Sex percentages of authors reviewed...

Having just read the post on Coverage of Women on SF/F Blogs by Ladybusiness (read it for the stats and some analysis), I decided to tot up the TFF Reviews figures for last year. Just out of interest; this is an unscientific statistic, both because it's such a small sample, and because the count is open to interpretation (as I'll explain) and I'm hardly an impartial statistician. But for what it's worth...

Of the 51 reviews we posted in 2011:

• 31 (61%) were of works authored or edited by men (to the best of my knowledge);
• 18 (35%) were of works authored or edited by women;
• 2 (4%) were of works or collections the gender of whose author or editor I cannot immediately tell.

For the record: for magazines, anthologies and other edited work, I used the sex of the named editor if one was given (or if I happen to know the person who edits the zine). Also for the record: we have a mixed team of reviewers, almost equally divided between male and female (53% of reviews had a male byline, against 47% female). For what it's worth, our current list of 34 titles available contains 20 with male authors, 10 female, 4 ambiguous (named with initials or names inscrutible to me).

The numbers are not as good as I hoped they would be, although marginally better than the average in the survey. This makes me wonder: do we need a reviewers' Russ Pledge?

I read a lot of SFF by women personally, but TFF reviews small press and indie publications, so these titles pretty much by definition have to be offered to us by the publisher or author, and our reviewers have freedom to choose anything on the list. I'm reluctant to change these rules (but would be interested to hear people's opinions on this), but I will say here that (a) we're actively looking for more women reviewers, so if you're interested in reviewing, take a look at our guidelines and drop us an email; and (b) we'd actively like to add more indie/small press titles by women authors and editors to our list, so likewise, check the guidelines and drop us an email.

The Russ Pledge: favourite science fiction by women

(Blog response to Nicola Griffiths: Taking the Russ Pledge.)

I've occasionally felt the need to answer the question, "Who are your favourite authors?" or "What are your favourite science/speculative fiction novels/stories?" I don't have a record of having answered this recently, but my impression is that a large proportion of my responses are women authors or books/stories authored by women. Here is my answer today, focusing (as per the Russ Pledge) on women who write scifi and speculative fiction (focusing a little more on science fiction than fantasy, but not shying away from the gray area between).

In no particular order (and with no claim to completeness):

• Octavia Butler's Fledgling (a vampire novel, but definitely shows a scifi mentality); 'Speech Sounds' is one of the best short stories about what it means to be human that I have ever read
• Nancy Kress, Beggars in Spain is a thrillingly creative social-sf novel, and stories like 'Inertia' are an unflinching look at biological engineering and how humans adapt
• Ekaterina Sedia's wonderful The Alchemy of Stone is probably considered fantasy, but it's really steampunk science fiction with an emphasis on human (and created) expertise and craftsmanship
• Tananarive Due: 'Like Daughter' (in the Dark Matter anthology) is a particularly heartbreaking story about cloning and the confusion between genetic and personal identity
• Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels (one of my earliest introductions to overtly strong women and alternative sexualities in future-of-humanity science fiction)
• Nisi Shawl: the stories in Filter House reinvented my idea of what speculative fiction should be (and do)
• Ursula Le Guin's Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusion etc.: powerful exploration of human settlements in an alien future and the real implications of science fictional technologies
• Roz Kaveney's short fiction, especially 'A Wolf to Man'
• Nalo Hopkinson: can anyone remind me the title of a short story I now can't find about a man and a woman who wear suits that allow them to feel each other's experiences and have sex?
• Joanna Russ, The Female Man, How to Suppress Women's Writing
• Julie Czerneda, Survival (haven't read the rest of the trilogy yet)
• Jennifer Maria Brissett, 'Nasmina's Black Box' (again, might look like fantasy, but a story about human creation--and destruction--and full of gadgets and dreams)
• Suzette Elgin, Native Tongue (real hard social-science fiction, with linguistics as the science)
• Vandana Singh: speculative fiction that avoids most of the Anglo-american clichés and boundaries of the genre
• Elizabeth Vonarburg, Chroniques du Pays des Mères, and the short story 'L'oiseau de cendres'; powerfully imagined, unromantic stuff
• Mary Rosenblum, 'Search Engine' (low-life cyberpunk political thriller)
• Therese Arkenberg, 'Drown or Die' (when we terraform another world, do we change it or ourselves?)