"Men write better fantasy than women" please discuss.

[Sieben]

Hi,

I am a new member and I was just looking down your author list on the home page and something struck me....

Sieben

 

[Cobolt]

Good question and welcome to the forum.

Never thought about it but I dont think for one minute men write better fantasy than women. It may be the case of women write different types of fantasy or even there just isn't that many women fantasy authors around.

No matter what the gender of the author is, the range of fantasy within the fantasy genre is wide as it is long.

Hmmm must think about this one.

 

[Wiggum]

Jennifer Roberson
Katharine Kerr
Robin Hobb
Sara Douglass

Off the top of my head, have written some of my favorite fantasy. Robin Hobb being number 3 on my list, and the others being near the top. If I made a list of my top ten fantasy authors it'd be a pretty even split.

 

[Nesacat]

How curious ... I've just made a top ten list and had a quick run through the book shelves and most of the fantasy writers I have are men. I'd never consciously thought about it before. It's a good question and bears some thinking about.

Welcome to the Chronicles.

 

[Brys]

I don't think there's any significant difference between men and women writers in terms of quality - there are more men who write fantasy than women, so logically there are more men who write excellent fantasy and more men who write awful fantasy. A couple of female fantasy writers I think are exceptional - K.J.Bishop, Patricia McKillip, Ursula K Le Guin, and there are a few more who I think are good but not amazing - Robin Hobb, J.V. Jones, Julian May, Vera Nazarian, Steph Swainston and there's only one female author who I really dislike - Trudi Canavan.

I don't read by gender, though most of what I've read is written by men, it's not a concious decision.
The chances are that if you randomly select a female fantasy author, it won't be very good fantasy - Sturgeon's law applies (90% of everything is bad), and the same would be true for men. The proportion of exceptional, good, mediocre and bad of what I've read is very similar for men as for women. It's not an issue in my mind.

 

[dustinzgirl]

First, the whole discussion is kind of silly, because everyone reads differently and everyone writes differently. No too men could be said to be better than the other, and the same for two women, or a man and a woman. But no, I think the few fantasy women I have had a chance to read were just as good, if not better, than the men. The problem is there are not ENOUGH female fantasy writers. Actually there are not enough female writers period. So, get off your butt and fix that.

 

[LeoCrow]

I guess when we hear the word fantasy, the second things that comes to mind (after lotr) is sexuality. usually fantasy is filled with elements of sexuality and women dont easily write about that. in that regard, fantasy writen by women may be better in a different way than most think.

 

[dustinzgirl]

I guess when we hear the word fantasy, the second things that comes to mind (after lotr) is sexuality. usually fantasy is filled with elements of sexuality and women dont easily write about that. in that regard, fantasy writen by women may be better in a different way than most think.

You don't read much outside of sf/f do you? because my mohter has about 10,000 books that are all sex, cover to cover sex, written by and for women. Women write about sex more often--and better--than men do.

 

[Finnien]

Anne McCaffrey, Margaret Weis, and Mercedes Lackey are easily three of the more popular fantasy writers. Michelle West, although less well-known, wrote a tremendous high fantasy epic series, The Sun Sword. Also, Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy was quite fun. I'm sure I could think of more, but I should also probably do a little work today.

 

[Finnien]

I guess when we hear the word fantasy, the second things that comes to mind (after lotr) is sexuality. usually fantasy is filled with elements of sexuality and women dont easily write about that. in that regard, fantasy writen by women may be better in a different way than most think.

Pick up Jaqueline Carey's Kushiel series, or Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I think it says more about the make-up of this board than it does about who writes better books. To a certain extent, what people are already talking about influences what people will continue to talk about. New members who find that no one is discussing any of their favorite authors here are less likely to stick around; new members who find out that people are already discussing their favorite writer in excrutiating detail are more likely to stay. And people who are already here for various reasons very often become curious about the books that everyone is talking about and seek them out. This is why word-of-mouth is so powerful.

Also, if you look inside some of the author forums, you'll see that quite a few of them date back to a time when the boards here were relatively new. In many cases, no one has uttered a word or started a new thread in those forums for a long, long time. If it were all to do again, it's highly probable that some of those authors would never have been given sub-forums, because no one is displaying sufficient interest for that to happen.

In fact, there are many, many highly regarded female writers (and male writers, too) who hardly get a mention here. Meanwhile, they go on collecting awards and nominations and recognition elsewhere.

(Whether or not more men are writing fantasy I don't know, because I haven't made a survey of the shelves in my local bookstores with gender specifically in mind, but certainly the conversations here are not a fair reflection of what is selling. Writers like Modesitt (male) and Lackey (female), who command a huge amount of shelf space in bookstores, rarely come up in our discussions.)

 

[Sieben]

Wiggum,

For every Robin Hobb there are 5 Mercedes Lackey's

For every Katherine Kerr there are 10 Storm Constantine's.

Sieben

 

[Sieben]

Brys,

I take on board all that you say - I actually thought Julian May was a man but yet you say that unconsciously you read mostly men.

My question is not meant to offend its just that I think that this is predominately a boys game.

 

[Sieben]

dustinzgirl,

I seem to have struck a nerve, or is this just a bad time?

 

[jackokent]

I've never really considered author's gender before but thinking about it now my favorite authors are Janny Wurts, Hobb, Le Guin and Tanith Lee and Octavia Bulter .. all women. I'm really surprised at that as I would have thought it would be a more even mix. If you looked at my bookshelves you'd probably think fantasy was predominantly a girls game.

 

[Brys]

Brys,

I take on board all that you say - I actually thought Julian May was a man but yet you say that unconsciously you read mostly men.

My question is not meant to offend its just that I think that this is predominately a boys game.

In writer's it still might be a "boys game" but I'm not at all sure that's the case amongst readers any more. Which is partly because women tend to read more than men, on average, but I also think that as fantasy has "matured" for lack of a better word it has gained popularity amongst female readers. Don't worry, it doesn't offend me at all. I subconciously read men because I tend to choose what to read based off recommendations - which have a significant majority of male writers. I'm as unlikely to read a Katherine Kerr as I am to read a Modesitt - it has absolutely nothing to do with gender. At the moment it seems like there is a slightly higher proportion of women writing epic or romantic fantasy than writing other types of fantasy, and as I prefer other subgenres, I read them less. While I don't conciously choose male writers because they are male, I'm not going to do the opposite and choose female writers because they are female, because the chances are there will be a lot I don't like. I choose them based on what I think will be the best - and that best is perhaps 10% of all that is written, so those which I consider worth reading amongst female writers is much lower than amongst men. That said, I am planning on reading both Tanith Lee and Octavia Butler as soon as I can get some of their books, and two of my favourite books this year have been by female writers, and I've only read maybe 4 books by female writers this year.

 

[Wiggum]

Wiggum,

For every Robin Hobb there are 5 Mercedes Lackey's

For every Katherine Kerr there are 10 Storm Constantine's.

Sieben

Not sure what your point is, the same "equation" could be done using male authors.

It's a subjective question, to which I answered with my opinion. My two favorite fantasy suthors happen to be male, but 4-5 out of my top 10 are women. If the gender equality within the genre is unbalanced, it doesn't seem to be by much.

 

[GOLLUM]

Like other members here gender of the author isn't really an issue to me. I'm just interested in well written books whose story I can enjoy.

It is however interesting to view my list, as I think all the books are by men. I've got some favourite female authors but I'd say about 80% of SFF that I read is by men, so perhaps it simply reflects the fact that the majority of SFF authors I know of are male.

 

[steve12553]

Two things I'd comment on. Nobody is quoting any sort of statistics such as sales or numbers of books sold. We're just guessing. Yes some authors are very good and some are total hacks but many in between are a matter of taste. The other thing mentioned was sexual fantasies. I suspect that women write what they find interesting along those lines and I know men do. That's another thing that is being discussed anecdotally. And on the other, other hand authors, just like forum users, aren't necessarily of the gender they purport to be.

 

[sabinerak]

Hello,

I just discovered and started reading these forums. I have been a reader of sci-fi/fantasy since I first learned to read. I've gotten way behind on my reading though since I discovered computers and internet.

In any case, I tend to agree that the "male majority" seems to be more a reflection of these forums rather than that male writers are more numerous/popular than female writers.

I haven't consciously chosen female writers over male writers, but the authors I seem to read again and again are mostly female -- Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mercedes Lacky, early Anne Rice, Patricia McKillip, Judith Tarr, Anne McCaffrey, Ellen Kushner, Elizabeth Moon, Katherine Kurtze, Joan Vinge....and there are others that I like too though I haven't read them as much yet and I'm still not even caught up with everything written by the above authors.

Even so, I've been very fond of many books written by males. Isaac Asimov started me off on this whole sci-fi journey (not counting Narnia, Mary Poppins series--written by a woman too, btw--, Wizard of Oz, miscellaneous myths and fairy tales, etc.) and then it just went on from there. More recently, I've enjoyed Tad Williams, R.A. Salvatore, Robert Silverberg, Donaldson, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson -- who are male so it hasn't all been female authors.

As for why I tend to read female authors more than male authors, I haven't really given it much thought. I'll read pretty much anything by anyone, male or female, given the time.