Comments on: 20 Ways Science Fiction and Fantasy Are Like Mozilla Firefox

By: A Progressive on the Prairie » Accumulated marginalia and miscellany

A Progressive on the Prairie » Accumulated marginalia and miscellany — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 21:37:29 +0000

[...] SF author David Louis Edelman gives us 20 ways science fiction and fantasy are like Mozilla Firefox. [...]

By: Frances

Frances — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 06:46:01 +0000

how much of a gender separation is there between fantasy and SF? It seems like women gravitate towards the former while men gravitate towards the latter.

This seems to be true to me. I definitely read more fantasy than SF but I can’t speak for everyone, obviously. As to how many women read SFF in comparison to men I am not certain. However, amongst us teens I know more girls who read SFF than guys, if that is any sort of indicator as to a shifting of the balance.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 03:22:29 +0000

As a diehard Rush fan, I bristled at your use of the word â€œsuffered.â€?

I, too, am a Rush fan from way back. Don't mess with Signals, Moving Pictures, or Grace Under Pressure. (Even Power Windows.) But, c'mon... "By-Tor and the Snow Dog"? That one's mighty tough to defend.

By: Scott S.

Scott S. — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 01:14:50 +0000

I am reading this blog on Firefox for Win2K and I just installed Fedorda Core 5/KDE with Firefox for Linux. As a diehard Rush fan, I bristled at your use of the word “suffered.”

–Scott

By: Velcro City Tourist Board » Blog Archive » Links for 26-06-2006

Velcro City Tourist Board » Blog Archive » Links for 26-06-2006 — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 02:18:10 +0000

[...] 1 - 20 Ways Science Fiction and Fantasy Are Like Mozilla Firefox A bit of flippancy from David Louis Edelman at Deep Genre. Does what it says on the tin. (tags: comparison literature books genre fantasy fiction science Firefox Mozilla) [...]

By: Carol Berg

Carol Berg — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:57:00 +0000

Is sff as a whole really enjoyed by a primarily male audience? What kind of stats do we have on that?

My own small sampling: My emails run almost exactly 50-50.

Carol

By: makoiyi

makoiyi — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 12:09:14 +0000

After Charlies’ remarks, one of my writing friends conducted her own poll through her blog. She took thirteen snippets of 250 words from both genders and asked which gender wrote them. It was virtually impossible to tell. I’ve read Charlies’ stuff and I still didn’t recognize his and I think the ratio on my own work was: eight thought I was female and five male. The interesting thing there was that the guys came out as hermaphrodites. Half and half in other words. The point being, without a name very few people could tell who wrote what. So why is there a bias at all in that case? Granted this was only snippets and only thirteen people, but it was still interesting.

As a reader I’ve always gravitated to female authors. Not to say there aren’t male authors on my bookshelves - George RR, Michael Stackpole and Steve Erickson to name a few, but one does wonder if a particular editor from a mag or a publishing house likes one or the other, if they go towards a bias without even realizing.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 11:35:05 +0000

Is sff as a whole really enjoyed by a primarily male audience? What kind of stats do we have on that?

Again, purely from the anecdotal evidence… my guess would be it’s somewhere in the 60/40 male/female range. John Joseph Adams recently linked to a statistical analysis of women’s publication rates in the major SFF mags, and it was running closer to 75/25. The numbers are a few years old by now, but I suspect still generally accurate.

Which leads to another, follow-up question… how much of a gender separation is there between fantasy and SF? It seems like women gravitate towards the former while men gravitate towards the latter. But who knows how much of that is just dated stereotyping?

By: Kate Elliott

Kate Elliott — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 09:37:53 +0000

Good list. My kids use Firefox. I should, too, but have Netscape set up because that’s what I’m used to.

One question, though.

Is sff as a whole really enjoyed by a primarily male audience? What kind of stats do we have on that?

By: Carol Berg

Carol Berg — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:31:51 +0000

Both go well with chocolate, pizza, chips, and coffee.
Throughout my software engineering career, almost everyone in my labs read fantasy and sf. And, because I worked in a Unix lab, we were Mosaic and then Netscape and then Firefox geeks.

Carol