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MonSFFA’s March 10 meeting welcomed two special guests on the topic of women in SF/F. Multi-award-winning SF/F author Jo Walton and social activist and a writer new to the Genre, Su Sokol, took their seats at the dais before a packed room.

Following an introductory video presentation briefly outlining the history of, and biases faced by pioneering women SF/F writers and early female stars of the Genre, moderator Keith Braithwaite opened the discussion by asking of the guests what drew them to the Genre to begin with, and who they thought were the female equivalents of SF/F’s so-called “Big Three” : Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke, along with Heinlein and other of the Genre’s best known male writers?

It was immediately noted that these male writers are dead and no longer selling! Many of the best-selling and award-winning Genre writers today, in fact, are women. So has gender equality been achieved, then? What of the instances of sexism endured by the precursors of today’s stable of very talented and capable female science fiction and fantasy writers? Do such instances continue to occur, today?

Things are better than they were, to be sure, but there’s still a ways to go. Gay and transgendered issues reflected in some of modern sci-fi are seeing more push-back of late than are the old battles fought by earlier generations of women SF/F writers trying to break into the field. This brought up the recent controversies surrounding the Hugo nominations and the politically-charged arguments advanced by such groups as the “Sad Puppies,” who yearn for the square-jawed science fiction of old and feel that those kinds of stories are being overlooked by a cabal of politically correct writers and activist fans who are supposedly asserting a leftist agenda.
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Touched upon, too, was the then-common practise of women writers using gender non-specific pen names – C. L. Moore, C. J. Cherryh, J. K. Rowling – to mask their femininity because, they were apparently told, sales would suffer if the author of a sci-fi piece was known to be a woman! Su read aloud Robert Silverberg’s humble admission of error regarding the gender of James Tiptree, Jr., who, it turned out, was a woman! Alice Bradley Sheldon wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. Silverberg had previously been confident, in print no less, that of course Tiptree, Jr. was a man, and that you’d have to be balmy to think otherwise! Jo clarified on the story regarding Cherryh, who it goes was cautioned by her first editor that she should change her surname because it sounded too much like that of a romance writer. But there actually was such a writer named Cherry, Jo explained, so Carolyn Janice Cherry added the “h” to her surname so as to differentiate herself from that other writer.

Our guests also illuminated the group on the craft of writing, touching on what influences their work, on building a realistic character, the ins and outs of the publishing business, and such.
The discussion closed with Jo and Su speaking of their latest projects, and signing a few books for enthusiastic fans. MonSFFA thanks them both for taking the time to share their thoughts with our membership.

Thanks, again, to our guests, Jo Walton and Su Sokol.

—  Keith Braithwaite