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Cootie-Free TOC
Aug. 4th, 2009 06:16 pmThere's discussion over on SF Signal and elsewhere about the latest table of contents with major issues. It's The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF edited by Mike Ashley.
Immediately obvious is that the 22 names (not counting the editor's) are all male. Less obvious, they're also all white.
Here's some other stats I managed to glean from Wikipedia, with forays into The Internet Speculative Fiction Database and one or two dips into author websites.
I couldn't find anything on Larry McCombs except that he(?) also cowrote a story with Ted White in 1965. So he's either obscure or somebody's pseudonym.
The youngest in the TOC is Ian Creasey, at either 39 or 40.
The one born the earliest is Arthur C. Clarke, in 1917.
Average age if they were all still alive is 62.
9 are British, 12 are American, 1 is unknown. Though at least one American moved to the UK (and Clarke moved to Sri Lanka).
I don't really have enough information to say how many of them are straight, though at least one is not.
5 were born in the Fall
5 were born in the Winter
4 were born in the Spring (3 of them on May 20-something!)
1 was born in the Summer
(7 unknown birth month/day)
Something about being born at the coldest part of the year must have inspired them to write mindblowing science fiction.
A couple have PhDs, some studied math, physics or biology. Though one of the PhDs is in English. But the vast majority, I couldn't find any info on whether they received any sort of advanced degree or what in.
Conclusions? Well, obviously this isn't a sampling of any size, so you can't really draw statistical conclusions. Though it might be interesting to do a birthday breakdown of the field at large. Is there an actual reason behind it? Am I doomed to write fantasy by having a summer birthday? Hmmmmm.
Oh, as for the stories themselves, I don't think I've read any of them. I also don't recognize them from the list of Hugo short story winners, which I've been working my way through. So I guess, my mind, she has not yet been blown.
Immediately obvious is that the 22 names (not counting the editor's) are all male. Less obvious, they're also all white.
Here's some other stats I managed to glean from Wikipedia, with forays into The Internet Speculative Fiction Database and one or two dips into author websites.
I couldn't find anything on Larry McCombs except that he(?) also cowrote a story with Ted White in 1965. So he's either obscure or somebody's pseudonym.
The youngest in the TOC is Ian Creasey, at either 39 or 40.
The one born the earliest is Arthur C. Clarke, in 1917.
Average age if they were all still alive is 62.
9 are British, 12 are American, 1 is unknown. Though at least one American moved to the UK (and Clarke moved to Sri Lanka).
I don't really have enough information to say how many of them are straight, though at least one is not.
5 were born in the Fall
5 were born in the Winter
4 were born in the Spring (3 of them on May 20-something!)
1 was born in the Summer
(7 unknown birth month/day)
Something about being born at the coldest part of the year must have inspired them to write mindblowing science fiction.
A couple have PhDs, some studied math, physics or biology. Though one of the PhDs is in English. But the vast majority, I couldn't find any info on whether they received any sort of advanced degree or what in.
Conclusions? Well, obviously this isn't a sampling of any size, so you can't really draw statistical conclusions. Though it might be interesting to do a birthday breakdown of the field at large. Is there an actual reason behind it? Am I doomed to write fantasy by having a summer birthday? Hmmmmm.
Oh, as for the stories themselves, I don't think I've read any of them. I also don't recognize them from the list of Hugo short story winners, which I've been working my way through. So I guess, my mind, she has not yet been blown.