Puntificator Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 Pretty sure Mazarkis Williams is a man. I am absolutely 100% positive Mazarkis is a female. I can't tell you at this time how I know this, but I can tell you that you will be able to know this for a fact as well, fairly soon, probably before the year is up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mars447 Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 I couldn't get into Kameron Hurley because she was too grimdark. But then I prefer Joe Abercrombie to R Scott Bakker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voodooqueen126 Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 I couldn't get into Kameron Hurley because she was too grimdark. But then I prefer Joe Abercrombie to R Scott Bakker. does Kameron Hurley have anything coming out this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callan S. Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 I am absolutely 100% positive Mazarkis is a female. I can't tell you at this time how I know this, but I can tell you that you will be able to know this for a fact as well, fairly soon, probably before the year is up. This secret knowledge begs so many spicy questions! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyanna Stark Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 I can only write from my experience and would be very interested in your recommendations of grimdark female authors. The closest thing I have read by a female author would be Jacqueline Cary's novels and that honestly is about as far from "gritty" as you can get with its Neo-Renassiance sex-positive spoiled pseudo-French as you can possibly get. I've been told Robin Hobb is the best woman to go to for that but her absence is due to a shocking factoid--I haven't read any of her books. Otherwise, she would have been included but recommending something without having read it strikes me as grossly inappropriate. My own opinion on female-written fantasy and otherwise as compared to grimdark is the first fantasy novels I ever read were written by Margaret Weis in the Dragonlance books so I've never really seen the "distinction" between male and female authors in the genre the way other readers do. As far as I'm concerned, fantasy should be considered a gender-neutral playground. If I were to cite influential authors for how I write banter, Elaine Cunningham would also be very up there. I also recommend Christie Golden but she is very-very high fantasy. LOL @ your description of Jaqueline Carey. I can only say I completely agree with that and add that it contains the most tiresome pre-occupation with ridiculously beautiful people I have encountered outside the Harlequin romance scene. As for the second bolded, is it your opinion that this is how things ought to be, or that this is how we should treat SFF here and now? While I can agree that SFF should be gender neutral as a sort of general thing, this is also not really possible until we live in a completely gender equal society. SFF has always been in conversation with our society and culture, even if a lot of people insist it's only escapism, but as we have discussed here about vampires and werewolves: they stand for something, or symbolise something, and then what does that mean and what can it tell us about society, our culture, the audience, etc. And Kurtz fucking rocks. I own all the Deryni novels and read them way before it was cool. Represent! Yeah, I was really stunned at this being a thing. Take a look at this article. She's pretty much where I am at, thought wise. http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/06/guest-post-tansy-rayner-roberts-fantasy-female-writers-politics-influence/ I'm not really sure if she's onboard with reading female authors as being political or something one should strive for, or whether her experiences invalidate that. It seems she switches gears completely half way through. Or perhaps that she was shocked by the lack of female authors outside her in-group, perhaps? Which I can certainly understand as yes, I basically had, growing up, Le Guin and Wynne Jones from the Anglosphere. And Susan Cooper for the slightly younger. However, their works were normally counted as YA and not "proper" adult stuff which was left to the menz. Until Hobb (which I didn't even know was a she, this was before the internet), Kurtz and Weis/Hickham. I suppose now with the advent of the internet, it's easier to speak to your peers and see what they read and what they reference. Regarding being surprised at people not reading female authors (like Rayner Roberts experienced), that seems to be a minority view. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray the Enforcer Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 does Kameron Hurley have anything coming out this year. yes. second book in the Worldbreaker Saga is out next month. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 I am absolutely 100% positive Mazarkis is a female. I can't tell you at this time how I know this, but I can tell you that you will be able to know this for a fact as well, fairly soon, probably before the year is up. Well, you'll forgive me if I don't take your word for it because this is the internet, but either way the last interview I read she, and I'll go with she for now I guess, had no intention of ever revealing her identity, so unless I missed some big news somewhere, I doubt we'll ever know for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puntificator Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 Well, you'll forgive me if I don't take your word for it because this is the internet, but either way the last interview I read she, and I'll go with she for now I guess, had no intention of ever revealing her identity, so unless I missed some big news somewhere, I doubt we'll ever know for sure. That's okay; i understand. But there is a podcast coming very soon that will make her gender clear. I'll remind you of it when it does, so you'll know it wasn't bullshit and maybe trust me more in the future. In any case, it hardly has any impact on the list of grimdark female authors I provided for Phipps, which is the key thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puntificator Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 In fact Darth, I'll even tell you the initials of the podcast: TGTP. And the first T stands for The, the G for Grim, and the P for Podcast. More than that I'd better not say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 YEah that came across more snarky then it should have. :P I look forward to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
polishgenius Posted September 10, 2015 Share Posted September 10, 2015 Yeah, I was really stunned at this being a thing. Take a look at this article. She's pretty much where I am at, thought wise. http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/06/guest-post-tansy-rayner-roberts-fantasy-female-writers-politics-influence/ You seem to have misinterpreted my raised brow, which was more to question your choice of phrase, which seems to imply that you think you're unusual in not dividing between women and men. Admittedly, I was being a bit vague, but... Added to the point, when you've just had pointed out that you mentioned no women in your thinkpieces, I'm not sure 'well, I'm not sexist, I read Meredes Lackey' to be the most... analytical response? By which I mean not to imply that you are doing any selecting on purpose, but to say that, while you shouldn't draw a distinction between male and female authors in terms of quality, style etc, being aware of your choices can help see why that gap exists and to fill it in if possible. Because the sexism might not exist in you, or in too many individual readers, but there's something about the social, publishing and marketing structures of the genre, particularly medieval epic/s&s fantasy of which grimdark is a version, which does seem to lead to men getting far more attention even if there's not more getting published (which I'm not sure about). I'm speaking slightly from experience here- iirc there was a topic on this sort of subject a few years back and doing a countback I realised I hadn't read nearly as many women as I'd thought in the previous several months (I don't think I was alone). I wasn't making any conscious choice to read books by men, but it was happening. Since then I've been aware of it and, I'm pretty sure not on purpose but perhaps subconsciously, I've read a lot more female authors. This has corresponded with a drastic spike in the proportion of non-epic fantasy I read, and it's not clear even to me in which direction the cause-effect has flowed and how much, but hey. Anyway, slight ramble, but the point is, awareness of who writes what you read is not necessarily a bad thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C.T. Phipps Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 I wasn't trying to defend myself, actually expressing that I hadn't read any and could someone help recommend me some. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedEyedGhost Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 I would certainly qualify Kameron Hurley as grimdark (and just awesome all around), but I don't think Robin Hobb is. Hobb is just grim. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 I dunno, if Hobb isn't, then most grimdark authors we call grimdark wouldn't be either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedEyedGhost Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 There's just too much hope suffused throughout Hobb's books for me to consider them grimdark (even while she's beating the piss out of her characters). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 You haven't read the soldier son trilogy yet then. :o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puntificator Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 There's just too much hope suffused throughout Hobb's books for me to consider them grimdark (even while she's beating the piss out of her characters). You've aroused my curiosity. I'm not saying I agree with you, or disagree with you, but would you say Abercrombie's First Law books are suffused throughout with hope? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 Actually I wouldn't say any if Hobbs works are suffused with hope, those books were bleak, but I'll admit it's been a LONG time since I read them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xray the Enforcer Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 I would certainly qualify Kameron Hurley as grimdark (and just awesome all around) Yes. Yes she is. The Bel Dame series is bleak as hell and I loved it. I'm finding Worldbreaker slightly less so, but we still have two books to go to figure out just how fucked up it'll get. Not sure I have an opinion on Hobb's grim(dark)ness -- she's certainly grim, yes. JV Jones is another writer who doesn't stint on the misery (at least in the Sword of Shadows books I've read), but I've only read two of the five-book series, so grains of salt, etc etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voodooqueen126 Posted September 11, 2015 Share Posted September 11, 2015 yes. second book in the Worldbreaker Saga is out next month. the first book has been duly added to my wishlist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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