My friend Steve and I were talking this evening

[hyphenate]

about writers of SF&F, and it was pointed out that most (not all by any stretch!) of those who wrote SF were male, and that most fantasy writers were female. He asked me why that was fairly true.

He found my answer interesting. I said "Women like to believe in possibilities, and men like to believe in probabilities."

Anyone agree or disagree?

[Orrex]

1. An interesting question; much of it probably has to do with readership

"Women like to believe in possibilities, and men like to believe in probabilities."

I confess that I don't really know what that might mean, but the question is worth exploring in any case.

Until fairly recently, the heavy hitters (the "celebrity" writers) in both genres were male, so one wonders what the break-in point might have been for fantasy. Of course, Mary Wolstonecraft pretty much kicked off the S/F genre, so credit must be given where due! And Ursula LeGuin didn't exactly start writing yesterday, either.

But some of the trend may have begun with spillover from the more traditionally "female" genre of Romance, thanks in part to Anne Rice and the vampire subgenre. Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon likewise has an undeniably romantic vibe to it. JK Rowling's the richest person in the universe, of course, but she's a late arrival.

That's not meant to diminish the writings of these or other women in the Fantasy genre; it's merely a speculation on one possible source of their readership. And once a publisher identifies a reader-base, it's understandable that they'd seek authors who might appeal to that same reader-base. And if those authors are women...


Or maybe it's just that boys are taught to like guns and spaceships, while girls are trained to like unicorns... :sarcasm:

[JitterbugPerfume]

2. I hate fucking unicorns!

:wtf: :hi:

[hyphenate]

3. I don't care so much for unicorns

myself, but when I was a kid my first SF was about robots, trips to Mars, computers (or the early 60s equivalents) and mutants.

I think what turned me from a lot of SF was the advent of cyberpunk, the loathesome and pretentious writing of a lot of newcomers in the early 70s and a certain elitist attitude on the part of some. I have to admit, it inspired me more to read fantasy, as I was already reading Tolkien, C.S. Lewis (as a FANTASY author), and others like them. The first series fiction I recall reading (other than by the above named) was the Darkover series, though I had some qualms with many inconsistencies in it.

I enjoyed work that was both SF&F in the same series--one of those series was Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series, Jack Chalker's Nathan Brazil books, and anything to do with Time Travel as a concept.

I now read far more fantasy than SF, and even now it tends to be because too many SF writers are way too pretentious and yes, arrogant. If an author is under the age of about 40 nowadays, I cringe, because many of them learned their "craft" from would-be presumptors of the SF throne. On the other hand, Fantasy is still mostly fresh and there are just as many things which haven't been written about as there are subjects which have supposedly been exhausted.

Yes, I'm speaking here in general terms and I shouldn't, but I do want to get to bed at some point tonight, and I have an early morning tomorrow. :)