Fake Writer Girls!
By now, I assume most of you are familiar with the Fake Geek Girl phenomenon, in which women’s geek credentials are repeatedly challenged, because everyone knows girls don’t like geek stuff. (Isn’t that right, Big Bang Theory?) It gets even worse if the woman in question is traditionally attractive, because even if we acknowledge the possibility of the occasional female geek, we all know she has to be ugly and socially maladjusted, right? Fortunately, we have men who tirelessly volunteer their time to challenge and harass these wannabes.
Because do you know what would happen if we let Fake Geek Girls into the inner circle of geekdom? PURE, UNMITIGATED GIRL-COOTIES!
Well let me tell you, Fake Geek Girls have nothing on the Fake Writer Girls. You know the ones I mean. Those women who think they can write stories and books that are just as good and important and serious as the ones written by us men. It’s almost like they don’t even understand that their work is inherently inferior, because GIRLS!
One of the best ways to spot a Fake Writer Girl is by looking for Mary Sues, those unrealistically competent, know-it-all, oh-so-special characters who are the Best at Everything! They’re nothing but silly, estrogen-fueled wish fulfillment fantasies. Like a girl could ever be an active, competent character. Oh, those wacky Fake Writer Girls and their ridiculously super-special heroines. If only they could write realistic, heroic protagonists like Ender Wiggin, James Bond, Eragon, Lazarus Long, Clark Kent, Kvothe Kingkiller, Legolas…
And don’t get me started on how they’re ruining science fiction and fantasy with their romance cooties! Urban fantasy? Paranormal romance? Why don’t they care about the history of our genre? SF/F stories should be about spaceships! and swords! and fighting! and yes, the occasional hooking up, but only when it’s nubile young women throwing themselves at manly protagonists!
It would be nice if these Fake Writer Girls could just stay in the romance section, because we all know romance isn’t a real genre. I mean, sure, romance makes up 55% of all fiction sales, but a real man wouldn’t be caught dead reading that stuff, so it doesn’t count. Besides, ALL ROMANCE NOVELS ARE JUST FORMULAIC, UNIMAGINATIVE HACKWORK! (On a totally unrelated note, I just remembered that I have to write a review of this awesome book I read last week. It’s just like Lord of the Rings, except instead of a ring, it’s a cursed dagger! Brilliantly original stuff.)
You might laugh, but Fake Writer Girls present a real threat to real writers like me, writers who write while also being guys. Just look at this report from VIDA that shows how lady writers are stealing review space from hard-working men! They took 33% of the book reviews in The Atlantic, 36% from Harpers, 26% from the London Review of Books, 19% from the New York Review of Books, and 34% from the New York Times. And they want to take even more review space away from real (i.e., male) authors! Why can’t they be happy getting slightly more than half of the reviews in Romantic Times and leave the rest to us? Why do they have to hurt men’s careers with their Fake Writer Girl Agendas?
Here are just a few known Fake Writer Girls, authors whose work you definitely should not immediately go check out and buy and read and tell all of your friends about.
Please feel free to suggest others in the comments. Because the more you know…
Known Fake Writer Girls
- Jaime Lee Moyer – Wrote a perfectly good book about vengeful ghosts, then ruined it with relationships and romance!
- Seanan McGuire – Prolific and popular. Stole multiple spots on the NYT Bestsellers List from deserving boy authors.
- Nalo Hopkinson – Her first book was Brown Girl in the Ring. Yeah, right. Call me when you write Brown Alpha Male in the Ring, amirite?
- Elizabeth Bear – Not only does she sneak relationship-cooties into her work, I’ve even seen her brag about doing it!
- Laura Anne Gilman – Sure, she’s been an editor as well as a Nebula-nominated author, but she also wrote some books for Luna. Romance! Fake Writer Girl! Unclean!
- Nnedi Okorafor – We all know she’s an award-winning novelist, but she’s also writing a Disney Fairies book. Need I say more?
- Kameron Hurley – Not just a fake writer girl, but a militant fake writer girl who actively blogs about girl stuff like sexism in addition to writing books.
- Mary Robinette Kowal – Her work has been described as Jane Austen with magic. That’s another dead giveaway right there. And if that’s not enough, she also plays with puppets!
- Alethea Kontis – She’s doing fairy tale retellings. Hmph. Fairy tale books are only worth reading if they’re written by a man!
- Tansy Rayner Roberts – That’s right, even Australia has Fake Writer Girls!!!
- Amal El-Mohtar – Yep, Canada too!
- J. V. Jones – Sure, she was writing grimdark fantasy decades ago, but do we really have to mention her when we talk about grimdark fantasy? Can’t we just talk about the men?
Liz Mancz
October 18, 2013 @ 11:55 am
Trying hard not to duplicate, but I’d like to add Teresa Edgerton and Sharon Green, even though neither of them write what the much beloved Mr. Theodore Beale calls “necro-bestial romance”. That’s his term for what women bring to Science Fiction – and who I suspect Jim has been reading… And did anyone mention Tanya Huff already? I wish I were at home – I could just go and look at my shelves. Yes, peccavi – I have sinned and read evil fake writer girls. I suppose I should go home and start burning books.
Lark of the Bookwyrm's Hoard
October 18, 2013 @ 12:46 pm
Yes, I’ll eventually put the list on my blog site, and Jim says I can link it here (Thank you, Jim!) I’m trying to include genre, though sometimes that’s a bit sketchy as I haven’t read a number of these authors. But it will take me a while to finish compiling it! 🙂
Lark of the Bookwyrm's Hoard
October 18, 2013 @ 12:47 pm
Thanks! I will, as soon as I can actually get the thing finished.
Rachel Lindstrom
October 18, 2013 @ 1:10 pm
Thanks for adding Alice Sheldon whose work is wonderful.
Jim C. Hines
October 18, 2013 @ 1:16 pm
I peeked in on Beale’s blog on occasion when SFWA was in the process of expelling him, but after that, mostly just forgot about him.
JH Vaughn
October 18, 2013 @ 2:04 pm
I’m starting to wonder if I’m a Fake Reader Girl because I read so many Fake Writer Girls! Two that I’d add to the list that I don’t think have been mentioned: Kristen Callihan and J. C. Daniels (aka Shiloh Walker). Both are writing series that are must-reads for me.
Jim C. Hines
October 18, 2013 @ 2:14 pm
Ooh, that could be a whole separate blog rant! 🙂
David Breslin
October 18, 2013 @ 2:50 pm
Some FWG’s I’ve read recently:
Lauren Beukes, who DARES to write gritty disturbing near-future SF like a tough guy(“Moxyland”)
Jo Walton, who tries to convince us that a girl can grow up obsessed with SF and fantasy. AS IF(“Among Others”)
Nicola Griffith, who wrote about an all-female society that doesn’t just fall apart like it would really (“Ammonite”)
Gwyneth Jones, who took the MANLY tale of the Count of Monte Christo and re-wrote it to be about some Kirghiz woman (“Spirit”).
Truly, this is a serious problem!
(ugh, feel a bit itchy trying to get into character…)
J.M. Frey
October 18, 2013 @ 3:09 pm
Thanks for the shoutout, Lisa! MUCH appreciated. Funny that I should get pinged to this when this post is making the rounds again this week.
And Munro has to be a man in disguise. They would NEVER give the Nobel for Lit to a WOMAN. NO. She’s a FAKE Fake Writer (Geek) Girl!
Quinalla
October 18, 2013 @ 3:33 pm
I know they’ve already been mentioned, but definitely stay away from Jo Walton, Ursula K LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Diane Duane & Marion Zimmer Bradley. You wouldn’t want to catch girl cooties, now would you?
Stephen A. Watkins
October 18, 2013 @ 4:12 pm
Thirded or fourthed or whatever. Total fake writer girl, what with her books about wars between the gods and deicide and GODLY LOVE TRIANGLE COOTIES.
Jeanette
October 18, 2013 @ 7:34 pm
Second Martha Wells, I can not believe I forgot her.
ULTRAGOTHA
October 18, 2013 @ 7:44 pm
Katie, I completely agree with you. Paladin of Souls may be the best book Bujold has ever written (Memory and The Curse of Chalion are a close second and third). The Sharing Knife books are good and I know many people who love and adore them; but they just aren’t as good, IMO, as her Five Gods fantasy books. She also wrote a stand-alone fantasy called The Spirit Ring.
Avilyn, give The Vor Game or Shards of Honor a try, you might like them, too.
For GrimDark SF I’d nominate Susan R. Matthews’s Jurisdiction novels.
ULTRAGOTHA
October 18, 2013 @ 7:58 pm
For more GrimDark SF that reads like Fantasy (and has beautiful language) try The Darkangel Trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce.
Her other Fantasy books are very good, too.
Tanglwyst de Holloway
October 18, 2013 @ 11:49 pm
Oh and the crafty Garden-of-Eden sneakiness of P. N. Elrod! If not for the “accidental” slip-up of Jim Butcher outing her, SHE WOULD STILL BE GETTING AWAY WITH IT! Way to go, Jim!
K.L. Townsend
October 19, 2013 @ 6:48 am
Thank you! This is awesome. You rock.
Sue
October 20, 2013 @ 7:36 am
Suzette Haden Elgin, now sadly suffering from a form of Alzheimer’s. She wrote extensively on psycholinguistics (see Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defence series) as well as SF and founded the Science Fiction Poetry Assocation. AND – shock, horror – she even had the temerity to create Láadan, a WHOLE LANGUAGE to express the perceptions of women.
BJ
October 20, 2013 @ 4:34 pm
Don’t forget that most Fake of Fake Girl Writers: Lois McMaster Bujold.
Not only is her name not Louis, like a real writer’s would be, but she’s had the temerity to write about a male military character as if she knew what that was actually like–then had the gall to fool enough Hugo Award committees into giving her enough Hugos to equal a Real Writer’s total! It’s shameless and horrifying!
IT
October 21, 2013 @ 9:59 am
You hit a lot of my favourite authors (and a fair number that are… not), but Naomi Novik of the Temeraire books ant Naomi Kritzer of the… oh god, the everything that is awesome… books. Mindy Klasky, though it’s been an age. Nik Vincent and Sarah Cawkwell. Nik Vincent’s particularly fun. Both of them write for Games Workshop, though I think they have outside projects as well (Nik is Dan Abnett’s wife).
David Toback
October 22, 2013 @ 1:38 am
Stephanie Osborne,Mercedes Laqckey
Alisa Russell
October 22, 2013 @ 9:52 am
How about Stephanie Osborn? She’s a good one!!
Christi Nichols
October 22, 2013 @ 11:05 am
I’d like to nominate Stephanie Osborn! Anyone who has read so much as a sentence she has written knows that she is the greatest author of our time!
Nalo
October 28, 2013 @ 6:36 pm
LOL! When Brown Girl in the Ring was about to come out, my writing group teased me that if it ever got made into a Hollywood movie, the producers would say they just wanted to tweak it a bit…and the resulting film would be called White Girl at the Mall.
jazz
October 29, 2013 @ 7:01 pm
Did anyone mention Meredith Pierce, who completely revolutionized women in fantasy (and the stereotypical version of the happy ending) many years ago? I second CS Friedman and take the bold step of recommending an un-clueless male author, Garth Nix. Great female characters in his Abhorsen series, and he’s proven otherwise socially responsible as an author. Also, has anyone recced Martha Wells, particularly Death of the Necromancer? I’m sorry I haven’t been able to load all the comments, I’m homeless and confined to the phone right now. 🙁 Discussions like this are distracting and emotionally sustaining, though.
Maggie Brinkley
October 31, 2013 @ 7:20 am
Wow! I mean – oh, woe is me, so many Fake Writer Girls that are new to me! I must write their names down so that I can AVOID them by way of my local bookshop!
A shout-out for Martha Wells, and another for Sherwood Smith, who DARE to write character-driven fantasy in beautiful prose!
Maggie Brinkley
October 31, 2013 @ 7:24 am
Jane Aiken Hodge was Joan Aiken’s older sister – and wrote a biography of Georgette Heyer, as well as her own ‘historicals’.
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Terry H Jones
November 21, 2013 @ 1:42 pm
apparently overlooked – Kat Richardson of the Greywalker series.
Desmond Auer
January 2, 2014 @ 8:27 pm
Not that I am particularly knowledgeable about girl cooties, but there is one author who hasn’t been mentioned yet who dares to write paranormal romance with steamy sex scenes included free of charge, contribute to reference books to encourage *shudder* MORE fake writer girls (‘How to Write Hot Sex:Tips from Multi-Published Erotic Romance Authors’) BUT also has the audacity to write MILITARY HARD SCIENCE FICTION! (i.e. A Soldier’s Duty, An Officer’s Duty, Hellfire)… What IS the world coming to?
Desmond
January 2, 2014 @ 11:07 pm
Not that I am particularly knowledgeable about girl cooties, but there is one author who hasn’t been mentioned yet who dares to write paranormal romance with steamy sex scenes included free of charge, contribute to reference books to encourage *shudder* MORE fake writer girls (‘How to Write Hot Sex:Tips from Multi-Published Erotic Romance Authors’) BUT also has the audacity to write MILITARY HARD SCIENCE FICTION! (i.e. A Soldier’s Duty, An Officer’s Duty, Hellfire)… What IS the world coming to, that GIRLS are writing SCIENCE FICTION?????? (Not mentioning CJ Cherryh, Louise Bujold, James Tiptree Jnr, nope, nope, nope, not at all…)
Desmond
January 2, 2014 @ 11:09 pm
And I’m talking about Jean Johnson, of course… Hiya JEAN!!!!