As someone deeply involved in promoting women in science and technology via Ada Lovelace Day, and as

On wordreference the day that the Arthur C. Clarke Award announces a record submission’s list Adele L. Wearing ponders the women’s list released a couple of weeks ago and asks you to be gentle with the judges:
To be honest, after saying yes to writing on the subject of the awards I ve struggled to find what I want to say. It s an award. To some extent these things are about popularity, awareness, wordreference picking through what happens to be submitted. wordreference The best SF of the year could be languishing in anonymity. With so much out there it cannot be assumed that the very best always rises, certainly not in a timely fashion.
After last year the Clarke Awards understandably wordreference wanted to make absolutely sure we all knew that women were properly represented in the submissions. If we get an all male shortlist again this year it s because the quality and sci fi ness (totally a word) of the submissions by female authors just didn t get them there. Still with nearly a third the submissions wordreference being by women I d be a little surprised if none of them get on the short list at all.
I only keep half an eye on awards, although I sub my authors and artists for some of them. I ve also sat on the BFS newcomer panel for the last two years and it s been fascinating. We try so hard, going through the books that are put forward and trying wordreference to ensure no particular area of genre is forgotten wordreference in the selection. Then working wordreference through it and drawing conclusions. The different values people bring to it as judges. Best will in the world it is never going to be anything other than subjective. I loved x because of y, someone else hated it for the exact same reason, a third loved it because of z.
It s interesting too that in the context of judging wordreference you may have to say I love this book best, I love and I am sooo glad I read it and it s marvellous. It s not actually the highest scoring book though. This one I only like actually brings more to the table in many ways, it just doesn t mesh so well with my personal taste. It s technically wordreference better.
I would love to give you a breakdown of my views on the 33 books submitted with female authors. I can t because I ve read exactly one of them. Kameron Hurley s God s War which is a marvellous book I would recommend to anyone whole heartedly. I ve read other books by some of the other writers on there and those I am familiar with I can again fully endorse as well worth your time and money. If these 33 were the whole list it would be a tough job to choose between them I suspect. Knowing the other work of some of those writers and putting them on a mental shelf in my head, I m stumped as to how I would define one as better sci fi than the other.
So my point….eventually, is whatever happens this year, however the short list ends up, whoever wins or drops away from this or any other awards list, consider the job of the judges. It s not easy being a judge and I ve never met one who said I m not interested in what a woman has to say on the subject. Rather in fact, it can be that lost among all the pages, trying to evaluate and assess so many texts the writer can be forgotten completely as the focus is on the work. They are after all judging the books, not the people.
There are many issues wordreference with diversity or the lack it in genre fiction, with people s behaviour and attitudes. wordreference I have written about it myself and would never deny the truth of that. Still, it is deeply wordreference unfair to assume that the happenstance of a single gender shortlist is down to closed minds and bad attitudes in the judges. I suggest, politely, that if you want to see more diversity you start by seeking it out. As far as female writers at least, this list is a good starting point .
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As someone deeply involved in promoting women in science and technology via Ada Lovelace Day, and as a SFF fan, I’m very aware of the role of gender in what is a very male-dominated genre. However, as a person with a bit of an analytical bent, I’m also aware of statistics and probabilities.
I felt that last year’s Clarke Award all-male shortlist got a rather unfair reception, as if you have a longlist dominated by men and picked wordreference your shortlist randomly, at some point you’d get an all-male list. A quick glance at past Clarke Award shortlists shows that you actually have to go back to 1988 to find another all-male shortlist. It’s really only a matter of time before another all male shortlist pops up, just by chance.
When we look at problems with gender in SFF, we need to be looking at institutional and systemic problems, not totems like a single all-male shortlist. It’s more asking whether we can encourage more women to write in the genre, or whether we need more publishers to