Proof Copy of the Day

[coalescent]

Item one: the difference in spelling between the front cover and spine.

Item two: "Female SF writers are a rarity; good ones even scarcer!"

If anyone wants to play guess-the-publisher before clicking through to the photos, feel free. That said, I'm still looking forward to reading it.

Comments

[oursin]

.

[coalescent]

Here's an interesting thing: one of the other proofs that came in the same package is The Ninth Circle by Alex Bell. The book is apparently "Neil Gaiman meets The Bourne Identity in one of 2008's most feted Gollancz debuts", and Bell is "a frighteningly young, talented debut author ... Massively promotable, Alex is sure to gain extensive publicity coverage". Nowhere does it mention that Alex Bell is a woman. Now, is this because (1) Bell didn't want to be so identified, (2) they think men aren't going to buy The Bourne Identity by a woman, (3) female fantasy authors just aren't as comment-worthy as female sf authors, or (4) something else?

[oursin]

I'm additionally perturbed by the 'frighteningly young' in that description, in between beating my head on the desk over the 'let's not mention it's a gurrrl'. It sounds like a Midwich Cuckoo.

I realise that if I ever get back into writing fiction I shall have to save it all up until I can be marketed as Splendid Ancient Crone (whacking people with my cane, waving my ear-trumpet at them, and bringing antimaccassars into the conversation somehow. But NOT wearing a red hat with purple). There is no hype to be got out of being middle-aged.

[nuttyxander]

Oh, frighteningly young gets banded about far too often. As a mid-20s bod in the book industry I don't find it frightening that I sell authors younger than me, I find it heartening.

Of course, the vocabulary available for putting on proofs has almost all be used at least twice already though, so sometimes it's just a game to see just how many clichés you can get onto a jacket.

[badgerbag]

Frighteningly middle-aged!

[oursin]

Of a certain, absolutely terrifying, age.

[movingfinger]

[via james_nicoll]"Frighteningly young" to me brings Eragon to mind and thus maps to "frighteningly badly written." Probably this is just me.

The posts keep moving for youth. F/SF has yet to meet its Daisy Ashford, but surely she is out there.

[oursin]

Now jonesing for Daisy Ashford does sf. (Spaceforce Commander Salteena?)

[maeve_the_red]

Alex (who does get annoyed when people assume she's a man, by the way), is actually young enough to be my daughter. So, if my blurb says (inaccurately) that I'm 'young', then logic presumably dictates she must be *frighteningly* young. Hey-ho.

Jaine

[veggiesu]

I realise that it's highly unlikely, given the gender wars that still seem to dominate the SF world, but could it be that the author's gender just isn't relevant?

Interesting that you don't seem to think they'd need to indicate if the author was a man :-p

[wishus]

I know the author's gender isn't relevant to me, but I have a friend who, in his youth, wouldn't touch a book written by a woman, because he had read one book by Anne Macaffrey and "didn't like it". I always thought that was a weird way of making a book choice myself, but I read statistics in Mslexia about the reading habits of boys and I think his case is probably typical.

I think the lack of indication of Alex Bell's gender may be a case of 'don't tell, don't ask'.

... That said, my friend and I were talking about what he'd been reading lately a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him if he had read anything by China Mieville. He said he'd seen her name bandied about a lot but wasn't sure if she wrote his sort of thing.

[lil_shepherd]

inamac thought the same, and I made no judgements at all about China's gender until I heard him on Radio 3. The fact is that I had heard of a couple of females called China but no males until Mr Mieville. Thinking that he was a she is not in the least surprising.

[ktempest]

we live in a world where the shoulda coulda wouldas sadly do not dominate the sphere. It SHOULDN'T matter whether she's a woman or a man, but it totally does. And unfortunately the way to get to a time where author gender won't matter in some way isn't to merely declare gender unimportant and go blindly forward. (Not that you suggested such, I am just sayin')

[coalescent]

My point wasn't that Alex Bell's gender is relevant -- I don't really think it is -- but that these are both debut novels from the same publisher, and one is marketed on the author's gender and the other is not. The point is not that Alex Bell's gender is relevant, but to ask why Gollancz thought Jaine Fenn's gender is relevant.

That said, having looked at all the Gollancz proofs I have sitting around, it is the only one not to mention the author's gender. Admittedly most of the others have non-gender-ambiguous names on them, but still.

[purplecthulhu]

Linguistic point...

I think the word you should be using here is sex not gender.

Sex is biological. Gender is a societal construct. I think you're discussing the sex of these authors not their gender.