{"id":15375,"date":"2012-08-17T06:30:19","date_gmt":"2012-08-16T18:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=15375"},"modified":"2012-08-16T23:35:03","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T11:35:03","slug":"thoughts-on-space-opera-women-authors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/08\/17\/thoughts-on-space-opera-women-authors\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts On Space Opera: Women Authors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I wondered whether I was really right about space opera<\/a>…<\/p>\n

And I concluded by observing that: “I did notice something else when I was putting together my non-exhaustive list of contemporary space opera authors\u2014any guesses?”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>No takers, alas—weeps quietly in corner, fun spoiled—but fear not, I am<\/em> going to tell you anyway! \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

What I noticed (ta-da!) was that the off-the-top-of-my-head-names that I came up with for contemporary space opera writers were universally male: John Scalzi<\/a>; Iain M Banks<\/a>; Peter F Hamilton<\/a>; Alastair Reynolds<\/a>; Ken MacLeod<\/a><\/p>\n

A-ha, I thought, now this is interesting—but is it really true that no or significantly fewer women authors are penning space opera? So first off I took the easy route and consulted Te Wikipedia<\/a>, which offered several more names for my list:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Stephen Baxter<\/a>;\u00a0 M John Harrison<\/a>; Paul J MacAuley<\/a> — and yes, drum roll, Justina Robson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I must admit I was surprised by the inclusion of Justina Robson, because I thought\/found Keeping It Real<\/em> to pretty much read as a variant of paranormal urban fantasy. And of course there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it’s not what I consider “space opera.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Anyway, Te Wikipedia having yielded one woman author’s name, a strong smell of burning ensued as I thought: “OK, female authors who write stories that fit my definition of space opera from yesterday’s post”, i.e.:<\/p>\n

“I think of \u2018space opera\u2019 as involving adventures in space, preferably with space ships and things like warp drives (or an equivalent), where the overall idea is loosely science based but not in a way that would prevent the story happening, and some of the themes can be pretty serious, and often it\u2019s about telling big stories but it doesn\u2019t has to be, and yes sometimes there is \u2018magic\u2019 but we dress it up as science and everyone is happy\u2026”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And in fact I did come up with some names and I feel that they constitute pretty big misses, both for me yesterday and for that Wikipedia article. First off and biggest miss:<\/p>\n