female free anthologies. That the whole sf&f publishing field is guilty doesn’t excuse individual failure; blame is a renewable resource. It doesn’t matter why a given anthology has few or no female contributors, only the end result matters. Just like readers like me need to address their biases in chosing who they read, so editors need to work towards getting more female writers published if they care about the gender imbalance of fantasy and science fiction. It’s hard is not an excuse to not do this.

And especially because the majority of editors and publishers isn’t consciously deciding to be sexist and to ignore women, it’s important to call them out on their subconscious but systemic biases. Each controversy like this carries the message that it’s wrong to publish anthologies skewed towards male writers, that you will need to pay attention to which writers you approach and accept submissions from, or you might find yourself in the centre of a shitstorm. Confrontation and “anthology bashing” are necessary tools, if not always the right tools…

All of which also means that, if you’re a reader concerned about the huge gender imbalance in science fiction, you should not buy any anthologies that makes this worse. I therefore won’t buy any anthology that isn’t at least forty-sixty percent women-men. No matter how good it is.

Feel old now!

economic crisis, Music, video
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This is thirty years old now:



unemployment is rife. The political and economic parallels between Britain in 2011 and 1981 may be self-evident, but musical reactions to today’s tempestuous times are conspicuous by their scarcity. Thirty years ago, however, there was one anthem that defined that summer of discontent. On 11 July 1981, the Specials’ “Ghost Town” hit the top of the charts, where it stayed for three weeks – the day before it reached No 1, rioting erupted across Britain. It was an elegiac portrait of the band’s Coventry home town, but its message resonated far beyond the Midlands, chiming with a country feeling the bite of Thatcherite cuts and galvanised into unrest by April’s Brixton riots. “Government leaving the youth on the shelf … No job to be found in this country,” Neville Staple and Terry Hall memorably sang to a backdrop of strident brass, haunted-house organ and loping bass, the groove’s eerie Middle Eastern flavour as unsettling as the lyrics. Meanwhile, to compound the disquiet, the video offered a road trip through post-apocalyptically empty London streets.

Dell Comics indoctrinates America’s children with godless evolution!

Creationism, funny
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introduction page of a Dell four color comic defaced by creationist

Here we have Dell sneaking through godless evolution in the introduction to the Dell Four Color adaptation of the long forgotten Columbia Pictures Underwater City b-movie, but luckily one brave free thinker has managed to set the record straight through some on the spot correcting. Click through for a bigger version.

I’m not sure what would be more sad/hilarious. That whoever “corrected” this was the child who got this comic originally in 1961, or some adult collector who bought it secondhand decades later and felt the need to erase this challenge to his creationist beliefs.

Books read June

books and books review, posts interesting only to me
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finally some process on the bookreading front, with twelve books read this month, four finished yesterday, thanks to S. having to have her operation and me therefore hanging around the hospital with nothing to do but read. Gender wise, it’s six male writers (Neal Asher turning up twice) versus four female writers (two Bracketts); not quite fifty-fifty, but looking at just the fantasy and science fiction books, it is three vs three, so gender balance is achieved this month. Go me.

Ground Control — Anne Minton
How the British lost control of their own towns as more and more is under the control of commercial entities.

The Sword of Rhiannon — Leigh Brackett
A classic planetary romance set on a version of Mars drenched with a bittersweet aura of loss and nostalgia

Beyond the Blue Moon — Simon R. Green
Sequel to Blue Moon and the Hawke and Fisher novels, of which I’ve read the former but not the latter. Mindless escapism, but done quite well.

Gridlinked — Neal Asher
My experience with Asher’s novels so far has been confusing, as the ones I’ve read had a lot of assumed backstory from earlier books. But Gridlinked was his first novel, so surely this problem would not exist here? Not quite, as Asher still drops the reader in the middle of a fully realised, but not fully explained universe…

When Bagdhad Ruled the Muslim World — Hugh Kennedy
My interest in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages led me to needing to read more about the early centuries of Islam, which led me to this, which tells the story of the Abbasid caliphate that ruled most of the Muslim world for almost two centuries. A decent enough history, but hampered by the large number of unfamiliar names and the habit of Kennedy to jump back and forward in his history.

Midnight Riot — Ben Aaronovitch
Ben twittered the shit out of this book a few months ago, which is why I picked it up. A police officer in training tries to interview a ghost as an eyewitness to a particularly senseless murder, which inevitably leads to him drafted for the secret magical unit of the London Met. Much more wittier than it needed to be.

Line of Polity — Neal Asher
Sequel to Gridlinked and like it, I devoured this book in slightly more than a day. Space opera pro forma.

Lightborn — Tricia Sullivan
Excellent coming of age science fiction novel, which teaches that while all adults cannot be trusted, becoming one is inevitable.

Sheepfarmer’s Daughter — Elizabeth Moon
Elizabeth Moon’s first novel, competently written military fantasy in a standard sort of Medievaloid world, more fleshed out than most such worlds. The scale of the military actions and descriptions of mercenary life meshed well with the Peter H. Wilson history of the Thirty Years War I was also reading at the time.

The Halfling and other Stories — Leigh Brackett
A collection of Brackett pulp science fiction stories, filled with strong morally grey heroes, the lithe fierce women who love and captivate them and the alien menaces they have to confront.

The Thirty Years War — Peter H. Wilson
An ambitious and mostly succesful attempt to write the definitive one volume history of this war. Wilson is careful to provide the larger European political context when appropriate, but only when these developments directly influence the struggle in the Holy Roman Empire. His history is somewhat handicapped by the large number of players he — and more importantly, the reader — has to keep track off.

One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night — Christopher Brookmyre
Comedy thriller about a school reunion set on an oil rig being turned into a holiday resort, which is targeted by the world’s most inept gang of terrorist bampots. Quite funny, if you like Brookmyre’s style.

Probably no real posting today

posts interesting only to me
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S. is going under the knife this morning and I’ll be in hospital shortly. It’s a necessary but not acutely life threatening operation. We’re cautiously optimistic if worried. Wish us the support of a random and uncaring universe.

UPDATE: back from hospital, S. having come out of the operation well enough to complain much about the doctors refusing to let her get outside for a quick cigarette (this being a woman known to have smoked while connected to an oxygen tank), though still in a lot of pain. Next few days we’ll see if it all was worthwhile.