Stardestroyer.net Has Got To Go

[Lord Pounder]

I had no idea that A.C. Crispin was a woman, I just appreciated that the books were kick ass. IIRC Travis was on TheForce.net and she tried to make it an issue about her sex. The reality was she made a stupid error in her numbers and refused to back down even when someone pointed out that China of our world have a larger standing army than the Grand Army of the Republic. It was embarrassing to watch, or in this case read.

[Rogue 9]

Traviss was certainly one of the most prolific unfortunately and quite memorable for all the wrong reason but its insulting to all these other fine authors and Vonda McIntyre to just ignore their contributions to Star Wars that now amount to jack all.

I'm sorry, I laughed entirely too hard at this.

[Lord Revan]

I had no idea that A.C. Crispin was a woman, I just appreciated that the books were kick ass. IIRC Travis was on TheForce.net and she tried to make it an issue about her sex.

to be honest it's fairly recent that women have been readily accept to be able to write good scifi or fantasy meant for boys or men, while there's been some big names in the past (Ursula K. Le Guin comes first in mind, though mainly cause she was part of a document on the history of scifi I watched recently), the prevailing attitude was that those gendres were "boys only clubs" or "writen by males for males" if you want another term, so most female scifi writers either didn't make a big deal out of their gender or outright hid it from the public using a pseudonym. Sexist attitude for sure but that's how it was.

[Captain Seafort]

to be honest it's fairly recent that women have been readily accept to be able to write good scifi or fantasy meant for boys or men, while there's been some big names in the past (Ursula K. Le Guin comes first in mind, though mainly cause she was part of a document on the history of scifi I watched recently), the prevailing attitude was that those gendres were "boys only clubs" or "writen by males for males" if you want another term, so most female scifi writers either didn't make a big deal out of their gender or outright hid it from the public using a pseudonym. Sexist attitude for sure but that's how it was.

Frankenstein?

[Phil Skayhan]

Madeleine L’Engle: First Sci-fi author I ever read (swiped the book from my sister)
DC Fontana: Imagine Star Trek TOS without the episodes she penned

By comparison, the only male classic sci-fi authors I can name without Google are Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, and Herbert. Growing up, I never had the impression that sci-fi was a "boys only club".

Granted, this is anecdotal. And because I mentioned Fontana, I looked up the episode writers for The Twilight Zone. Number of female writers: 0.

[Ted C]

My favorite SF/Fantasy author?

Elizabeth Moon

[Broomstick]

I had no idea that A.C. Crispin was a woman, I just appreciated that the books were kick ass. IIRC Travis was on TheForce.net and she tried to make it an issue about her sex.

to be honest it's fairly recent that women have been readily accept to be able to write good scifi or fantasy meant for boys or men, while there's been some big names in the past (Ursula K. Le Guin comes first in mind, though mainly cause she was part of a document on the history of scifi I watched recently), the prevailing attitude was that those gendres were "boys only clubs" or "writen by males for males" if you want another term, so most female scifi writers either didn't make a big deal out of their gender or outright hid it from the public using a pseudonym. Sexist attitude for sure but that's how it was.

Such as James Tiptree, Jr., also known as Alice Sheldon, who managed to keep her female identity secret until the late 1970's.

Of course, SF used to be such a low-rent segment of fiction that a lot of men used pen names, like Cordwainer Smith, also known as Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger.

Perhaps more familiar to this generation is Stanley Lieber, also known as Stan Lee of Marvel.

SF was pretty much a "boys only" club through the 1970's, women participants were conveniently ignored, or drafted to get coffee for the men.

[Batman]

Warehouse 13's 'H.G. Wells was actually a woman' plot worked for a reason. We're not used to female SciFi authors. When I look at my bookshelves, I see a good bit of Fantasy novels and entire series written by female authors. When I check the SciFi section, I find...Star Wars, and they're not from the 'good books' part of the EU. (Mind you I actually think Timothy Zahn is a fun enough author outside his problems with the Wars universe so my quality standards might not be all that high.)
Women are good with unicorns and magic and romance while men are good with fighting and technology and spacy stuff so that's what the industry claims to deliver. I very much suspect a lot of people writing 'girly' stuff under a female pen name are male too because somebody decided 'Joe Q. McMasculine' was a bad name to sell a romance novel under. Is that hogwash? Of course it is. Males have written terrible SciFi (KJA, the vast majority of VOY, ENT and SGU, the entirety of the Dune universe and the second Foundation trilogy) and awesome Fantasy (Discworld. Nuff said) but we're socially and historically conditioned to expect a certain setup.

[Baffalo]

My favorite SF/Fantasy author?

Elizabeth Moon

Agreed! She reminds me a lot of David Weber at times, but for some reason just a little bit easier to read.

Honestly, the biggest problem I have with scifi is that for every good author, regardless of gender, you get a ton of really bad ones. I can think of a ton of good authors because I really like their work, like Elizabeth Moon, David Weber, John Ringo, Linda Evans, Timothy Zhan. The only two bad authors I remember are Travis and Troy Denning, who I only remember because I slogged through it reading "Star by Star". I nearly gave up the series because it was just so boring.

[Broomstick]

Honestly, the biggest problem I have with scifi is that for every good author, regardless of gender, you get a ton of really bad ones.

That's known as Sturgeon's Law