Choosing new authors

[catsittingstill]

RaceFail 09 did not intersect my life in any way, and I'm just as happy about that.

However John Scalzi invited Mary Anne Mohanraj to post a piece on his journal about racism, and discussing it and so on.  I thought "oh, I know her--at least a little bit" and read it, and I'm glad I did.

It did bring up something that kind of struck me.  I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, and apparently there isn't very much of it written by people of color.  I don't usually choose books by characteristics of their authors, but, well, hmmm.  Maybe I'm missing out.  So I just got a book called "The Iron Hunt" by Marjorie M. Liu, which was reviewed on this livejournal community focusing on writers of color.  The dangers of Kindle; I went to Amazon and there it was as a Kindle book, and well, there it was...

Actually I'm starting with the sample.  If it seems interesting, *then* I'll splash out the seven bucks to buy the whole file.

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I didn't know you knew Mary Anne. She and Scalzi and I went to college together. :)

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Charles R. Saunders, who did some interesting fantasies with an African mythological background decades ago, has commented that there are a lot of good black sf writers just starting out, and they're going to be making a difference soon. Probably so. Of recent writers and off the top of my head--and I'm not reading that much sf these days, so I don't know that many young sf authors of any color--Nalo Hopkinson and "Minister Faust" come to mind. (Keep in mind that "young novelist" usually means someone who's at least 30. See also Seven Authors You Should Know. In fact, that article includes two more "young" black sf authors: Tannarive Due and Alaya Dawn Johnson.)

I think that the attack on racism is an attack on the human tendency towards domineering hierarchy. (Famous black sf author Octavia Butler once had a non-human character comment that the human combination of intelligence and hierarchic social order was terribly dangerous.) A worthy target. Only...I don't think it's a battle that's going to be won anytime soon.

[howeird]

Not a big surprise here. Just look around any sci-fi con and you can count the non-Asian people of color on one or two fingers. As for why, I think it boils down to it being difficult to write about the future and outer space when one is still trying to deal with the past here on earth.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

BtW, just stumbled across Tannarive Due's memorial page for Butler.