Hmm. Off the top of my head, my list would probably look something like:

Baxter, Voyage
Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Link, Magic for Beginners (I'm pretty sure)
Macleod, The Light Ages
McDonald, River of Gods
Ransome, Swallows and Amazons
Robinson, Pacific Edge
Russell, The Sparrow
Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

Hrm. I wonder if (hope that?) part of this is an artefact of age--these are mostly books I read in my late teens (yes, I'm young), and possibly had the impact of being first. Certainly looking at my favourite books of the year, the split is much more even. Still ...

It's an important question.

As with evolutionary selection, a bunch of very small inequities, repeated iteratively, can account for a large disproportion. Women have had, over time, less resources to write books. The books they do finish are less published. The ones published are less marketed. The ones marketed are not necessarily marketed to you. The ones you do hear about don't always get past a series of subconscious biases -- not for me, not like me, not quite as much the thing, loved it but don't recall it...

Also, if there's a type of book with ambitions to be Great in a way that would get it on such a list, a series of internal and external pressures may discourage women differentially from attempting such ("stick to small books, honey").

None of those effects even has to be all that large (though many of them, historically, of course have been) for the net effect to be a vast disproportion.

I don't entirely buy the "editor picks the best" argument. I mean, I don't edit, really, but I've always regarded with suspicion and discomfort editorial pronouncements that "I just want the best stuff." Or I read them as simply meaning "send your best work" or "don't be prematurely discouraged, you never know what I'll like", which is fine.

But I don't actually want to read a set of stories some editor has grudgingly decided, since they are indisputably "the best" according to some impersonally available criterion, to publish, rather than the ones they had a personal, passionate relationship to. That seems to me to be how you get your average issue of your average middle-of-the-road mag, not how you get Dangerous Visions.

(Of course, if you pick a cool enough theme for your themed anthology project, possibly the stories are all intrinsically, zeppelinically exciting enough to you personally that this doesn't become an issue...)

The books by Le Guin and McHugh both have male protagonists -- though amazon.com informs me that there are female protagonists in some of your selections which I haven't read.

Is it a bad thing, by definition, if like responds to like?

I'm going to (surprise!) agree with Benjamin. I'm not an editor, but I sort of assume that, for most situations, it's an editor's job to exercise his/her personal taste. The ability to recognize that a story is a superior example of its type, even if you don't like that type of story, is certainly a useful skill to have, but I think it's more important for, say, a writing instructor than for an editor.

And (now that I'm reading the posts at Meghan's), I'm not sure it's clear from the above what I think should be done -- which is to make an explicit effort, where such an obvious and ancient and ugly disparity exists, to correct it.

I think if an editor finds themselves publishing all men, they should wonder why. And then they should go find women whose work they're passionate about and beg them to submit.

I like what Christopher & Gwenda say about trying to get the slush skewed, too...

The ability to recognize that a story is a superior example of its type, even if you don’t like that type of story, is certainly a useful skill to have, but I think it’s more important for, say, a writing instructor than for an editor.

That seems to presuppose that an editor is always going to have such a selection of stories that they can afford to choose only the sort of stories they like, and also that a large enough audience exists whose likes and dislikes are sufficiently similar to the editor’s to make a collection of those stories viable. I think even the many of the editors with the largest slush piles would tell you that what they can publish is also dependent on what they think their audience wants to read — viz., for instance, the low number of fantasy stories published in Asimov’s. And for a publisher of novels the problem must be even worse, unless you can afford to have an editor for every subgenre.

Also, take note that I wasn’t talking about publishing stories of a type that you don’t like; I was talking about publishing stories of a type that isn’t your favorite. I did mean that; it wasn’t just understatement. The fact that as a rule I’m not really into ghost stories doesn’t mean I can’t be blown away by a “The Specialist’s Hat.”

Jackie, women are underrepresented as protagonists in that list as well, though not as badly as they’re underrepresented as authors. (Though large parts of Zhang and The English Patient are in fact told from the points of view of some female characters.) As to your question — I don’t know if it’s a bad thing or not. I think I’d like to know why it’s happening, and not be caught in the kind of position Silverberg was caught in with respect to Tiptree. :)

Which gets to what Ben was saying about iterative inequities. I think the “stick to small books” thing definitely has something going for it.

Um, has something going for it as an explanation, I mean. Not as a maxim. :)

Niall — what, if anything, do you think your list has in common? And tell me about the Ransome; that’s the only one I haven’t at least heard of.

Arthur Ransome.

The only non-sf book on the list. Very common (I think) children's reading in the UK. First in a series of books about kids having adventures in the Lake District, normally involving sailing and camping. In Swallows and Amazons, the Walker children--John, Susan, Titty and Roger--run into the Blackett sisters, Nancy and Peggy. They end up trying to steal each others' boats to claim a particular island campsite. It's the children's series that's really stayed with me, even though I was never much of an outdoors type.

As for what the books have in common ... well, there's a lot of hard or hardish sf, except for the ones that aren't hard sf. I was going to say it's predominantly British, and then realised that it's not, which is a bit surprising. And it splits into the books I read before The Sparrow and the books I read after The Sparrow. That book was my watershed in terms of moving from an omniverous read-whatever's-available strategy to being a bit more choosy.

That seems to presuppose that an editor is always going to have such a selection of stories that they can afford to choose only the sort of stories they like, and also that a large enough audience exists whose likes and dislikes are sufficiently similar to the editor’s to make a collection of those stories viable. I think even the many of the editors with the largest slush piles would tell you that what they can publish is also dependent on what they think their audience wants to read — viz., for instance, the low number of fantasy stories published in Asimov’s. And for a publisher of novels the problem must be even worse, unless you can afford to have an editor for every subgenre.

I think these factors are largely independent of the original question (which I took to be, loosely, "even if women and men actually write different kinds of stories, shouldn't an editor still choose both kinds, regardless of personal preference?").

Sure, for economic reasons an editor often has to publish works that s/he knows will be popular even if they aren't to his/her particular tastes. But that wouldn't necessarily improve the gender balance; it might make it worse.

Similarly, yes it's true that an editor can only choose from what gets submitted. But again, this wouldn't necessarily improve the gender balance; it could again make it worse.

So, I don't see how my comment ignores these realities any more than your original post does.

Also, take note that I wasn’t talking about publishing stories of a type that you don’t like; I was talking about publishing stories of a type that isn’t your favorite. I did mean that; it wasn’t just understatement. The fact that as a rule I’m not really into ghost stories doesn’t mean I can’t be blown away by a “The Specialist’s Hat.”

Yes, but if you're blown away by it, then obviously you'd want to buy it. But what if it turns out that the stories you're blown away by are mostly written by authors of one sex? Should your editorial purchases favor diversity over blasterrificness (that quality shared by all stories that blow you away)? I interpreted your original post to be suggesting that this is in fact the editor's duty, and I guess I disagree.

An exercise; at What Should I Read Next? I used Kelly, Maureen, Isak Dinesen, Angela Carter, and Dorothy Parker to generate a list of recommended reading. Of the results, 45 of the 50 books were written by men (some of the other results had women listed as editors or translators, but I'm looking at authors). That's a steep percentage. Granted, it might say more about WSIRN's sampling or algorithm than it does literature, but it points to the idea of connection, the "If you like X, you might like Y" phenomenon. And I wonder if there isn't an imbalance there, a difference in profiling.

When I was first reading Garcia Marquez there was no shortage of pointers towards Vargas Llosa or Carlos Fuentes or Borges. But when I was obsessing over Dinesen, she seemed to be presented as an exceptional figure--not just in the sense of being a great storyteller, but in the sense of being unique among her gender, with no antecedents or literary descendants. No one was poking me and saying "Hey, Angela Carter!" I heard her work described as "masculine," and while I can't say whether this was code for "women's writing that doesn't suck," it certainly sounded that way at times.

If I were to list my top ten, it would skew towards male writers as well. But I can't say whether that's because men write more stuff that I like, or because the women who write stuff that I like are less visible because of the way the canon is structured.

Interesting. I had a variation on this conversation with my wife, and it went something along the lines of

ME: Funny, all my favorite authors tend to be male.
HER: That's chauvinist.
ME: Yeah, it is, isn't it? It's just that the stuff guys write about is more interesting to me.
HER: Wow, you're a pig.
PAUSE
HER: Wait a minute, most of my favorite authors are female...

I don't know if it means anything, but there you have it. Actually, now that I say that, I think Nancy's position was actually that most of the authors that she READS are female. I wonder who her favorite authors are...

Anyway, for posterity, my top ten favorite books, with the added Molesian caveat that this is the list that occurs to me as I'm typing right now.

Gene Wolfe, All the Sun books, New, Long, and Short - it's actually a very long story cycle if you read straight through them... Although I have to admit the Long Sun books only belong in this list by virtue of their bridginess between the New and the Short Sun books.

William Vollman, You Bright and Risen Angels - while this may not be his best book (I also enjoyed Fathers and Crows and Argall a great deal, and I had to struggle to pick a favorite from them), it was his first book, and it's pretty damn amazing.

Mervyn Peake, The Gormenghast Trilogy - I can't say enough about these books, so I'll say almost nothing at all...

Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon - I loves me some Pynchon. Yum, yum.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick - even if the ignorant blighter insists whales are fish...

China Mieville, Perdido Street Station - I liked this one better than the Scar, myself, but the Scar was good too.

Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time - I know, I know... I could defend Jordan, and I will if you call me up on the phone and argue about him with me, but for the sake of argument, here in this space, I will acknowledge that it's trash.

Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep - or Werner Weengee, as I prefer to call him. Silliness aside, I like this man's aliens.

um. um. um.

Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time - gotta love time travel as insanity. Or insanity as time travel, whatever the case may be. Anyway, I dug this book a lot. Yeah, I had to get a woman author's book in here. Maybe my list would be more interesting as an artifact of chauvenism without her, though. Okay, forget Marge Piercy. How about J. K. Rowling?

Crap.

Philip K. Dick, Scanner Darkly - what would life be without Phil?

(As an aside, I've noticed that most of these books are extremely long...)

Sorry to occupy so much of your precious page space...

peace

Page space, bah. The real estate market is finally going soft, don't you know?

With respect to the protagonist comment, I was wondering if the combination of a woman writing a female protagonist makes it even more difficult for a male reader to connect with a story than either the combination of a male writing a female protagonist or a female writing a male? I'm pretty sure I've heard musings of this sort about both J. K. Rowling's and Le Guin's characters.... Is a woman writing a woman a lethal combination for male readers? (Sorry, it's difficult to flip the question and ask it in reverse because of the strong male default in SF in particular -- although Matt's comments about his wife's reading preferences suggest that it might be a worthwhile exercise anyway.)

I think I’d like to know why it’s happening, and not be caught in the kind of position Silverberg was caught in with respect to Tiptree.

Oh, um. As in, does it happen because you're hard-wired to unconsciously assume books by women won't be enjoyable vs. because of a real difference in content and/or style? That is, vs. because you're hard-wired not to enjoy what women tend to write?

But the way you say it sounds very negative! "Getting caught by Tiptree." I doubt that Sheldon was out to make fools of her readers. I expect that she merely wanted to make her voice heard; that she was more interested in giving male readers who might not be able to connect to a female author an opportunity to be drawn in, to feel the story under the default assumption without having the experience colored by the imagined alienness of a feminine perspective.

And if that's true, then the mechanism could only work if the reader allowed themselves to be drawn in and "caught." You know, I envy Silverberg et al. their schmuckdom -- I never got to experience that myself because "Alice Sheldon" was in the blurb on the back of the first Tiptree book I ever saw.

That Sheldon wasn’t out to make fools of her readers didn’t stop some of them from making fools of themselves. :) What I meant to say was that I don’t find “like responds to like” a sufficiently compelling explanation. Like in what way?

More later. I’m down with a cold and having trouble summoning the concentration to do this conversation justice . . .

Should your editorial purchases favor diversity over blasterrificness (that quality shared by all stories that blow you away)? I interpreted your original post to be suggesting that this is in fact the editor's duty, and I guess I disagree.

Blasterrificness! What a great word!

At the risk of offending thirty-eight people, if there actually were enough stories in the slushpile that I personally found blasterrific to make an anthology, the question would be nicely black and white. Maybe GvG et al. are lucky enough to get that, but I get an order of magnitude fewer submissions than those folks, and perhaps my personal blasterror threshold is unreasonably high, or circumscribes an unreasonably small (or unreasonably oddly-shaped) area of the problem space.

The situation you describe isn’t one I’ve found myself in; whereas I have found myself in the situation of having to choose between two quite good stories, one of which is in many ways similar to a third story that I’m definitely accepting (on account of its blasterrificness), the other of which is quite different, where the first story (and its more blasterrific double) are in a subgenre that in general I strongly prefer to the subgenre of the second story, such that, other things being equal, I would prefer the first story to the second story, but since other things are not equal (because of the third, blasterrific story), for the good of the anthology the second story is the one I take.

When I say for the good of the anthology, I mean for the purpose of, in my admittedly subjective estimation, bringing the greatest pleasure to the greatest number of readers. Readers who, like me, prefer the first subgenre will be made happy by the inclusion of the third, blasterrific story; readers who prefer the second subgenre will be made happy by the inclusion of the second story. The first set of readers might have been made incrementally more happy had I also included the first story, but not likely so much more happy as to counterbalance not making the second set of readers happy at all.

(Does that at least make sense, even if it isn’t necessarily convincing anybody?)

Yes, that makes sense, and I definitely understand the need for any magazine or anthology to include a varied selection of stories. But that's unfortunately no guarantee of gender balance; I imagine it's possible for an editor to have done her best to choose a wide variety of stories that reflect her personal tastes, and then discover a gender imbalance in the writers of the selected stories. It wasn't clear to me that the "part of being a good editor" paragraph of your original post acknowledged this possibility.

okay, is it just me or do the convos over at meghan's and justine's include more women and the one here include more men?

i'm only half-joking.

Probably. The conversations over there are usually more entertaining, too.

Hey Claire. You may be right. But it's also possible David's blog is (inadvertently I'm sure) deleting female posts. I've had at least 2 posts deleted from his blog. David, I won't take it personally. I'm sure it's a glitch.

WTF?

Lauren, at the risk of insulting you, you're not mistaking the Preview button for a Post button, are you? I've done that myself, after all, not paying attention.