Women Who Write, and do it damn well

[blahflowers]

As part of my spending on new stock for the Closed Library (£5000 for science fiction stock! £1000 for graphic novels!) I came across the lists of Science Fiction Masterworks and Fantasy Masterworks. Now, I'll definitely be buying these, we've had some of them in the library before and they are generally very well produced and packaged. But when you look at the lists the one thing you get almost immediately is that the lists are very male. I don't know a huge amount about the Golden Age so it's possible I'm missing a few who wrote under pseudonyms, but of the sixty or so Science Fiction Masterworks there's Ursula Le Guin for three books and Sheri Tepper for one, compared to the eleven Philip K. Dick titles published so far, or the four Arthur C. Clarke books in the series thus far, which doesn't yet include either 2001 or a Rama book. The Fantasy Masterworks is similarly dominated by the Y chromosome.

Is this simple prejudice or lack of knowledge of decent female writers? Of what I've read and enjoyed there's a lot that I would hesitate to call 'a masterwork', but if Moorcock can get in with stuff that he often says he knocked off briefly in the sixties you have to wonder how seriously the 'Masterwork' tag is meant. So, based on the lists I've linked to above, is there anything missing that you think merits being a 'Masterwork' by a female writer?

Comments

[larryhammer]

I don't know if these are in print in the UK — I think they're out of print in the States, actually — but for SF I'd start with Brightness Falls from the Air and the collection Warm Worlds and Otherwise by James Tiptree (pseudonym).

For fantasy, Winter Rose by McKillip and A Wizard of Earthsea by Le Guin. Which doesn't add to the range of authors, admittedly. The Hound and the Falcon by Judith Tarr (so the omnibus was titled in the States). Daggerspell (which may have been published in the UK under a different title — The Silver Dagger perhaps?) by Katherine Kerr.

I've read a lot of really good fantasy by women in the past decade, but I hesitate to put anything that new on a masterworks list, not until we've had time to think about it. Even though I'm fairly sure, say, Bujold's Palladin of Souls will make it.

---L.

Re:

[larryhammer]

Oh, as to why, it's a combination of prejudice at the time (thus the pseudonym James Tiptree and the initials C.L. Moore, on one list) and lack of knowledge today. I'm surprised, actually, that Hope Merliss's Lud in the Mist isn't on the list, given how much of the good old stuff is included.

[blahflowers.livejournal.com]

It's in the fantasy list. I should have remembered the D.C. Fontana factor...

Re:

[larryhammer]

So it is — didn't see it. So that makes five of twenty for the fantasies. (Unless I've miscounted again.)

---L.

[blahflowers.livejournal.com]

And I guess Arthur C Clarke kinda looks like my Nan... and Philip K. DICK, I mean, who's she trying to kid? (Note to self: Stop posting when drunk)