Hard Science Fiction and Author Gender: Does It Matter To You? (Poll)

December 1st, 2010

Historically women have been less likely to enter the hard sciences than men, and similarly less likely to write hard science fiction.   Happily, some do, and do it well, in my opinion.

When I talk about hard science fiction, I mean stories in which science is central to the story, doesn’t smell too much like magic, and actually rests on quantitative standards.   Astronomy and physics are my background, so they’re my bias, but there’s been a lot of great hard science fiction involving the biological sciences as well.

What I want to bring up today is not anything about why the gender disparity exists among the folks writing science fiction, but whether or not readers care.

I recently discovered that some female friends of mine who write hard science fiction have either been asked by publishers to use pen names that are not gender specific or are male (e.g., initials, or outright male names), or have gotten mail or seen reader comments from people who were actually mad when they found out that an author was a female.   The first item just indicates that publishers, particularly marketing departments, think that there are a lot of readers like the one mentioned in the second item.   Are there?

A big chunk of my library is hard science fiction, and it’s skewed toward male writers because a larger fraction of hard science fiction is written by men.   It doesn’t make it any more balanced when I go out and buy a bunch more books by those authors (e.g., Greg Benford, Joe Haldeman, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, etc.) and those individuals take up entire shelves, although there’s a big space dominated by Nancy Kress as well.   I’ve never consciously considered not buying a science fiction novel because of the gender of the author.   These days my buying is usually based on reviews, how cool the premise sounds, and more and more often if I’ve met the author and like them and/or find them especially interesting.   I wind up buying a lot of books by friends, and luckily I’m friends with some really good writers, male and female.

I wonder though… Do the marketers know something I don’t know?   Are there a lot of hard science fiction readers who strongly prefer their authors to be male?   And even if this was true in in the past, how true is it today?

My blog here probably isn’t the most scientfic place to figure this out, but many people who come here probably do read hard science fiction.   Here’s an opportunity to have an anonymous poll.   If you read hard science fiction, take a minute to take the poll, please.   Thanks!

Does it matter to you if the author of a hard science fiction novel isn't a male?

View Results

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In my link above, and comments there, there are recommendations of some hard science fiction novels by women writers.   Be encouraged to check some of them out if you’ve been on a steady diet of the guys.

I’d like to think the gender of the author doesn’t matter, that the marketers are making a mistake and in turn hiding potential role models from girls interested in doing science and writing hard science fiction.   But maybe I’m guilty of wishful thinking. Science is about getting at the truth, whether or not it’s the answer you would like to see, so let’s find out.

If you know of research into this topic, please leave a comment and point at it.   Thanks!

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16 Responses to “Hard Science Fiction and Author Gender: Does It Matter To You? (Poll)”

  1. Craig Says:
    December 1st, 2010 at 6:40 pm

    Any meaningful research on this is going to have to be based on something other than self-report surveys; demand effects, social desirability bias and lack of insight problems are going to completely fuck your results otherwise. There are good reasons why self-report methodologies aren’t much respected on the more scientific side of psychology.

    You might get something useful out of similar methods to those used in employment bias testing: for example, give folks two identical stories, one with a clearly male author credit, one with a clearly female author credit, and look at what effect that has on quality ratings and purchasing decisions.

    And: even if most readers aren’t sexist fuckwits, it only takes a small proportion of the readership who are in order for it to be profitable for the marketing folks to falsify author gender. The ethics of doing so are an entirely different question…

  2. Mike Brotherton Says:
    December 1st, 2010 at 6:48 pm

    Thanks for the comment, Craig. I don’t have enough time to do astronomy, which I’m trained and paid to do, so unfortunately my interests in psychology and related issues gets relegated to blog posts. But maybe I’ll inspire someone with more appropriate skills and the time to look into this properly.

    Hmmm…I wonder if there’s a sneaky way to do this online with an interested editor, Craig?

  3. JMS Says:
    December 1st, 2010 at 8:08 pm

    I’m significantly more likely to read a hard SF novel by a woman, because I presume it had to be really good to get past the prejudice against women writing hard SF.

  4. Mike Brotherton Says:
    December 1st, 2010 at 9:12 pm

    JMS, I guess I’m wondering if there still is much of a prejudice (and I’m sure there was in some circles of science fiction’s so-called “golden age” as there was in many aspects of society, greatly diminishing since), or if perception of a prejudice keeps alive the suggestion to have pen names that are not clearly female. Perception is awfully difficult or impossible to tell from reality sometimes.

    I mean, I suspect very few if any book editors would turn down a great hard science fiction novel they loved, no matter the gender of the author. Same thing with romance editors. Marketing is perhaps a different story…

  5. Craig Says:
    December 1st, 2010 at 9:39 pm

    Mike: given that I’m averaging about 60-80hrs/week in the lab myself, and have ~50 rat brains to dissect and analyse in the next few weeks, I’m not terribly keen on volunteering myself as a gender bias researcher either…

  6. Jenny Says:
    December 1st, 2010 at 9:55 pm

    I voted “No” but I guess it’s complicated with me, too. I’d be *more* likely to pick up a hard science fiction novel written by a woman, but not just because I am one. I have great admiration for (and a fascination with) women in science — I often wish I’d had the courage myself to pursue a scientific field (I wanted to be an astronaut something fierce when I was younger).

    I’ve particularly enjoyed Catherine Asaro’s novels that were based on/inspired by spherical harmonics and quantum physics. That said, I have enjoyed Asimov, Niven, and others.

  7. Craig Says:
    December 1st, 2010 at 10:56 pm

    Jenny: it’s never too late for science. I’m halfway through my PhD (behavioural neuroscience/psychopharmacology), and I’m 36 years old.

  8. russ Says:
    December 2nd, 2010 at 1:56 am

    I think some such bias exists. But if marketers would quit forcing women to hide their sex via ambiguous or male pseudonyms, the bias would go away quicker.

    It seems analogous to other examples of the effects of closetedness on perpetuating bias against a group, and that breaking open that closet helps increase awareness and reduce the bias, as someone realizes “Oh, I’ve actually read and enjoyed books by female authors!” or “Oh, I actually know and like gay people!” or whatever.

  9. -dsr- Says:
    December 2nd, 2010 at 10:10 am

    Note that the other direction of bias exists, too: in urban fantasy (the kind with the woman on the cover who is wearing leather pants, showing a tattoo and has her back to the audience) and all genres of romance, female authors are expected.

    I don’t condone the bias in either direction, I’m just noting it.

  10. Kim Says:
    December 2nd, 2010 at 1:43 pm

    I voted that it doesn’t matter the gender of the author, however, there is a little catch to this. I read the books that appeal to me, in genres that appeal and on subjects that appeal, and as was said in the article, a lot of these books tend to be written by men. Dreams and Speculation dot com’s book club for 2011 is all female authors, and I’m up for it!

  11. Adrian K Says:
    December 2nd, 2010 at 2:27 pm

    Well it’s hardly news that the publishing industry is driven by a narrow perception of profit: sell to a known target demographic; hard science fiction is predominantly read by men so should be written by someone they can identify with; repeat previous success formula while claiming to be looking for something different.

    Ok so my view comes from bitter experience (as a *male*) and I’m no expert on the US market. People also tend to be more conservative than they like to make out. I can’t be certain of not being more reluctant to read a hard sf book by a female author since there are so few, or maybe I would be because there so few (and there’s the catch-22). The promotion of so few could seem like tokenism by a publisher who wants to appear politically correct, or fulfilling some quota. This can only change if the industry takes more risks, rather than reinforcing conventional beliefs based on biological stereotypes. It’s about as valid to say that women can’t write hard-sf as it is to say men can’t write romantic fiction or create convincing female characters.

    Perhaps the problem of late is this subdividing of genres. Why not just get back to good old science fiction? (but not sci-fi, of course). I’m working on something which could be categorised as hard-sf, but that’s bound to exclude people who think, well, its too hard.

  12. urban writers colony Says:
    January 28th, 2011 at 10:15 pm

    I voted that it doesn’t matter the gender of the author, however, there is a little catch to this. I read the books that appeal to me, in genres that appeal and on subjects that appeal, and as was said in the article, a lot of these books tend to be written by men. Dreams and Speculation dot com’s book club for 2011 is all female authors, and I’m up for it!

  13. John Evo Says:
    February 27th, 2011 at 9:00 pm

    Wow, I just happened upon your blog and this post and it’s a subject I’ve been kicking around a good bit lately.

    Not only does it not matter to me – I actually want to get the female perspective on hard sci fi. I just exchanged some email with Elizabeth Bear (“Carnival” and “Undertow”) and she was reporting to me almost exactly what you are claiming here.

    You would hope that sexism is not flourishing in the sci fi genres, but apparently it is. Marketing people aren’t any more sexist than any other group, but they are cold-bloodedly calculating when it comes to the best ways of increasing revenue. Despite the results of your poll so far (encouraging), I’d guess they have done their homework on more scientifically conducted polling. Sad.

    Anyway, I’ll bookmark your blog and check in from time to time. Glad I found it.

  14. Samantha Says:
    April 15th, 2011 at 4:07 pm

    I voted that the question is complicated. As a female who enjoys hard SF, I want there to be female authors who write fantastic stories in that Genre. Unfortunately that is not always the case, and most female SF authors I have read tend to fall more into the speculative fiction category or even to cross over into fantasy at times. That being said, I tend to purchase books based on whether the premise is interesting to me or not, as well as reviews. Much like you mentioned, the imbalance in authors of the two genders tends to naturally cause an imbalance in my own book shelf. There are many really well written and interesting SF stories by women, but not many (that I have found or been led to) that fall into the hard SF category. Also, if a hard SF author happens to have some sort of degree or training in the sciences, I am much more likely to purchase their work, and that again shifts the scale towards men.

  15. Laura Says:
    October 31st, 2011 at 2:57 pm

    I once dated a guy who told me he NEVER read science fiction written by a woman because women couldn’t wright science fiction. He claimed, quite matter of factly, that women weren’t smart enough to write science fiction. I had read a statistic somewhere, can’t remeber where and I don’t know how accurate it is, but it was that 40% of science fiction is written by women under a male pen name. (Interestingly I the same article said that 60% of romance is written by men under female pen names). When I repeated this to him, he actually got mad. I mean really and truly pissed. He wasn’t my boy friend after that.

    I personally voted that its complicated. I have found several female hard sci-fi authors that I like, but many I don’t. I find that women writers place a lot of emphasis on emotional relationships and romance, to the point of taking over the plot and science. So, I won’t avoid an author just because she is female, but I have found that many female writers skew their writing in a way I’m not interested in. And, I don’t care for overtly over the top, angry femenist themes anymore than I like dismissive, blatantly sexist themes of some male writers. I rely on reviews and samples to judge before buying, male or female . . .

  16. Sunday Starlinks Says:
    February 12th, 2012 at 4:52 pm

    [...] Science Fiction Writers Would Break.  The issue of women writing hard sf comes up and links to an old post here.  I guess the article is just a reminder that there are no true rules to writing.  If it works, [...]

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