Am I the only one who distrusts female fantasy authors?

[niamh]

Don't know that one

[Kalbear]

Ooh, brilliant song. Go find it!

[Elrostar]

If we're thinking of brilliant songs from the 80s which are guilty pleasures, surely we must include "Tainted Love" by Soft Cell. Oh, and "Brand New Lover", also by Dead or Alive

[Relic]

The entire premise of your reasoning is patently absurd. It seems that you have yet to meet Mr. Theodore Sturgeon and his law.

"Ninety percent of everything is crud."

Of course there are bad female fantasy authors. 90% of them suck. It's a LAW.

[Ealasaid]

Is Robert Jordan actually the nom de plume of a female fantasist?

Because he portrays female characters with such artful verisimilitude. Jordan's women are just so dynamic, subtle, complex and intricate...it's amazingly deep work.

You are joking. Right?

Try Tam Linn by Pamela...well something. It's good great fun.

[Pellegrina]

The interesting thing about Robin Hobb was that the books (the UK versions at least) didn't hint at her gender until the Liveship Traders series by which time the Farseer books had been successful. The author info section in the Farseer books didn't mention gender, just referred to her as 'Robin' which is a gender-neutral name, and not her real name. My guess is that it was decided that some readers in fantasy are biased against women so they pulled a little sleight of hand.

The funny thing about that is that it never occurred to me that Robin Hobb wasn't a woman, entirely on the basis of Fitz's first-person narrative! I just couldn't imagine any male writer of fantasy being that introspective.

I've also noticed that although I happily read SF and fantasy by men and women, my favourite fantasy writers are men (GRRM, Tolkien, Pratchett) and my favourite SF writers are woman (Cherryh, Bujold). Then there's Steven Brust, but the jury's out on whether Dragaera is fantasy or SF...

[TerraPrime]

The exercise of recommending female authors of quality to someone like Greyman is well-intended, I'm sure, but ultimately futile, for he has yet to disclose why he dislikes the works of female authors that he had come across. Did he dislike them for a particular thematic element? Did he dislike them for a style of writing? Did he dislike them for a specific type of prose? Or did he dislike them because the authors are female? The issue, I fear, is not that he has not been exposed to quality work from female authors. When a dislike is irrational, like a child's dislike of vegetables, a rational approach seems misguided at best.

I think it is telling in itself that a person can associate the quality of writing to the author's gender. When I come across a bad book, I don't think "wow, men/women certainly can't write good fantasy!" It's not a framework I use to look at the world. I think this is similar to the notion that women are bad drivers. Most of the time, people who believe that only notice examples that confirm their biases and ignore counter-examples. It's called a perception bias and it's well documented in psychology. If someone thinks that women can't write well, they will find evidence to support that, contrary to reality. No amount of recommendation is going to change that. The change that needs to take place is at how the person perceives the world, imo.

[Manat]

The exercise of recommending female authors of quality to someone like Greyman is well-intended, I'm sure, but ultimately futile, for he has yet to disclose why he dislikes the works of female authors that he had come across. Did he dislike them for a particular thematic element? Did he dislike them for a style of writing? Did he dislike them for a specific type of prose? Or did he dislike them because the authors are female? The issue, I fear, is not that he has not been exposed to quality work from female authors. When a dislike is irrational, like a child's dislike of vegetables, a rational approach seems misguided at best.

I think it is telling in itself that a person can associate the quality of writing to the author's gender. When I come across a bad book, I don't think "wow, men/women certainly can't write good fantasy!" It's not a framework I use to look at the world. I think this is similar to the notion that women are bad drivers. Most of the time, people who believe that only notice examples that confirm their biases and ignore counter-examples. It's called a perception bias and it's well documented in psychology. If someone thinks that women can't write well, they will find evidence to support that, contrary to reality. No amount of recommendation is going to change that. The change that needs to take place is at how the person perceives the world, imo.

Here here!

[Crazydog7]

I don't really practice my sexism in any other format than picking up new books. That said, it's very hard for me to trust a female fantasy author. I think Mercedes Lackey and Anne Mcafrey might have poisoned me. Is Storm Constantine a woman? Robin Hobb is good, but to me, she's a unique exception.

Be honest, does anyone else distrust the lady authors of fantasy?

I have read some god awful books written by female authors but I have also read awful books written by males. I don't think the comparison is fair.

[MinDonner]

The funny thing about that is that it never occurred to me that Robin Hobb wasn't a woman, entirely on the basis of Fitz's first-person narrative!

Yeah, I found exactly the same thing; I kept having to remind myself that Fitz was supposed to be male, as you'd never guess it from "his" narrative...

[Marcelo Rebelo Firqoralas]

Yeah, I found exactly the same thing; I kept having to remind myself that Fitz was supposed to be male, as you'd never guess it from "his" narrative...

Ever read The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe? Severian makes Fitz look like a shallow pre-schooler.

Interesting fact though: when I first read The Book of the New Sun in Swedish translation at age eleven or so I though Gene Wolfe was a woman too, even though I probably did so because I confused the male name Gene with the female Jean. But you might have a point there.

When we're talking about good female epic fantasy writers, my standing recommendation is as seriel called The Seven Citadels by Geraldine Harris. It's been out of print for nearly twenty years though, so it might be a bit hard to find, but it's excellent.

I also second the recommendations for Mary Gentle and C. S. Friedman, especially if it's the romance factor that puts you off female fantasy writers. They aren't romantic for a second.

[MinDonner]

Wasn't that keen on Book of the New Sun, though much better than Hobb (it's reviewed on my blog, link in the sig... /plug).

Has anyone mentioned Kelly Link in these posts yet? She only seems to do short fiction but is absolutely fantastic and would probably even make it onto my top 5 writers' list.

[Lyanna Stark]

Oh the seven citadels!! I read it when I was really young and I have always tried to find it since! Thanks for mentioning it firqoret.

I think it must be.....17 years since I read them. The main thing I remember from the series is the horribly ugly man who got "turned inside out" so people got to see what his inner personality looked like, and then he got turned back again, but he get to keep his amazing green eyes. After all this time, it still stands out in vivid detail.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Ursula le Guin is quite good, although she writes mostly sci-fi, and people seem to like J.K. Rowling, last I checked...

But now that I think about it, how about Latino fantasy writers? Are they any good? Lithuanian? I haven't noticed the hearing-impaired community turning out anything decent in awhile, either...

Gabriel Gacria Marquez--Borges--Fuentes. South American, though Fuentes claimed Mexico as his home. Marquez and Borges both tend to write under magical realism. Maybe not the type of fantasy with swords and stuff, but fantastic things happening in the every day world. A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez comes to mind. Borges wrote the eerie Garden of Forking Paths. These are as close as I can come. Fuentes wasn't fantasy at all but I felt I should mention him nonetheless.

So what about Robert Newcombe, Christofer Paolini, Terry Goodkind. Would reading something by them prevent you from reading any male written fantasy?

Your reason is extremely flawed Greyman

I think the problem is you're missing the point--for every craptastic female author he's read, he hasn't found an equally good one. For every bad male fantasy author there does indeed seem to be a fanstastic male fantasy author. That is why the logic is not flawed.

[The Wolf Maid]

I distrust female fantasy authors when they write women. Other than that, I think women are as capable as men in turning up very good fantasy.

[Galactus]

Oh the seven citadels!! I read it when I was really young and I have always tried to find it since! Thanks for mentioning it firqoret.

I think it must be.....17 years since I read them. The main thing I remember from the series is the horribly ugly man who got "turned inside out" so people got to see what his inner personality looked like, and then he got turned back again, but he get to keep his amazing green eyes. After all this time, it still stands out in vivid detail.

Gah, I got to read the first book of the Seven Citadels but never found any of the later ones.

[Sandello]

There is a terrible Russian fantasy\history writer Mariya Semenova. She is soo senfimelmal and syrupy.

[Guest Raidne]

Gabriel Gacria Marquez--Borges--Fuentes. South American, though Fuentes claimed Mexico as his home. Marquez and Borges both tend to write under magical realism. Maybe not the type of fantasy with swords and stuff, but fantastic things happening in the every day world. A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez comes to mind. Borges wrote the eerie Garden of Forking Paths. These are as close as I can come. Fuentes wasn't fantasy at all but I felt I should mention him nonetheless.

I think the problem is you're missing the point--for every craptastic female author he's read, he hasn't found an equally good one. For every bad male fantasy author there does indeed seem to be a fanstastic male fantasy author. That is why the logic is not flawed.

Hmmm...I refrained from pointing it out the last time someone posted a recommendation for a south american author, but since there is a pattern, I'll just come out and say straight out that what I meant with my sarcastic remark was that I think assigning people to groups and then discussing whether or not that group sucks at a particular task is kind of a fruitless exercise without making some kind of case that there would be something about women, for instance, that would make them less capable fantasy authors. Otherwise, I might as well ask whether fantasy writers with beards are better than those without, or whether people who are lactose-intolerant develop better characters.

My bf and I refer to this as "brown shoes" in reference to a study of pilots who found that those with brown shoes were better pilots than those with black shoes. As with that particular instance, one should also look to intervening variables.

First, it seems that our sample size of one has since been well-outnumbered by a number of other posters, I would say that it has not even been shown that women write worse fantasy, but that it might be true that Greyman doesn't like female fantasy writers.

If there were a case that could be made about the difference between male and female authors, I would say that it's more likely (for what are likely social reasons) that male authors had some experience (read: obsession) with millitary history, and that this greatly informs and enriches the number and quality of battle scenes in books written by those authors.

[Marcelo Rebelo Firqoralas]

Gah, I got to read the first book of the Seven Citadels but never found any of the later ones.

You're Swedish right? You should look for the translated version at your local library, it's usually fairly easy to find and the translation is as far as I can remember pretty good too.

[Galactus]

You're Swedish right? You should look for the translated version at your local library, it's usually fairly easy to find and the translation is as far as I can remember pretty good too.

Where do you think I found the first book? Our library never got the later ones though.