Thankfully there are many wonderful persons of the male persuasion in the world. Here are a couple of shout-outs.
Firstly to Joe Gordon who has done a fine post on the Womanthology project.
And secondly to Marco and Lee at Angry Robot. You probably already know that they publish Lauren Beukes, Kaaren Warren and Aliette de Bodard. Also in the pipeline are Jo Anderton and Anne Lyle. And today they added Madeline Ashby. All of these ladies write science fiction. (Aliette’s novels are fantasy, but her Hugo-nominated story is SF set at a later time in the same world.)
See, it’s not hard to find women SF writers when you put your mind to it. Or indeed to publish them and have a massive international success on your hands. My only regret is that, of all those ladies, Anne is the only Brit. I guess it must be something to do with the climate.
Thanks for the mention, Cheryl! To be accurate, my forthcoming novel is fantasy, but whereas typical fantasy has fantastical elements derived from mythology and folklore, mine are extrapolated from biology and psychology. So I guess you could say I use SF sensibilities to write fantasy 🙂
As for whether this is anything to do with the climate, I have no idea!
Your publisher says it is alternate history. That will do. 😉
I prefer “alternate palaeontology” – but no-one knows what that means 🙁
Giant vampire, troll and fairy skeletons?
No – though that’s a really cool idea! (I’m actually incubating a fantasy archaeology story, but it’s in the very early stages at the moment).
I have a non-human sentient species that _isn’t_ based directly on mythology – rather the alternate world’s mythology is slightly different from ours, because of their existence.
There are up and coming British SF writers… from the last 4 issues of the Jupiter (which is published quarterly) science fiction magazine we have Nicola Caines, Kate Kelly, Sarah Hughes and Emma Knight. I’m too modest to include myself…
That’s good to know. And if people are interested in reading those ladies, the Jupiter website is here.
Thanks, Cheryl! One of things I really like about the team is that they seem to stand with their female writers, so I’m happy that someone else noticed the trend. 🙂