I toyed for a while with the idea of writing a starship-based SF novel (think Star Trek or Men, Martians & Machines) in which no character's gender is given; the pronouns are just "they". Possibly I was hankering after the utopianism of the '60s and '70s, when we imagined a future in which ethnicity and gender were simply not worth remarking on, rather than the future in which they have become labels of overwhelming significance.
Names are fascinating for how one then not only sees a characters gender but also looks and ways of behaving.
Interestingly I've just learned that the author SJ Parris is a woman. I'd thought they were a man I think because of the violence in their subject matter and also the use of initials. Now I wonder if I would have read them differently if I'd know they were written by a woman author??
I feel the same about S.A. Chakraborty, who recently decided to start using her full name, Shannon. As a general rule, I find a lot of fantasy written by women to be not to my taste, so I tend not to pick it up. I'm glad I grabbed City of Brass, though, because it's a masterpiece, and she's now one of my favorite writers.
Probably not, at least not on spec. If I'd read encouraging reviews or heard good things from friends, that would be different, but I tend to assume, based on experience, that most fantasy written by women is definitely aimed at a female readership.
I toyed for a while with the idea of writing a starship-based SF novel (think Star Trek or Men, Martians & Machines) in which no character's gender is given; the pronouns are just "they". Possibly I was hankering after the utopianism of the '60s and '70s, when we imagined a future in which ethnicity and gender were simply not worth remarking on, rather than the future in which they have become labels of overwhelming significance.
Names are fascinating for how one then not only sees a characters gender but also looks and ways of behaving.
Interestingly I've just learned that the author SJ Parris is a woman. I'd thought they were a man I think because of the violence in their subject matter and also the use of initials. Now I wonder if I would have read them differently if I'd know they were written by a woman author??
I feel the same about S.A. Chakraborty, who recently decided to start using her full name, Shannon. As a general rule, I find a lot of fantasy written by women to be not to my taste, so I tend not to pick it up. I'm glad I grabbed City of Brass, though, because it's a masterpiece, and she's now one of my favorite writers.
So would you not have started reading her if you'd known she was a woman?
Probably not, at least not on spec. If I'd read encouraging reviews or heard good things from friends, that would be different, but I tend to assume, based on experience, that most fantasy written by women is definitely aimed at a female readership.