Monday 16 April 2012

Varied Things

First up, if you have a manuscript ready for submission and are unagented, Angry Robot Books is having another Open Door event.  They're only looking for particular subgenres, so read the information here.

Fantasy Cafe has another great week of Women in SF&F posts prepared, and Kristen is hosting a giveaway for the excellent Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.  And if you didn't see the guest post I did for her, check it out.

Bastard Books has an interesting discussion on what happens with reviews if the author's gender isn't known and what the gender balance for reviews would look like if the charts showed what subgenre of books were being reviewed by each gender.  I didn't really agree with the conclusions, but it's certainly worth thinking about.

Towards that end, I've decided to do a yearly wrap-up where I parse my blog reviews by gender and subgenre.  I did this last year and am curious if my number stay consistent or shift, depending on my interests/books I'm sent.

I've also decided that since I'm reading pulp short stories, I should read some by women (seems bizarre to campaign for more reviews of women's works and then only read stories by men).  Towards that end, I need suggestions for female pulp authors.  I know a few: Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, C. L. Moore, Anne McCaffrey, James Tiptree, Jr. ... but would love to hear about more authors.  I'm thinking older authors who wrote from the 1900s to the 60s.  If there's someone you've read and would recommend, please post their names in the comments.  

Finally, I've been reading through Claws and Saucers, an upcoming movie guide for science fiction, fantasy and horror films and have found a ton of movies that I want to watch.  So it was with glee that I discovered there are some cool sites that offer free downloads/torrents for public domain movies,  Archive.org and Public Domain Torrents.  Look forward to reviews of some old, likely cheesy, classics.

2 comments:

Christina Vasilevski said...

I'm doing the same thing with my books this year, but I'm keeping a spreadsheet for each book I read. I want to see how I grade male vs. female authors, but also print vs eBooks.

Jessica Strider said...

I'm keeping track of my books too so it's easier to parse things at the end of the year. I hadn't thought of mentioning print vs ebook though. That might be interesting to see as well.