Nice Change of Pace

Doug and I just got back from a trip to Depoe Bay Oregon. My sister in law Amber organized it to celebrate a milestone birthday for Mike, my father in law. We stayed in a very nice beachfront "cottage" that had an extraordinary view of the ocean.

View from living room window

We actually saw some spouting and breaching whales from time to time. We had fourteen people total, as Doug's father, stepmother Michele, Sisters Angela and Amber (with their husbands Dino and Ian), and our teen-aged nephew Antonio and our three young nieces Ava, Mia, and Kia were all there, along with two old family friends Les and Eileen. The place was set up to sleep up to nineteen, however, and most importantly it had four bathrooms.

Doug and I brought Wiley and Roxy as well, though Flick stayed behind at the WAG hotel (she's what the veterinary behaviorists at the UC Davis vet school call a hyper-vigilant dog, so she does not do well in chaotic conditions with lots of new people running around). Wiley got tons of petting. Roxy did okay, but she was a bit confused at first. She's fifteen and doesn't see or hear so well anymore, so it took her a while to figure out the layout of the place. She still enjoyed walking on the beach, in spite of her arthritis. It's sad, though, seeing how much she's slowed down. She was a big hit with the girls, though, and they seemed to understand the need to treat her gently.

The only less than ideal thing about the place was that it lacked any good tidepooling rocks. We still managed to find some interesting marine life washed up on the beach, most notably some driftwood that was positively crawling with some kind of (I think) wood boring clams or mussels [edit--it turns out to have been Lepus aniterfera, the goose-necked barnacle], and some blue jellies (Velella velella) that have been reportedly washing up all over Pacific coast beaches lately.

Mysterious blue jellies-Velella

Lepas Anitfera, goose-neck barnacles on driftwood

I remember seeing something similar years ago when I was at the beach at the Sonoma Coast State Park in Northern California. Except those jellies were clear and colorless, not blue, and my Father dubbed them "alien condoms." Evidently, the aliens are back and partying on our beaches, and they've decided to add the excitement of color to their experience. I haven't managed to look up the mollusc species, but they were pretty impressive, as they formed writhing masses of tentacle-like things (those would be the muscular foot part of their anatomy).

The water was too cold for swimming, of course, but we got lucky with the weather, and there was a breeze that was ideal for kite flying. My niece Ava got a kite as one of her birthday gifts, so she had fun flying it.

One way I am blessed is that I get along with both sides of my husband's family, and he gets along with mine. Maybe it's because we're all crazy in a similar way or something. All in all it was a wonderful opportunity to break from our usual routine and have a change of scenery for a few days. A lot of driving, but I don't usually get up to Oregon during the Spring, so it was a treat.

Doug, Wiley and Roxy

Oh, and one unusual thing that happened to us on the way up was that Wiley got to meet another kelpie at a rest area outside of Shasta. He was thrilled. He was less thrilled by the gigantic Newfoundland he met on the beach on Saturday. Wiley has a distinct bias towards dogs close to his own size or smaller as playmates.

We're home now and have picked up a very excited Flick from the boarding kennel (where we pay extra to have the trainers work on her with socialization), and we have made up with our cats. I'm looking forward to spending the rest of spring break relaxing and catching up with my grading and work.

Sadly no requests from any agents arrived in my inbox while I was gone (no rejections either). It appears that a couple of agents I queried back in early Feb have skipped me, as (according to Querytracker) they've sent rejections and made requests from more recent submissions. I don't know what to make of this, as they're agents who generally have a high response rate (as opposed to ones where no reply means no) one way or the other. So I have the fun of deciding whether my queries to them were eaten by Spam filters or lost (so maybe I should re-query), or so horrible they didn't dignify a response, or if they're still trying to decide about them (in either of these latter cases, re-querying would be offensive). I don't think my letter and opening pages are horrific, as I got very encouraging early nibbles from a couple of agents. They turned into nos, but I was hopeful I'd get some more requests at least. Since then, though, it's been crickets.

Querying is a harrowing process, and I honestly don't know now if I should rework my query letter and opening pages, and if so, how. I wish I knew of my writing time was best spent on the sequel for UH (so a draft, at least would be ready if someone does want to rep it and it sells), or if I should just write something completely new (and essentially give up on UH and the series I hoped it would become).

SF and F "Have You Read These Great Books" Lists

A lot of those lists have been circulating lately: the ones that give you a list of great SF and/or fantasy novels and ask you to check off the ones you've read. The higher the number the better your geek credentials. Some are based on an individual's feelings about which novels are best and most important, while others (like this list compiled by npr) are based on surveys. Nothing wrong with these in their place. We all have our preferences, and if we learn about some books we haven't read in our favorite genres then it's all for the good.

But there are a few of things about these lists that could be better.

One is that they nearly always focus on individual novels and not authors. So there may be a handful of very prolific and famous authors (Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, LeGuin and others) who end up dominating. If you don't care for Asimov or Heinlein (say), you'll likely perform more poorly than if you're not fond of someone who only has one book on the list.

Another is it can be tricky to know what "counts" as having read a given book. If the entire Foundation series is listed, and you only read the first book (deciding it wasn't for you after), then should you tick it off or not? For that matter, how much of an individual book should you have read before it "counts"?

If more of these were lists of authors' names, rather than lists of famous books or series, some of the ambiguity would go away. I think it would also remedy another problem with these lists: they're not terribly diverse.

This list (from Michael Sullivan's blog) is more inclusive than some and lists a number of authors/books who may be less familiar to some readers.

In contrast, one of the most infamous examples of a poll that ignores a huge chunk of SF and F talent is the Guardian survey, where only 4% of the polled readers' favorite SF and F novels were by women. While the npr survey was better, only 14% of the titles on their list were by women.

Some people claim this is because there are few women actually writing SF and F out there, but this is not true. Approximately 40% of SFWA members are women. 20% of Hugo awards have been won by women since 1968 (the percentage is higher in recent years) and about 39% of Nebulas and about 39% of the Arthur C Clarke Awards. The John W Campbell award for the best new writer is close to 50% female writers. So there doesn't seem to be a dearth of women writing quality SF and F either.

This guest post by Cheryl Morgan (on the SFWA site) sums the issue up very well.

So why aren't people noticing and remembering female speculative fiction authors more often? I don't know, but it's more than a little disheartening to those of us who are female and attempting to break into print in these genre. While being female doesn't seem to make it harder to get published in the genre (though it's hard to know for sure without access to slush pile statistics), or to receive awards, it does seem to make it harder to be noticed or remembered by everyday fans.

I've always disliked lists that separate out women this and female that as a special subcategory (it rings too much of that old, condescending "Lady Authors" or "Lady Scientists" thing), especially in areas where women are not a small minority. But given that female writers of speculative fiction are overlooked or forgotten more often than their male counterparts, then it may be a necessary evil.

So I've compiled a list of (approximately) 100 female authors of SF and F. Some of these women are famous, some have written bestsellers, and many have won one or more of the awards mentioned above. Others are women who were writing back in the 19th or early 20th centuries. Some wrote (or write) under male or neutral sounding pseudonyms. I didn't vet the list according to any standard of literary merit, even my own. I love some of these writers, don't care for others, and have yet to read a number of them. It's also not an exhaustive list. There are a ton of women I didn't include (since I was shooting for just a hundred). There are a few authors on here (like Margaret Atwood) who are not primarily speculative fiction writers, but some of their famous work has crossed that line. Most, however, are firmly within the genre.

I didn't include specific book or story titles here. Most of these writers wrote a number of books, and as stated above, I find surveys that ask readers which authors they've read or are familiar with to be better than ones that ask about specific titles.

So how many of these authors have you read, or at least attempted to read? How many have you never even heard of? And are there any you think should be added to this list?

Margaret Atwood

Kage Baker

Elizabeth Bear

Danielle Bennett

Gertrude Barrow Bennett

Carol Berg

Anne Bishop

Leigh Brackett

Marion Zimmer Bradley

Patricia Briggs

Kristen Britain

Lois McMaster Bujold

Emma Bull

Octavia Butler

Trudi Canavan

Jacqueline Cary

Margaret Cavendish

Suzy McKee Charnas

CJ Cherryh

Deborah Chester

Miriam Allen DeFord

Amanda Downum

Kate Elliot

Lynn Flewelling

Mary Gentle

Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire

Carolyn Ives Gilman

Nicola Griffith

Barbara Hambley

Elizabeth Hand

Norma K Hemming

Robin Hobb

Nalo Hopkinson

Tanya Huff

Kameron Hurley

PD James

NK Jemisin

Susannah Clark Jonathan

Diana Wynne Jones

Gwyneth Jones

Jaida Jones

Kay Kenyon

Katherine Kerr

Francis Knight

Mary Robinette Kowal

Katherine Kurtz

Ellen Kushner

Mercedes Lackey

Glenda Larke

Anne Leckie

Tanith Lee

Madeline L'Engle

Ursula K LeGuin

Doris Lessing

Jane Lindskold

Malinda Lo

Karen Lord

Jane Loudon

Marie Lu

Anne Lyle

Julian May

Anne McCaffrey

Vonda McIntryre
Patricia McKillip

Elizabeth Moon

CL Moore

Pat Murphy

Linda Nagata

Andre Norton

Naomi Novik

Yvonne Nvarro

Nnedi Okorafor

Taomora Pierce

Cat Rambo

Melanie Rawn

Laura Resnick

JK Rowling

Joanna Russ

Mary Doria Russell

Michelle Sagara

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Nisi Shawl

Mary Shelly

Alison Sinclair

Vandana Singh

Kristine Smith

Maria V. Snyder

Margaret St. Claire

Michelle St. Claire

Francis Stevens

Mary Stewart

Tricia Sullivan

Rachel Swirsky

Amy Tan

Sherri Tepper

James Tiptree Junior

Amy Thompson

Jo Walton

Margaret Weiss

Kate Wilheim

Connie Willis