Mike Ashley
I did a little looking around on Mike Ashley, editor of The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing Science Fiction. (See previous post). Seems he's been doing this editor thing for a while, and has a whole bunch of Mammoth short story collections running around.
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For a start I have no bias towards women writers or writers of any race or creed. Quite the contrary. If readers want to check out any of my anthologies or, more importantly, the section in GATEWAYS TO FOREVER that looks at the feminist issues of the 1970s, they will see that I have great respect for women writers. I have said this time and again, as far back as the mid-70s when I wrote an article about women writers for SCIENCE FICTION MONTHLY. My reference books have explored sf throughout the world.
In assembling this anthology (and EXTREME SF) the emphasis was on stories that took unusual scientific concepts and developed them in even more unusual ways. When I checked out stories for these books I just picked stories that worked for me. I didn't even always check out the by-line. In fact I was a bit surprised that as the list of likely contents grew that I didn't have anything by women.
That probably has something to do with my concept of "mind-blowing". Women are every bit as capable of writing mindblowing sf as men are, but with women the stories concentrate far more on people, life, society and not the hard-scientific concepts I was looking for.
Maybe, in retrospect, I should've looked harder, but I didn't want to include women writers on a purely token basis. I did in fact contact a couple of women writers early on hoping they could contribute new stories, but one didn't respond and for the other, the timescale for compiling the anthology proved too tight, which was a shame.
For those interested, the next anthology I am compiling, of apocalyptic sf, will include quite a few stories by women writers, though I'm still some way from resolving the final line-up.
Mike Ashley
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Even if I were to accept this as a reasonable reason, that does not explain where all the people of color are. Just sayin'.
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After looking through your work, I thought it was supremely peculiar (mind blowing, in fact, in I may) that someone as cognizant as you would have left out the women. I for one look forward to the apocalyptic sf anthology, as I'm fond of that trope.
As for your statement about stories concentrating on people, etc., rather than hard science concepts, I can't say whether I hope that will change or whether that's all to the good.
Perhaps one day the woman writer who obviously employs both concerns will show herself.
--Marguerite
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I can't believe this statement is even remotely acceptable, being a gross generalization and a repetition of something we've heard over and over from male editors, most memorably in the F&SF debate. I find it nearly as offensive, if not more, than the TOC itself.
Women's stories and men's stories are not different. To make a vast, sweeping statement about all women's fiction as a defense against not including them is revolting, and Not Helping.
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Swanwick wrote the introduction to at least one of Tiptree's collections. Are we to credit the argument that none of those stories about science?
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but really, it's easier to assume i am always sarcastic.
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Seriously, someone who knows so little about the current state of the field to opine something so demonstrably false should really rethink whether he is the right person to be editing anthologies at all.
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In my experience, yes - men and women write science fiction differently.
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Just to clarify. By "a couple," you mean don't mean the informal "a small but undefined number"; you mean two (evidenced by the rest of thes sentence).
I only point this out because on a casual reading, I got hte impression that you contacted more than two women writers. I wouldn't want anyone else to suffer the same confusion.
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