Good spot, thank you! That'd be an amazing film. I'm sorry they didn't make them while Clint Eastwood was still making Westerns - I wonder who would play him now...

True! I didn't actually say he was self-published, I guess the Hocking/Howey comparisons come across like that...

I would say that "winning a Hugo short story award" = "quietly making waves". Some people will think that definition is cruel, others generous.

Same guy. I've not read Soft Apocalypse but have heard good things. There are a few references to a "soft apocalypse" within Love Minus Eighty - I don't know if they're somehow connected?

That's a really good point - I love the stark white background on this. I think the leggiest of all McGinnis' ladies has to be the one from Losers Live Longer. Even with a landscape cover, her foot doesn't fit.

I disagree on a lot of that (obviously). Specifically regarding The Panopticon, another SF/F award recognised it (granted, The Kitschies only require "elements of the speculative or fantastic" so have a much lower threshold for what constitutes science fictional). So whether or not The Panopticon is SF/F isn't really an open and shut case.* What bothers me is that whether or not The Panopticon is SF, the judges would never (officially) know. I'm also not sure that arguing on a book by book basis is the right way about this.** There were more than 16 books with female authors published last year. Some of them were probably even science fiction. I guess the question is, who is responsible for getting them in front of the judges? How "activist" should the judges be? Is not being activist a form of activism? Etc. *[On that note, in regards to another book on the shortlist, Maureen Kincaid Speller's review of The Dog Stars wasn't SF "according to any criteria I’d care to exercise". I don't actually agree, with her, but I think it is interesting that we are, again, reminded that people define SF in radically different ways. Which is part of the kerfuffle about this whole thing, I guess.] **[I think we're also coming about this from completely opposite ends here. Given the remit of finding "the best science fiction novel of the year", I would far rather argue why a great novel is science fictional than why a science fiction novel is great. I can completely understand the opposite approach, but it isn't for me. (That said, all a tangent - I don't have any questions about the quality of the books on the shortlist!)]

I'm a sucker for him too. Although I generally find him interchangeable with King... or, at the very least, extraordinarily similar to King's pulpier horror.

Just as a general aside, I'm really sorry the blog is now randomly dining on people's comments - this has nothing to do with me, and has apparently been happening for a few weeks now. I've got a help ticket in with Typepad because this sucks.

If I had a tenner, I'd put it on Ken MacLeod. Following much the same logic as you've laid out. 1) You're absolutely right in that this is a hole in the logic - I don't know what's been called in. Every book by a woman that was submitted could've been a specific judicial request. But I do think there are odd absences. I do know of publishers that had books by female authors that weren't called in. And I do know that, when we call in a book for The Kitschies, it generally comes in, or we follow up until it does (but our submissions model is different as the Clarke has a slight fee, but I'd also suggest that the Clarke has vastly more prestige...)) I can also guess that the judges were probably showered with 82 books and no time and didn't even have a chance to think it through properly. But there are weird operating assumptions that the Clarke submissions list is a) an exhaustive list of all works by women in genre and b) the judges are passive victims of what the publishers provide. Neither of which are true! 2) I don't think too much is being read into the quote because that's the only transparency we have into this year's judicial process, in which she explains that many of the books by female authors were excluded for being too fantasy. That is prioritisation. Whether or not that decision impacted books that were of shortlist quality is, of course, impossible to know. Obviously there's also a slippery slope - without any way of knowing what makes a book "SF", how do you know what isn't? I do think the judges have to draw a line somewhere, but, and again, this is all we know - the way that line was drawn this year, female authors were excluded. 2b) This whole thing is speculation. :) 3) No argument here - I said that point was dodgy listing it above. The point being, I suppose, that there can't be a blanket statement that 'women didn't write good SF in 2012' (and I'm not saying that ANYONE has said that!), because other awards have said they have. Being a Clarke judge seems like the coolest-stroke-most-thankless job in genre.