I suppose this is John Sutherland trying to be funny...

[tree_and_leaf]

... but I'm not sure where the joke's supposed to be.

Comments

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

I was trying briefly to think of subgenres of SF which really are completely male, and I couldn't; even space opera has Lois McMaster Bujold (although it's very *odd* space-opera!), and alternate history has Susanna Clarke.

It might be difficult to write convincingly for the other gender, but enough people do it (both ways round) that it doesn't seem to be a problem. The most generous reading I can put on his argument is that male/female writers writing in a female/male-dominated genre might write "unusual" works for that genre, but it's not even clear that that's a bad thing!

[tree_and_leaf]

Generally it's thought not to be, particularly by literary critics, so I'm not entirely sure what JS's problem is...

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

I guess if you really like the "core aspects" of a genre, then having people come in and write Out Of Genre stuff in them might be annoying ... but you could just not read/watch it :) (and classic space opera was just about dead and needed a change anyway).

I was about to say that I can't think of any comic fantasy long fiction written by women off the top of my head (unless Piers Anthony has something he wants to tell us about ...) but alas! Connie Wills and Diana Wynne Jones make a liar of me ...

[owl]

I would call Elizabeth Moon "space opera" as well. Cherryh is sometimes a little space-opera-ish.