The Sword and Laser discussion

recently i noticed my reading interests here changed where i mostly buy and read books by female authors. I started thinking about this because my wife and I were at barnes and noble and i came home with binti by Nnedi Okorafor and radiance by Catharine M Valente. I started to look through the last 60 books and graphic novels I've read and I've read more female authors than male authors. Has this happened to anyone else? Is this because of sword and laser? Have my tastes changed with age? Is levar burton's podcast an influence? Thank you sword and laser for introducing me to new authors.

I can't speak to your changes but one reason I have a lot of female authors on my read list over the last few years is because a lot are being published and they're excellent. Jemisin, Okorafor and many more just flat out write really well. I don't think this was the case 15 years ago (them being published, I mean).

I don't consciously seek out women to read but the fact is that a lot of the best SFF lately is done by them and I want to read the best stuff. That's also why I read Daniel Older, Yoon Ha Lee, Victor La Valle and others. I think we're a bit spoiled - the white guys are still there but they've been joined by women and both men and women of color and we're reaping the benefits of seeing a more open landscape - more really good fiction.

Frankly, this is why I love the movement toward diversity. Not (just) because of the social justice angle important as that is, but because I'm selfish for myself and for society and when we get more people doing a thing... writing SFF, doing physics, researching diseases, whatever... we all get more. And it's not just more of what we had it's more new stuff too.

I definitely read more female authored Sci-Fi and Fantasy books than I used to and that is mostly through Sword and Laser and this community introducing me to them.

I never excluded female authors when I was choosing books and read many great books by women throughout my life.

But It did seem to be dominated by men back in the 70s and 80s when I started reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

My story is the same as Tassie Dave's. I've read more female authors in the last few years because of S&L. I've never picked books based on gender or ethnicity or anything like that but the majority of SF books available in the early 70's were by white males so that's who I read for the most part.

I’ve always had an even balance between male and female writers. I didn’t even know until recently that most people read books written by authors of their own gender.

Even back in the ‘70s and ‘80s I always read books by women. For every Larry Niven book there was a Katherine Kurtz novel. For every Jack L. Chalker book I read one by Anne McCaffrey. It almost certainly skewed towards men simply because there were more male writers, but not by much. Julian May, Kate Wilhelm, Octavia Butler were all on my must-read list.

My favorite book as a young boy was Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, followed by The Call of the Wild/White Fang by Jack London. After that I went on to the Hardy Boys (written by men) and Nancy Drew (written by women). So I think my tastes were set to “gender neutral” at a young age.

My reading taste used to be more diverse (including classics, general/ contemporary fiction) compared when I was in school/college but I think in the last five years or more I stick to SFF and occassional nonfiction.
I do read more female-authored books because of Goodreads groups and members as well as some podcasts I listened to.

To be honest I've never really paid attention to which gender the author is, but now you mention it, of the books I've really enjoyed over the last year the large majority are female.

Of my favourite authors, the majority are female.

I'm guessing the reason I'm mainly reading these authors is because they're smegging good.

For me there’s a sense of wanting to read something with a fresh perspective, and often that can be provided through diversity. Eg, I’ve read the white Western male take on SFF, let’s see what a Chinese guy, or an African-American woman, brings to the table. Answer: some of my favourite books of the last few years (The Three-Body Problem and The Fifth Season)

Yeah I think I am reading more from female authors due to book clubs, podcasts and recommendations than I used to. On the flip side of that it means that more female authors are going onto my 'never read again' list :)

I've always flipped between different genders in different genres and never noticed a real difference. A good writer is a good writer. The publishing world for horror seems to be male dominated while females seem to have a solid share of the fantasy realm. But then again I've never really noticed since to me a writer is a writer. Off the top of my head though I can think of a lot more females in Fantasy than in Horror.

When I started reading sci-fi I loved how the genre could be used to take a deeper look into social, philosophical, psychological topics in fun settings. Maybe my change in reading habits is partly due to authors of different backgrounds writing from different experiences to create stories I've never read before. There is something fascinating when a story takes you somewhere new and different.

My tastes haven't changed in regards to gender or race, but I've noticed as I've gotten older that I much prefer shorter books.
When I was younger I would get thrilled over the latest 1000 page opus by King or Jordan, but nowadays I'd much prefer a brisk 350 page read.

I think the reason is that more female authors get published. For example, J.K. Rowling. There was a reason they went with J.K. instead of going with Joanne Rowling which would have been just as fine. I think it was her huge success that made publishers give more female authors a break, especially in SF/F literature.

Tomp wrote: "I think the reason is that more female authors get published. For example, J.K. Rowling. There was a reason they went with J.K. instead of going with Joanne Rowling which would have been just as fi..."

I think you are right. I think the fact that they have been successful since then shows that female authors can produce good books, as can male authors, if they are not blocked from publishing.

Just think of the books we've missed out on because the publisher judged people not by the quality of their writing, but by the contents of their underwear.

Getting published has never been a problem for women. Being read and taken seriously by men has.

The cold hard facts of the matter are these: more women than men read books. People tend to read books written by authors of their own gender. You do the math.

Of the top 10 best-selling authors in history (writing in English), the only men on that list are William Shakespeare and Harold Robbins. The rest are women: Agatha Christie, Barbara Cartland, Danielle Steel, Jane Austen, J.K. Rowling, etc. Christie sold more books than Shakespeare and he had a 400-year head start.