TOC: The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF edited by Mike Ashley
By John DeNardo |
Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at
11:28 am
Here are the contents of The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF edited by Mike Ashley.
- “Out of the Sun” by Arthur C. Clarke
- “The Pevatron Rats” by Stephen Baxter *
- “The Edge of the Map” by Ian Creasey
- “Cascade Point” by Timothy Zahn
- “A Dance to Strange Musics” by Gregory Benford
- “Palindromic” by Peter Crowther
- “Castle in the Sky” by Robert Reed *
- “The Hole in the Hole” by Terry Bisson
- “Hotrider” by Keith Brooke
- “Mother Grasshopper” by Michael Swanwick
- “Waves and Smart Magma” by Paul Di Filippo *
- “The Black Hole Passes” by John Varley
- “The Peacock King” by Ted White & Larry McCombs
- “Bridge” by James Blish
- “Anhedonia” by Adam Roberts *
- “Tiger Burning” by Alastair Reynolds
- “The Width of the World” by Ian Watson
- “Our Lady of the Sauropods” by Robert Silverberg
- “Into the Miranda Rift” by G. David Nordley
- “The Rest is Speculation” by Eric Brown *
- “Vacuum States” by Geoffrey A. Landis
* = New story written for this anthology
[via Marooned and Mike Ashley]
Related posts:
- FREE ANTHOLOGY: Diamonds in the Sky edited by Mike Brotherton
- TOC: Celebration edited by Ian Whates
- REVIEW: Down These Dark Spaceways edited by Mike Resnick
- [UPDATED] Alastair Reynolds Lands Unprecedented 10-Year, 10-Book Deal with Gollancz
- REVIEW: Alien Crimes edited by Mike Resnick
Tagged with: Mike Ashley • TOC
Filed under: Books
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Ian McDonald: Just to clarify – that list was someone else’s, giving examples of the writers who should have been considered in order to demonstrate diversity. I went through it with the aid of Wikipaedia.
I don’t agree that male and female sf are on either side of a line, and that they write differently. Most sf stories aren’t obviously male or female. However, some are.
That some women writers, in some of their stories, can come up with a uniquely female perspective (and the same applies to men) is one reason why diversity is a good thing.
Silverberg famously and fatuously stated that it was obvious from their masculine content that the stories of James Tiptree, Jr. could only have been written by a man. Selecting different best-of-the-year stories based on gender or any other personal characteristic is just plain stupid. The point is not that women deserve to be included in this anthology because of past discrimination or because a particular point of view is now missing, but simply that to exclude women is to exclude some of the best writers in the field, period, and given what this anthology advertises itself to be, that’s just absurd.
Hey!!
It’s the White Men’s Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF , YOU GUYS!
There. Problem solved.
…
Except that wouldn’t happen.
A group of white men have ~*magical powers*~ POC’s and women do not have…To put out anthologies without having that pesky label.
Because we all know WHITE MEN = DEFAULT OF HUMANITY.
If it were all women or all POC that’s what it would be called: WOMEN’s Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF or The AFRICAN-AMERICAN/ASIAN/NATIVE AMERICAN…etc’s Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF
You know this to be true and oh so, fucked up.
I found Tais Teng over there at the Free Speculative Fiction Online link. Hundreds and hundreds of SF & Fantasy stories online, by writers (M/F/Gay & Straight/Poc & Otherwise, from all over the planet), absolutely free and accessibly to you and me right here in our basements. Or wherever you are.
Even Mike Ashley could be reading Eleanor Arnason & Tais Teng, who, you want to talk mindblowing?
Go see. I recommend Knapsack poems by the first and you pick any by the second. He rocks. Yeah, he’s a white guy, but I’m no bigot.
Here’s the link if you don’t have it:
http://www.freesfonline.de/
I will not be buying this book, nor will I be recommending it.
As a consumer of SF this is the most telling statement/action I can take and it WILL make a difference.
(no Butler, no LeGiun, no Tiptree, at the very least? Pitiful)
The one thing that goes without saying, in almost all anthology construction, is that we’re basically dealing with one person’s opinion. This book of “mind blowing SF” is essentially a single person’s pick list, and each of us is liable to have a pick list wildly different from everyone else’s pick list.
Personally, I noted that Larry Niven was absent from this anthology. For me, any anthology with the words “mind blowing” in its title ought to have at least one Niven story. But that’s just me. Others will have different authors — each of whom is deserving in their own way — left off of Mr. Ashley’s pick list.
It’s a little like the NBA’s All-Star game. In any given season there are far, far more players deserving to be on the All-Star roster than can possibly be on the All-Star roster. So they let the fans vote to choose the starters for East and West — which, to my mind, is actually a lousy way to pick the “best” players, given the fact that “highly capable” and “popular” are hopelessly confused in the minds of most NBA fans. The second team is selected by the coaches — a more valid list in my book, since we’re finally dealing with a voting body that has half a clue about what it’s actually voting on. But still, when all is said and done, you’re going to have at least one or two dozen more players left off the starting and reserve units, through no fault of their own, and really, through no fault of the selection process. Because there simply is not room to put them all on East and West squads.
Thus I suspect that the number of factors impacting Mr. Ashley’s decision-making process is probably larger than some people on this thread give him credit for.
In the end, it’s just one anthology. There are others. Maybe the editors who edit those other anthologies will have a pick list more similar to your own? Expecting any given editor to always have a pick list to your liking is probably unrealistic. It’s also unfair to read bias or prejudice into an editor’s process unless that editor has an outstanding and blatant track record of bias and prejudice.
It also almost goes without saying that for some individuals, their bias and prejudice detectors are so accutely tuned, they will find bias and prejudice in virtually everything. Which says — I believe — far more about them than it does about the editor in question.
Not everything is automatic bias or prejudice. It may be easy to assume such if your normal M.O. is to just default to, “It’s the bias/prejudice, stupid!” But again, this is a disservice to the editor, about whom I think most people on this thread know almost nothing about.
RE: Robin Alvarez’s comment….
Robin makes a great point. One I want to echo.
To me, the greatest negative consequence of consistently and constantly “pointing out” racism and sexism, is that people start to become deaf to the complaints. Like the little boy who cried wolf. Claim racism and sexism too much, or when such claims seem stretched, specious, or flat-out unwarranted, and pretty soon a lot of people will begin ignoring you because in their minds they’re thinking, “Oh right, you always say that!”
The obvious rebuttal to this is, “Well if COURSE it’s always racism and sexism because it’s ALWAYS been racism and sexism!” Women and minorities have lived with an uneven playing field for so long it’s difficult to NOT automatically jump to the conclusion that racism/sexism is at fault, because so often in the past, racism and sexism have been a factor.
But is it therefore fair, going forward, to automatically assume racism and sexism just because the past is what it is? What good does it do to judge, try, and convict the present — or the future — for the sins and wrongs of the past?
I’m white, my wife is not. We have a mixed daughter. I feel I have a vested interest in issues of race and sexism. I also feel that discussions about race and sexism — especially within SF and F as of late — can and are damaged when people use these issues to self-agrandize, preach to the choir, manufacture large controversies out of minor oversights or disagreements, or just generally exacerbate or inflame things under the guise of “awareness” or “activism.”
When every little thing becomes controversy, over and over, it speaks of an inability to pick and choose battles. The little boy has cried wolf too many times.
Ask yourselves: who are you really trying to reach with all of this? Is what you’re doing REALLY making a difference, or is it just self-congratulatory InterToob mutual masturbation?
so is delany an albino or what?
I, for one, am glad of this discussion. As a new reader to SF&F, I have discovered a wealth of writers (female and PoC) to mine for my reading pleasure.
Several good things have come out of this conversation: Frank discussion about an obvious endemic issue in the genre and a kick-ass reading list.
Gee Brad, you’re right, it’s the politely silent wheel that gets the grease, isn’t it? Oh wait…
The only way that racism and sexism are ever going to end is if people keep pointing it out when it happens, even when it happens unintentionally. The correct response to being caught acting in a way that promotes gender-bias or racial bias is not to sit there defending your good intentions*; it’s to fix the problem and take steps to keep it from happening again.
The editor said himself that he was “surprised” he didn’t have any women on his list. Apparently, though, he wasn’t surprised enough to recognize that his selection process might be deficient or have built-in biases he hadn’t been aware of. It apparently didn’t matter enough to him to do something to fix it, even though he was the only one in a position to do anything about it. He was in enough of a position of privilege that he could do it and not get called on it until now. Had he actually pursued a more balanced selection of story contributors, he wouldn’t have found “token” authors; he’d have found a number of astounding authors whose own “mindblowing” works would probably put a number of his accepted submissions to shame. They are not that hard to find if you just take a moment to care.
And most of them probably won’t turn a polite disagreement into a PR disaster by flying off the handle and comparing women and POC to weeds in a potato field. Did Mr. Di Filippo quit appearing in Geico ads to write SF or something? I guess he got into the Mammoth book because he used to hunt them.
* If you don’t know which road is paved with good intentions, you have no business being an editor anyway.
Ardath,
I didn’t say silence was the answer. I said that blowing up every little thing, over and over, into a controversy, speaks of an inability to pick and choose battles. This is just one anthology. How many others like it or similar to it will be produced this year and next? There is no law written that states every anthology must contain X number of women and/or Y number of non-white writers. We don’t know what Mr. Ashley’s selection process was, and it seems to me you and others have made some grand leaps in assuming that it’s OBVIOUSLY sexism and it MUST be racism, therefore Mr. Ashley is in the wrong for failing to “fix” himself and his process.
Again, “mind blowing” for one person is mundane for another person. I can think of probably a dozen or more authors I’d have liked to see on Ashley’s TOC for this anthology, but they’re not there. It doesn’t ruin my day that they’re not there because I’m in touch with the reality that most anthologies are just pick lists by a single person. Whether or not we perceive the anthology in question as trying to be broad or otherwise definitive, is on us. The anthology is just a product from a single person’s POV and tastes. Don’t like it? Pick a different anthology from a different editor whose POV and tastes are more in line with yours.
This debate seems like yet another molehill made into a mountain. And as per usual with these molehills-to-mountains of late, professionals in the industry are being unnecessarily dogged out by people who seem to have made it their business to dog these people out.
Being an advocate for race and gender issues is one thing.
Too often, people in these threads don’t sound like advocates, they sound like shrill, accusatory jerks.
No matter how righteous or just the cause, being a shrill, accusatory jerk is STILL being a shrill, accusatory jerk.
How would this be as an amended list of authors? Better? Worse? More representative? Giving a wider range of experience?
Anne McCaffrey
Stephen Baxter
Octavia Butler
Timothy Zahn
Gregory Benford
Connie Willis
Robert Reed
Terry Bisson
Samuel R. Delany
Michael Swanwick
Paul Di Filippo
John Varley
Ted White
Larry McCombs
James Blish
Nancy Kress
James Tiptree Jr.
Stephen Barnes
Robert Silverberg
G. David Nordley
C.L. Moore
Geoffrey A. Landis
Here’s my global view of this phenomenon, after I had the dubious pleasure of observing it in three different venues almost at the same time:
Is It Something in the Water? Or: Me Tarzan, You Ape
http://www.starshipreckless.com/blog/?p=712
Westprog: Your list is much more inclusive, though to include McCaffrey while excluding Le Guin is an odd decision.
Strike McCaffrey and include Le Guin then. Better still?
It is, but it’s still 100% anglocentric. You really can’t have mindblowing without Stanislaw Lem, for instance.
Brad:
Your complaint is so unoriginal and baseless that there is actually a dictionary entry for it:
http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org/glosario.html#maestro
First Law of Anthologies: Every anothology must contain one token story written by a female, in order to avert controversy sparked by those who lack even a rudimentary understanding of statistical distribution and logic.
Seriously, I’m just astounded at the flawed reasoning I’m seeing here. A bunch of monkeys pounding on their keyboards could do better. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
I’m sure a bunch of monkeys could come up with something better than your comment. After all, they wouldn’t be at a disadvantage in the logic and reasoning department.
Katie,
Your bingo card refutation — in which you attempt to use a rhetorical device to avoid dealing with my statements – is also old and unoriginal.
I repeat: no matter how just or righteous the banner under which you march, being a shrill, accusatory jerk is STILL being a shrill, accusatory jerk.
People are welcome to believe that their gender or ethnicity gives them a license to ill.
People are also welcome to be ignored by the whole after their shrill and accusatory antics cause the whole to tune out.
Pain — regardless of its source — can only be an excuse for poor behavior for so long.
Some of the comments on this thread, towards Mr. Ashley, towards Mr. Di Filippo, are what I’d consider poor behavior. This imbroglio as a whole is also following a familiar pattern. One which the InterToob world of SF and F is becoming familiar with. I wonder sometimes if some of the voices in these pattern-following, manufactured squabbles realize that you can only baselessly accuse and/or insult industry professionals for so long, before the industry begins to shut its ears.
In the end, flashmobbing Mr. Ashley and his anthology via the InterToob makes almost no impact on the problems faced by everyday women and minorities. I am sure it FEELS GOOD to those doing the flashmobbing, but it’s essentially a circle of back-pattery wherein people congratulate themselves for Fighting The Good Fight, while the REAL WORLD outside the computer has not be changed one iota.
I’m a bit wary of reading too much into the title, because, here in the UK, “Mammoth Book Of” seems to be a label for a series of physically large anthologies, mostly reprinted stuff. And mostly edited by Mike Ashley. Not just SF, either.
So I think that people are misjudging Mike Ashley by focusing on one book. It looks likely that this just happens to be the one without a story by a woman. Statistically, not so unlikely, but politically a bit careless, I think. Again, looking at titles, labels such as “extreme” or “mindblowing” are a bit vague. It’s not as if it claims to be something obvious, such as humorous. Not that I will laugh at the same things as you.
Speaking as a straight white man, I’m appalled by the juvenile tone of the comments made by too many of the other men (or is it boys? males, anyway) on this thread. Come on, guys: have the spine to admit *at least* that an anthology that claims to be representative of the field yet contains *no* stories by women (or people of color) is, statistically speaking, pretty goofy. If you can’t muster the levelheadedness to do even that, well… that’s what separates the men from the boys.
Brad, I always get a kick out of people who come into an internet discussion demanding that the discussion stop this instant.
For a relatively unknonwn author who wrote sentient spaceships with some originality– not to mention complex and deeply nuanced racial relations, try Jo Clayton (sadly deceased.)
Brad,
Just a quick comment. Using the word “shrill” to describe a woman’s comments is a really effective way of coming across as a misogynist. That and the word “hysterical”, though thankfully you don’t go there. These are not words that people ever attach to men and as a result they reek of the idea that women somehow lack the capacity for rational argument.
Regardless of whether you are right or wrong, that type of language makes you come across as a raging sexist and it does neither you nor the people you seek to defend any good at all.
I looked up some synonyms for shrill.
acute, argute, blaring, blatant, cacophonous, clanging, clangorous, deafening, discordant, ear-piercing, earsplitting, high, metallic, noisy, penetrating, piercing, piping, raucous, screeching, sharp, strident, thin, treble…
I also looked up the definition. #4 seems to apply:
betraying some strong emotion or attitude in an exaggerated amount, as antagonism or defensiveness.
I do catch your drift, Jonathan. “Shrill” is a shibboleth. One of those words men aren’t supposed to use — such as bitch — when describing any women, lest they “show their ass” as a sexist and/or misogynist.
Honestly, I couldn’t come up with any other word that better fit than shrill. Because that’s what seemed most accurate, for comments being made by men and women both. I knew some people might not like that word — and my argument by association, but that’s the word I chose.
I guess I’ll take my lumps accordingly.
Look up cronyism while you’re at it, Brad.
Michael Ashley is a long-time insider who cannot invoke beginner’s ignorance or naiveté.
Gender and race are not a choice. Willful stupidity, however, is.
The way anthologies are compiled to enforce prejudices — still, in this day and age! — makes it plain that SF is not exempt from politics. And it probably never will be.
I think it is the duty of SF literature to demolish privileges at every turn. What good is it to even call oneself a “fan” of Intellectual Speculation, if one can’t get past the idea of white male privilege?
An anthology which claims to be “mind-blowing” but fails to include Alice Sheldon a.k.a. “James Tiptree Jr.” (*bangs head against desk*) is simply not deserving of its title.
From Ashley’s comments, it would appear that he was genuinely surprised by the negative reaction, and genuinely tried to explain in a way that would make everyone happy – and genuinely stepped on his Cheney with both feet. I suppose by now he realizes that his little apologia was so lame he needed to buy it a helper monkey.
And I wish I knew him personally, so I could put an arm around his shoulders (in a purely blokey way of course) and say, “You poor bastard, don’t feel so bad. It wouldn’t have made any difference. Trust me on this. For a couple of years I ran a magazine that published the highest proportion of stories by women, AND non-white writers, of any major SF magazine; and none of that stopped the Blogiban – including many of those same writers – from getting their collective Hanes Her Ways in a knot, and spreading shit like a squadron of Piper Pawnees, the instant I got marked down on their hate list. You can’t win with these people, lad, and trying to talk sense to them is a mug’s game.”
Don’t get me wrong, though; I do have a certain sympathy for the people who are genuinely offended by the estrogen-challenged and persons-of-pallor nature of the contributors’ list. Back in the 90s I got invited to contribute to an antho of “Native American fantasy”, and the editor assured me that it would contain at least a fair number of stories by Native authors. As it turned out, there were three – Owl Goingback (Choctaw), Merle Apassingok (Inuit), and an Aleut woman whose name I’ve forgotten – or four if you count me, which I won’t say you should or shouldn’t. All the other contributors were of the white persuasion.
And I was pretty hacked off, till finally Roger Zelazny told me, “Just spend the money and don’t worry about it – people will remember your story after the antho has been forgotten,” and he was right.
But I never accused the editor of racism, or anti-Indian bias, either publicly or in my thoughts. What I did say was that while he surely had only the best of intentions, he didn’t try hard enough to find Native writers.
Not the same thing, of course; this Mammoth book never claimed to be of, by, or about women – but still, I sympathize with those who would say Ashley should have made more of an effort in that direction. And I’m sure that there are many who feel this way, without joining in with the baying of the pack.
(Personally I would never have been tempted to buy the book anyway. I made the mistake of buying one of those Mammoth anthos once; the Mammoth Book of Erotica, I believe was the title, and what a ripoff. The contents were just about as solidly anti-erotic as you could find outside a Baptist tract; there was not one single story that could have been remotely stiffigenic to anyone outside of a very small number of very strange people, and indeed the book might have been of great value to someone striving to maintain a vow of celibacy.)
All that being said, who CARES? This isn’t a university-level college antho, meant to be used as a textbook. (There actually are such anthos, you know; I’m in one, in fact.) It isn’t even a general SF antho – or one of the so-damn-many-it’s-silly “YEAR’S BEST” efforts – and as far as I can see it makes no claim to be representative of anything except the editor’s peculiar taste. It’s just not important enough, one way or another, to justify all this mahoohah.
But of course that doesn’t matter to people like the Big Wind. After all, the professional attention-hustler can’t be too picky….
You know, I’m considering going into the lingerie business. I have in mind to put out a line of brassieres: the Karl Marx, the Salvation Army, and the K. Tempest Bradford. The Karl Marx uplifts the masses, the Salvation Army aids the fallen, and the K. Tempest Bradford makes mountains out of molehills.
I only came over here to read sanders’ response to this kerfuffle, but i’m wierdly fascinated by the fact that flemfan thinks Chip Delany looks totally white. Sheesh. http://www.flickr.com/photos/risa/2096590177/ from 1968 is a good example of how he looked when the world was younger. Not totally African, but nobody in the small North Florida towns I grew up in would have thought he was White.
Incidentally, Mike Ashley is not related to me that I know of.
I hear Mike Ashley’s next collection will be _The Mammoth Book of William Sanders Makes a Lot of God-Damned Sense_.
Its clearly absurd that an anthology intended to reflect SF doesn’t have any women in it – and the more I’ve thought about it the more ridiculous it becomes! I have a lot of anthologies from the forties and fifties – when the SF Club was supposed to have had signs up saying “Kno Gurls Alowed” – but evenso, most of them have at least a few stories by women!
However, I did think it was unfair to judge Ashley by one anthology – he has done dozens (I can confirm what others have said, that “Mammoth Book of” is a publisher’s title – it means no more than “The Big Bumper Book of …”). I do have several anthologies by Ashley, so I thought I’d have a look at their author content: first up MBo SF and MBo Extreme SF … O dear, not looking good: one woman in each! I next moved on to fantasy, with the MBo Comic Fantasy … better: 6 women; the MBo Seriusly Comic Fantasy has 8 or 9 (depending on EK Grant’s gender), with 25 men. He’s also done a lot of crime anthologies: Shakespearean Detectives features 12 female authors (and 21 males); Classical Whodunnits has 5 or 6 (depending on RH Stewart’s gender) with 15 or 16 male. So, as a generalisation, I don’t think he was a problem with women writers, but he does seem to have a blind spot with enjoying SF written by women.
See the following site for his anthologies and their contents to 1998 (scroll down a little)
http://www.locusmag.com/index/b23.htm#A244
However, Ashley is currently writing a series of books on the history of the SF Magazines, the third was published a couple of years ago, taking the story to about 1980. They are excellent and I have noticed no problems when it comes to covering women writers – the latest volume, covering the seventies, is certainly sympathetic when it covers the rise of feminism in SF: clearly he has no intellectual problem with women in SF. It may be just an age thing – he’s in his early sixties and perhaps is from a background where editing a large book of SF stories and having no female authors is not something which makes him think “Now, that’s odd …”
Here is a Worlde diagram of this discussion.
Dear Brad R. Torgersen and Robin Alvarez,
Seanan McGuire has an insightful post in her livejournal talking about if your masterpiece of fiction spits in someone’s soup, admit it. Don’t blame the person with spittle disolving in their meal for getting upset. LINK HERE: http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/36378.html
“…if someone says your book has upset them, ‘you’re just’ is not the appropriate way to start your response. ‘I’m sorry’ is a much better approach, no matter how wrong-headed you may think the person’s reaction is.”
This anthology does the above in spades. Be adults, quit defending the bratty child, quit attacking those who are telling you it’s a bratty child.
Stephanie
You can actually have a reasonable discussion about this sort of thing with men. Even white men. There are possessors of the Y chromosome with intelligence and strength of character enough to keep their cockles down and their primate posturing to a minimum, and actually listen, and let the POV of others open their eyes to things privilege can obscure.
Adolescents educated beyond their intellect poking and going “heheheheh! Anyone who doesn’t know we’re the coolest is a whiny baby?” Not so much. There’s no point in trying to have a civil debate with these tossers. “If you don’t validate me utterly you are a fishwife!” is not the response of a man who thinks with the head on his shoulders.
“Anything that claims to contain the finest SF stories ever told should make at least a vague effort to be marginally inclusive of the incredible variety of viewpoints in the genre.”
How did we get from that reasonable objection to some of these comments?
I say this with all and complete respect to the men who actually behaved like men in this conversation. And to the women who adulted-up in the face of this stupidity and remained civil.
Speaking of mind blowing, mine is totally blown by the fact that there is no Tiptree story included. How can that be possible in a “Mammoth Anthology of Mind Blowing SF”??? 21 stories hardly qualifies as “mammoth”. More like pigmy elephant…
I buy a lot of anthologies because I like to be exposed to a variety of writers and ideas. I look to the editor to select stories that are worthy of my time and money. I have to trust that the editor knows the field and is widely read and can do a good job of soliciting and selecting stories for the anthology – ones that really represent the chosen theme so that I am exposed to the best, or at least, some of the best examples.
I don’t really want to read only what the editor personally thinks are the best representatives of the chosen theme — I want and expect something more objective, as much as that is possible when it comes to fiction. I’d like to think the editor had some way of coming up with the TOC that leads to the very best stories being published.
However, I suspect that the method of compiling a TOC involves something along these lines: “I wrote to everyone I know personally or whose work I personally liked and asked for a submission for the anthology. I only know one woman writer personally and one writer who is a POC and both of them were busy with other projects. Of the rest, only 50% of those I asked responded and in order to make my deadline, this is what I ended up with.”
If anything, this speaks to the narrowness of the editor’s taste. Nothing against any of the writers in the anthology for I am sure they all belong in a TOC and anthology of mind-blowing SF.
Here’s a thought — maybe it might be a good idea for an anthologist to actually try to get a representative selection of stories and writers in their chosen theme rather than just one that represents their own personal taste and judgement or with whom they have a personal relationship.
Or is that me being all Pollyannistic?
It seems to me that this is a genuine oversight. An oversight by several layers of staff, yes, but an oversight nonetheless.
I publish a weekly short fiction eZine, and when accepting stories for publication I have never considered whether the story is by a man, woman, POC or otherwise. The quality of the story has always been the only criteria.
I’ve been asked to compile an anthology of the “Best of” the magazine’s stories for physical publication, and in doing so, I picked the best stories I had (as well as commissioning a few originals). The question of whether the authors were male or female did not arise. Perhaps it should have. As it happens, there appears to be a 60/40 M/F split. This certainly supports the arguments made above that any representative collection would include female writers, but it also supports the other argument – that the editor chooses what he or she is familiar with.
I’ve never met most of my contributing authors, and I don’t know their ethnic backgrounds – it just wasn’t important from an editorial perspective. Should I now ask them all to provide photographs before I decide on the final line-up? That just seems a little bit creepy.
Ok, that question was a little facetious, but it’s important to remember that not all decisions are driven by racial or gender issues (be they pro- or anti-). Sometimes the quality of the writing and the editors’ experiences are what drives these collections, and sometimes those are the most important criteria. It’s not all #racefail.
I am sorry, but it completely stretches the bounds of reality for anyone to look at that list and expect us to think that this analogy just “fell out” that way. Add me to the list of people who won’t be purchasing this book.
Well, Brad and Paul, you’ve each lost yourselves another longtime reader. Of course, my voice is so shrill that you won’t be able to read this comment.
<PLONK>
Hey, my killfile still works!
Oh, and I would had been fine with the anthology. No worse than the old anthologies from the 1970s, in their lack of diversity of POV. But your comments are too revealing — I didn’t really want to know that either of was such a jerk (unless you are just trying to win an internet argument?). Now it’ll be hard to read without remembering.
good greif this is ridiculous. No where in the book did they say that it listed all the best authors no where did it say it had ALL the mindblowing stories. A short story by Ursula Guin would have been ok but really she is the only female author of sci-fi that I have read that I would consider mind blowing. NONE of the names here you have mentioned besides her’s do I know and I have been around in sci-fi fantasy reading for 15 years and I read widley. All the way from Asimov to Greg Bear. Every book DOESN”T have to include a representative sample. The arguments I have seen that “pick this argument apart” have themselves been picked apart time and time again. If the authors who complain about these things would actually spend their time trying to write books on the level of Clark (someone NO other sci-fi author has come even close to surpassing) rather than spending silly arguments about including them simply because of their sex or race we would all be better off.
Yes their are sci-fi writers that are female and that are african american but they have yet to move past writing novels about “oppression” and until they do they will not rise to the level of Clark or Asimov (who really should have been included in this collection as well, but this is only one editors opinon).
Worry more about writing good novels and winning hugo’s and nebulas that is how to prove the bredth of the genre.
Will Sanders.
Best post yet. Deliciously candid and not PC.
Bravo.
I think Daniel Cole’s post is the real matchwinner. He has read sci-fi and fantasy for 15 years, widely, (he has the A-B-C, Asimov-Bear-Clarke) and apart from Le Guin doesn’t know any of the names mentioned here.
I guess Octavia Butler, James Tiptree and Samuel Delany, even if they won their fair share of Hugos and Nebulas, should have moved past writing “novels about oppression”. That way they could have escaped the P-C niche and reached mainstream sf readers like him. Maybe even be considered for a spot among the truly mind-blowing authors collected in the anthology.
I agree that Daniel Cole’s post is worthy of an award, that of solipsism: “What I don’t know doesn’t exist.” So much for speculative fiction broadening one’s horizons.
I’m a young speculative and literary fiction writer. I’m 28. I’m just starting to get published. I’m a woman.
I wish the editors of this book understood how absurd they appear to the younger generation. And how young writers (like me) take note of them, i.e. specifically take note to never buy, endorse, or work with them in the future. There is just no excuse for this kind of thing anymore.
*looks up*
*reads controversy*
*shrugs, goes back to her Bujold novel. Is looking forward to rereading some Moon, McIntyre, Tepper and McCaffery later. Doesn’t buy anthology.*
Clearly I’m not part of the target marketing demographic. Or they’d have have picked a more “mindblowing” mix of authors.
I don’t find the editor’s picks offensive. Limited, yes–and as many people have pointed out, it’s not just because it doesn’t have any minorities. It’s missing a lot of mindblowing Old White Guys and twenty-one stories isn’t mammoth. But as far as being offended that this particular editor doesn’t have a female/black/whatever in this particular anthology? *shrugs* I understand the concerns people have, but it’s just a mistitled anthology to me. No big.
What I *do* find offensive is the defensive posturing of the hysterical screeching crap-flinging monkey brigade. Paul, Lance, Sanders, Brad, etc.? You realize this is an open, public thread? And that you’ve turned off yet another (very un-PC) reader by being frothing, foaming asshats? The height of professionalism there, dudes. Why bother to debate your point when you can just insult the people who don’t agree?
*another young, avid specfic reader who just added more names to her Never Buy This Hack’s Work list*
I find it curious, in this debate as well as others, that the ultimate tell-off seems to be, “Since you say things that I disagree with, I shall therefore threaten to not buy your work!”
Now, I’m all for people voting with their purses/wallets.
But I personally don’t require the politics and opinions of a given author to be consonant with mine in order for me to enjoy that author’s fiction. Frankly, I think a given artistic product assumes a life of its own once it’s left the artist’s or producer’s hand, and enters into the wider world.
In fact, I am personally uncomfortable with the mentality which demands that the creator-producer of an art product must have similar opinion to mine before I’ll consider buying the art product.
To me, that’s the heart and soul of Political Correctness.
Evaluate the creative product, independent of the creator. That’s a cleaner motto.
Oops, look at me, going and being a “foaming asshat” again. My bad.
While researching an article this week, I grabbed my dog-eared copy of that landmark bastion of “mind-blowing science fiction,” DANGEROUS VISIONS. Hmmmmm…
Originally published in 1967, DANGEROUS VISIONS features three women, and apologizes for excluding a fourth, Kate Wilhelm. Kate appears in the sequel, AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS; released in 1972, that one includes seven, including a Nebula-winning tale from Joanna Russ and the masterpiece “The Word for World is Forest” from Ursula K. Le Guin.
In the 36 years since then, hundreds of female and non-Anglo authors have authored hundreds (if not thousands) of books and stories in the SF/ Speculative Fiction genres. Daniel Cole’s assertion above that all these authors and stories revolve around PC concepts of “oppression” is as absurd, bigoted and ill-informed as it is badly written and poorly conceived.
Three or four decades ago, Harlan Ellision understood the frontiers of science fiction. Clearly, some folks haven’t caught up with him since.
How did a body of literature based around the opening of minds and the possibilites of human experience get so crowded with close-minded people of limited human experience? That, I suppose, remains a question for the ages.
Perhaps someone will write a book about it.
- Phil Brucato
——————
* – by Harlan Ellison, likewise excluded from Asheley’s “mind blowing” collection.