tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post3108263742363859670..comments2024-03-27T23:55:17.673-07:00Comments on Flogging Babel: Before I Was A GiantMichael Swanwickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18389836784776252022noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-66523565411630220682010-05-19T08:38:47.309-07:002010-05-19T08:38:47.309-07:00People have made a number of valid points here. Al...People have made a number of valid points here. All I can say at this point is that I apologize publicly, it was an honest mistake, and that now that I'm better informed, any future anthologies I do will have a greater gender balance.<br /><br />-JamesSutterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05672111974426144371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-35442848045745175742010-05-19T05:24:55.452-07:002010-05-19T05:24:55.452-07:00No we are not Tim. At some point James stopped ask...No we are not Tim. At some point James stopped asking women. James has made clear that his priority was whether they were his favourites. He also told us that he didn't know that many women writers. (He uses the word "several" which I understand to usually mean less than ten). As you will see in the quote below, he chose not to dig deeper.<br /><br />"For the reasons mentioned in my earlier post, almost all of the women on my list were either unavailable or refused. Rather than dig deeper into the authors I wasn't as familiar with - given that there were still male authors near the top of the list available and interested - I went with the authors that I most enjoy *already*."<br /><br />James produced the kind of anthology he wanted to produce. That's fine. But I (and others here) am allowed to point out that it is not the kind of anthology we want to read.<br /><br />I am going to leave it here, because it is unfair to James who is, after all, only one person.Farah Mendlesohnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01951321462450109434noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-14655521661903353852010-05-19T05:20:40.973-07:002010-05-19T05:20:40.973-07:00"When you give this collection to the teen gi..."When you give this collection to the teen girls you work with, what are you going to say? "There are many wonderful women writers, but not that many had enough of an impact on me that I wanted to include them." Suddenly not so empowering."<br /><br />Or he could say that he called up a number of female authors and only one accepted the invitation. Some of you guys are suffering from a neat case of selective reading here.Timhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09413726511423078378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-7700036368449092592010-05-19T05:10:43.923-07:002010-05-19T05:10:43.923-07:00I wonder if Michael knows his blog is on fire?I wonder if Michael knows his blog is on fire?HANNAH'S DADhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05877455489975811860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-81979974109205543242010-05-19T04:35:48.370-07:002010-05-19T04:35:48.370-07:00Dear James
Please don't cite your credentials...Dear James<br /><br />Please don't cite your credentials. They can be wonderful. You can do wonderful work in many different areas. But this is not wonderful work.<br /><br />When you give this collection to the teen girls you work with, what are you going to say? "There are many wonderful women writers, but not that many had enough of an impact on me that I wanted to include them." Suddenly not so empowering.<br /><br />There are many, many points in your responses I could take you up on, but in the end, you said it yourself: instead of seeing an anthology as something directed at a market, and thinking about what that market looks like these days, you put together a collection of your favourites.<br /><br />All the best<br />FarahFarah Mendlesohnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01951321462450109434noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-52321494629923173532010-05-19T02:22:13.393-07:002010-05-19T02:22:13.393-07:00On another tack, our gracious host says:
".....On another tack, our gracious host says:<br /><br />"... have a far stronger claim to have written in the pulp direction than do I, much less Gibson."<br /><br />Is Gibson not the child of Hammett and Chandler, then?Matthew Brandihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15316867558957637393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-40294953901227412902010-05-19T02:16:36.745-07:002010-05-19T02:16:36.745-07:00I'd hoped we'd reached amicable agreement ...I'd hoped we'd reached amicable agreement ...<br /><br />I don't suppose for a minute that James wrote this, but:<br /><br />"An invaluable look at the origins of speculative fiction’s greatest minds, ... this book is a must for any science fiction or fantasy fan, aspiring author, or teacher."<br /><br />The lists offered by Farah and Pharaoh are to be seen in that context: they didn't expect Norton & Sheldon to rise from the grave to reminisce about first stories.<br /><br />"He asked some women and they said no" won't do as a defence. It is certainly not equivalent to "as many women of interest as reasonably could be were approached sympathetically, but gender balance couldn't be achieved."Matthew Brandihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15316867558957637393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-19584249036299650232010-05-18T18:50:05.270-07:002010-05-18T18:50:05.270-07:00And with specific regard to Andre Norton, I have t...And with specific regard to Andre Norton, I have to wonder if the rights to any of her stories would have been available given the legal unpleasantness that focused on her estate.shsilverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14795917341695138709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-59324635345360151882010-05-18T18:40:50.567-07:002010-05-18T18:40:50.567-07:00@ukjerry:
As Marty's co-editor on the Beginni...@ukjerry:<br /><br />As Marty's co-editor on the Beginnings books, I will say that yes, my goal in selecting the authors was to have an overall balance. We did include several of the authors mentioned as missing from this book*, and since the Beginnings books only came out 7 years ago, I can imagine that those authors (I note no overlap, although some of the authors I tried to get and failed showed up in this new book) did not want to reprint their story again so soon.<br /><br />*Le Guin, Bujold, Norton,shsilverhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14795917341695138709noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-65029362371342260172010-05-18T17:39:45.120-07:002010-05-18T17:39:45.120-07:00Ha! Actually, in the original version of the cover...Ha! Actually, in the original version of the cover, the resemblance was... uncanny. We had given the artist free rein to create "some kind of awesome tentacled alien monster" and he gave us a picture that - well, let's just say it didn't take a lot of imagination to make the connection you have. Our (female) art director really liked the image, but had him redesign the alien a bit to make it somewhat less obvious. Still, I like to think Georgia O'Keefe would be proud.<br /><br />Given all that's happened since, the irony is truly fantastic....Sutterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05672111974426144371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-33828852980253584642010-05-18T17:36:07.916-07:002010-05-18T17:36:07.916-07:00Anyway, I hope it sells well and you get to publis...Anyway, I hope it sells well and you get to publish another anthology.Matthew Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06954050440829792514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-26180501625822070552010-05-18T17:32:35.100-07:002010-05-18T17:32:35.100-07:00James, you defended yourself well enough when you ...James, you defended yourself well enough when you stated that the mainly male lineup is due to those who accepted being published in the anthology. The opportunity was given and not taken by women writers. Any other complaints about the anthology from that angle is just hobby horsing.<br /><br />And so for some more hobby horsing around, why does the cover depict a spaceman about to point his (need i say phallic?) laser rifle at a menacing tentacled floating vagina?Matthew Adamshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06954050440829792514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-84681264896663428492010-05-18T15:46:18.692-07:002010-05-18T15:46:18.692-07:00Ukjarry is 100% correct. I also really wanted to a...Ukjarry is 100% correct. I also really wanted to avoid crossover with Unearth and the Greenberg books out of fear that the readers would be displeased with repeats, which canceled out a lot of obvious choices, both male and female.<br /><br />-JamesSutterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05672111974426144371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-38962274884354279742010-05-18T15:40:31.470-07:002010-05-18T15:40:31.470-07:00Not that it matters much, but going through the li...Not that it matters much, but going through the list of female authors whom others seem to think to think should have been included, most of them appeared in the series of books edited by Martin Greenberg for DAW, “Horrible Beginnings”, “Wondrous Beginnings” and “Magical Beginnings”. Greenberg managed to include 24 women out of a total 49 selected authors (whether he intentionally aimed for an overall spread of almost 50/50 might be interesting to know), and each one contributed an essay about the story too. So when Sutter says that many of the women he approached turned him down, it may well be because it’s territory they’ve already covered. I don’t think any of the authors in this book feature in Greenberg’s three books. Now there are more than just 24 women writers in sf/fantasy/horror, but many of the female “giants” people seem to righteously feel have been excluded have already gone down this road before (if not for Greenberg then in “Unearth” from the 1970s) and possibly exhausted whatever interest they had, and aren’t up for an interview on the subject. And it’s a reasonable assumption to make, since many of the authors in their forwords for Greenberg/Unearth have a definite affection for the thrill of publishing their first story, but as more mature and capable artists are embarrassed at offering these works to a contemporary audience that expects better of them. Once a philosopher, twice a pervert, and all that.ukjarryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12250028389206081742noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-72923879674414388932010-05-18T12:45:32.685-07:002010-05-18T12:45:32.685-07:00Matthew said:
>As for "buy the book you u...Matthew said:<br /><br />>As for "buy the book you unruly band of internet hooligans just laid into, or I won't be able to edit the book you wanted to see", I'm not going to touch that one. ;)<br /><br />Fair enough. :) I'm just saying that it's my first anthology, and after the amount of hell I've caught from both readers and authors I respect over the oversight, I'm definitely more educated about the issue than I started, and it's not a mistake I'll be making again... I'm just hoping I can stay off folks' blacklists long enough to prove it!<br /><br />And I agree that we should be beyond stating credentials, but I know that I'm personally less inclined to write off the person with the gay friend as a lost cause than I am the person who doesn't have any. :) It's really easy on the internet to end up with an us vs. them mentality, when really, we're all close enough in viewpoints that we could be working together against the problem.<br /><br />In any case: lesson learned!<br /><br />-JamesSutterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05672111974426144371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-20047428318435048412010-05-18T12:34:59.409-07:002010-05-18T12:34:59.409-07:00James, at the risk of compounding the offence:
&q...James, at the risk of compounding the offence:<br /><br />"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." I was about to say that I don't take that (MC5) hard line, but on reflection, <i>I do</i>. "All it takes for evil to flourish, ..."<br /><br />I don't, however, subscribe to "if you are part of the solution, you're not part of the problem". (The self-satisfied often have a poor grasp of Venn diagrams/truth tables.)<br /><br />I don't doubt your credentials (and I might hug you to my bosom if we ever met), but [a] I don't think they're to the point, and [b] although we're <i>all</i> inclined to offer them (me, too), the offer always smacks of "some of my best friends are black". Shouldn't we be past that by now?<br /><br />I propose to play fair, however: I'd bought Planet's edition of The Ginger Star, and after posting my comment, I ordered a couple of the Moore collections.<br /><br />As for "buy the book you unruly band of internet hooligans just laid into, or I won't be able to edit the book you wanted to see", I'm not going to touch that one. ;)<br /><br />Peace.Matthew Brandihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15316867558957637393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-69780467871747636582010-05-18T12:03:55.958-07:002010-05-18T12:03:55.958-07:00If we're going with a hard-line, "if you&...If we're going with a hard-line, "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" viewpoint, then clearly this book is falling down on the job. All I sought by posting (especially my "credentials," such as they are) was a chance to air where I was coming from, and to hopefully let folks know that the failings of one book is indicative of neither a systematic failure from Planet Stories (which I maintain has done more to advance the cause of female SF authors than most publishers in the few years it's been alive) or hopefully with the editor behind it. <br /><br />Rest assured, however, that your message here has been received loud and clear! I guarantee you'll see more female authors in any future anthologies from me. (A possibility which, of course, rests heavily on whether or not this one sells.)<br /><br />And now I'll do my best to hush up!<br /><br />Thanks,<br />JamesSutterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05672111974426144371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-83155127638952509052010-05-18T11:44:52.561-07:002010-05-18T11:44:52.561-07:00"Personal impact", "roll of the dic..."Personal impact", "roll of the dice", "most enjoy already", "name recognition", "awards" (awards, for heaven's sake!) -- repeat across the industry and what do you get?<br /><br /><i>Exclusion</i>, and everyone saying, "Well, it's not my fault, mine's just one book; I'm a good guy really, look at my credentials."<br /><br />Systematic exclusion isn't explicable only by conspiracy or self-conscious pursuit of exclusionist policies. (Don't take my word for it, ask an evolutionary biologist.)<br /><br />And just when I thought Mike's blog had become the official <i>Joanna Russ love-in</i> ...Matthew Brandihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15316867558957637393noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-37767584616274488302010-05-18T09:13:21.195-07:002010-05-18T09:13:21.195-07:00Farah wrote:
>The problem with your response i...Farah wrote:<br /><br />>The problem with your response is that at least three times you have retreated to "people I know and like" which is rather what I assumed. At some point in the process you replaced each female name you thought of with a male name, because you did not have other female names in your head.<br /><br />>Furthermore, when you say "name recognition" you don't seem to have asked "to whom"? You have a market out there: you've just pissed off around 40% of it.<br /><br />>There is a solution to this: read more women writers, go out to meet them. This is a lot easier than it used to be because of Wiscon. I'll be there this year and if you'd like to meet people, come down and I'll do my best to introduce you to as many really impressive women writers as I can.<br /><br /><br /><br />Thanks, Farah! If I could afford to make it out to WisCon, I'd welcome the chance - I'm well aware that there's a wealth of awesome female authors out there, and I'd be happy to read/hang out with more of them. As I said, I make no claims to encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, and the gender of the author has zero bearing on whether or not I read (and hence potentially love) a given book - I operate almost entirely off of recommendations from folks. It may well be that, by this time next year, I have a number of new favorite female authors. But at the time this was put together, I went with the folks I already knew and loved.<br /><br />"Name recognition," in the case of the cover, was decided primarily through number of high-profile awards won and our general, subjective impression of how immediately recognizable the name would be to the general audience (male or female). And since the collection had ended up being primarily male, the cover did as well.<br /><br />Also for the record, though I was the editor, fully 50% of the staff who worked on the book were female, from the female owner of the publishing company down to the female copyeditor and the all-female art team who designed the cover. Again, I'm not saying that it should matter to anyone else - reactions to such issues are personal, and everyone on here has totally valid reasons for feeling the way they do - but it's my hope that since our generally feminist, take-no-shit-from-anyone female staff (who are also LGBT, non-Caucasian, etc.) enjoyed the book, that we can all address the issue, agree that it's important for female voices to be heard... and then enjoy the book anyway for what it is, rather than what it has clearly failed to be.<br /><br />-JamesSutterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05672111974426144371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-78355474183834718862010-05-18T08:51:37.987-07:002010-05-18T08:51:37.987-07:00I'm truly sorry that folks are offended by the...I'm truly sorry that folks are offended by the relative paucity of female authors in the collection, but when I put my list together, it was without regard for race, creed - or gender. In my mind, it was most important to get those qualified authors whose work has had the biggest impact on me personally. (Which, I understand, is not by any means a cross-section of the field... I make no claims of being a scholar, and which authors have meant the most to me over the years is as much a roll of the dice as anything. Most of my favorite musicians are male. Most of my favorite slam poets are female. That's just how things have worked out so far.) For the reasons mentioned in my earlier post, almost all of the women on my list were either unavailable or refused. Rather than dig deeper into the authors I wasn't as familiar with - given that there were still male authors near the top of the list available and interested - I went with the authors that I most enjoy *already*. <br /><br />I agree that this is a conversation that needs to keep happening over and over in order to make sure people realize that there's a huge number of female authors and readers who deserve representation. But I would hope that, simply because a single book happens to have one female author instead of the many who were invited, it can still be enjoyable. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has, to my memory, one significant female actor, no black actors, no outwardly gay actors (or rather, characters), etc. And yet I would hope we can all agree that it's a great movie in spite of that. <br /><br />I sent out a call to the team I wanted, and with the exception of Nicola, only the boys showed up. If the author list makes the book unreadable to a section of the community - be it female readers, or non-Caucasian readers, or LGBT readers - then I am truly sorry, but I stand by my claim that all the authors in the book deserve to be there. (Which of course does not preclude the fact that OTHER authors doubtlessly deserve to be there as well. And in fact, each author interview in the collection comes with an introduction explaining why I think a particular author is so significant to the genre - so if you're saying, "What? how could authors X, Y, and Z be considered a 'great'?", please consider thumbing through in the bookstore and seeing if I can change your mind about any of them!)<br /><br />Also, though it shouldn't matter at all, I'd like to throw in early in the discussion that I'm a young, liberal, LGBT Seattlite who spends his off hour running a nonprofit aimed at empowering teens (and particularly young women) through the arts. I realize that's totally unrelated to the book, but I want to emphasize that, though we may have contrasting viewpoints on individual matters, I think we're all on the same team here. :)<br /><br />-JamesSutterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05672111974426144371noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-14063819146539789482010-05-18T08:33:30.674-07:002010-05-18T08:33:30.674-07:00Dear James
Thank you for posting here, I know thi...Dear James<br /><br />Thank you for posting here, I know this takes courage.<br /><br />I too am an editor, and in fact have just had to delay a volume by almost a year in order to fill a gap. <br /><br />The problem with your response is that at least three times you have retreated to "people I know and like" which is rather what I assumed. At some point in the process you replaced each female name you thought of with a male name, because you did not have other female names in your head.<br /><br />Furthermore, when you say "name recognition" you don't seem to have asked "to whom"? You have a market out there: you've just pissed off around 40% of it.<br /><br />There is a solution to this: read more women writers, go out to meet them. This is a lot easier than it used to be because of Wiscon. I'll be there this year and if you'd like to meet people, come down and I'll do my best to introduce you to as many really impressive women writers as I can.<br /><br />If you want to chat off list, my email is farah at sf dot gmail dot com.Farah Mendlesohnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01951321462450109434noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-73923413812928316432010-05-18T04:50:12.479-07:002010-05-18T04:50:12.479-07:00I am sure that being an editor comes with many cha...I am sure that being an editor comes with many challenges, but it's hard to see how no one at any point of the construction of the book considered that the many female readers in the field might consider their lack of representation insulting.<br /><br />We do need to talk about this, over and over, because it's just this kind of publication that contributes to the overall impression in the field that men's writing is simply more important than women's.<br /><br />It may not have been the intention of the editor or the publisher but that is quite clearly the statement this book is making. <br /><br />I'm very glad Nicola Griffith was included but it is clear from the result that regardless of how many women may have been invited to participate, it was not ENOUGH.TansyRRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09411830162058361645noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-83709670500049559132010-05-17T23:56:23.488-07:002010-05-17T23:56:23.488-07:00pseudonym even,pseudonym even,HANNAH'S DADhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05877455489975811860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-16690427036665179392010-05-17T22:45:39.346-07:002010-05-17T22:45:39.346-07:00Pharaoh Katt writes:
> Andre FUCKING Norton!
...Pharaoh Katt writes:<br /><br />> Andre FUCKING Norton!<br /><br />I grew up reading Andre F. Norton - Galactic Derelict and Key Out of Time and all that - from when I was about 8 to 10.<br /><br />I was surprised many years later to read that she had written under a male psuedonym, as at the time I'd assumed that that was how 'Andrea' was spelt.HANNAH'S DADhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05877455489975811860noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1484180326012950400.post-89341062952479843342010-05-17T17:18:05.490-07:002010-05-17T17:18:05.490-07:00Hannah's Dad:
>Full marks to James Sutter ...Hannah's Dad:<br /><br />>Full marks to James Sutter for sticking his head up to reply. being an editor must be scary sometimes.<br /><br />Thanks! :) I just wanted to make sure people didn't get the wrong impression of the book and Planet Stories as a whole, especially since much of our book line is based on resurrecting the work of important women like Leigh Bracket and C. L. Moore (the latter of whom created Jirel of Joiry, the first female sword-and-sorcery character). <br /><br />Also, I forgot to note earlier that Nicola's interview in Before They Were Giants includes an interesting bit on women as aliens (the societal Other) which some folks on this thread might find of interest. <br /><br />-JamesSutterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05672111974426144371noreply@blogger.com