Dennis Wise

list during the same period; LOCUS only began doing these lists in 1978.

As these figures shows, female authors make the Locus bestseller lists IN EXACT PROPORTION to the number of female-authored books.

Now, there's caveats, of course ... but for those, you'll have to wait for the article!

number of SFF and fantasy novels published by the top 10 major paperback publishers between 1978 and 1991. (Star Trek novels are excluded.)

The *bottom* of the chart shows the total number of male & female authors who made a LOCUS bestseller ...

I'm sure some SFF scholars have heard that "women don't sell" in science fiction, at least in the "olden" days. But was that true?

Well, I think I've found some pretty conclusive evidence that that old trope is pretty much a myth .... mostly.

The following chart shows, at the top, the total ...

Well, crap! You're absolutely right.

Del Rey Books comes around, but it never quite catches up to science fiction, which is also expanding rapidly (although it found itself eclipsed in total *sales* by fantasy).

As a follow-up to my last post: this is my first time creating charts in EXCEL, so here's a lovely little bar graph cuz .... well, cuz now I can't stop!

This one tracks original mass-market paperbacks published from 1972 through 1991. Obviously, genre fantasy explodes after ...

these lines are trending upward by relatively the same rate ... i.e., keeping pace with the general increase in woman-authored titles. 4/4

was simply less welcoming to female authors .... or, which I think is actually the case, prospective women authors were far more DRAWN to the fantasy & Star Trek genres than they were to SF.

Either way, most interestingly, you can tell by the linear trendlines that ALL ... 3/4

But then you see SF is quite far below this average .... and fantasy, when it gets going in 1976-ish, is quite a bit higher. (Due to small sample size for Star Trek fiction, I went with the average rather than year-by-year numbers.)

Couple ways you can parse this. One is SF ... 2/4

A little something I'm working on for @iafa.bsky.social ICFA 2026 .... an analysis of mass-market pb novels (SF, fantasy, & Star Trek) by women for 1972-1991.

The green *General* line is from @tedunderwood.com et al, tracking the "average" number of novels by women over this period. 1/4

Whoa! You know, I don't think I've ever seen a picture of him .... and certainly didn't expect that set of hair!

Going through old fanzines, it's sometime interesting to see the little odds and ends people have put in their.

For instance, I've found different female authors who've dubbed Fritz Leiber (left) and A. J. Budrys (right) each as "the handsomest man in science fiction."

It's an exciting period! At least two years before the book's done, and it's shocking how little good SFF criticism is on this era.

Latest issue of Forgotten Ground Regained! Come for the alliteration, stay for the .... well, stay for the alliteration, too. Just check it out.

Just read a joke that Ursula K. Le Guin told to Michael Bishop in one of their letters.

"Dear Mike,
It takes two Taoists to screw in lightbulb.
One to do it; and one not to do it."
-U

For anyone forced to do Likert Scales when submitting letters of rec for students to graduate school, I've developed something I like to call the "Dennis Wise" method of rating: 100% of my students are in the top 1% of all students I've ever taught.

(Seriously, Likert Scales, go *^@* yourself)

a man speaking in front of a crowd with a sign that says trusted leadership for a stronger america ALT: a man speaking in front of a crowd with a sign that says trusted leadership for a stronger america

My two syllabi for MONSTERS and WORLD-BUILDING are 7 and 6 pages, respectively, including the daily schedule.

Look like my course mascot, Draggie, is ready for a new semester of ENGL 178: Dragons, Elves, and How to Build Imaginary Worlds!

Long Alliterative Poem by Christopher Paolini in the Works My friend Doug Anderson, who manages the blog Wormwoodiana  on old forgotten fantasy texts, just informed me about an interesting new allite...

Interesting blog post by @denniswise.bsky.social on Christopher Paolini's alliterative poem in the works ...

stratofanatic.blogspot.com/2026/01/comi...

Have you done St. Boniface yet? Pat Masson did an awesome allit poem on it, "The Lay of St. Boniface."

I also wrote a Rum-Ram-Ruf entry on it for The English Companions, if you're interested!
@rhunedhel.bsky.social

the greatest percentage of their SF line, by a wide margin, authored by a female author? (And it's not even close!)

@sfrareview.bsky.social @bsfa.bsky.social @sffreview.bsky.social @sfwa.org

So, here's a little nugget from my data set.

From 1978-1991, out of the five SF editors LEAST receptive to female authors (as measured by their % of female-authored SF titles), four of those editors .... were women.

Now, let's play a guessing game. Which 1980s editor had ...

is the gender of the main protagonists for SFF novels during this period and others.

Look at this image, and tell me if you notice anything ... unusual ... about Lester del Rey's editorial strategy for genre fantasy:

I should've been an accountant, b/c despite being a humanities, I have an insane love of spreadsheets.

For instance, the years 1977-1981 are when Del Rey Books became the first publisher to successfully establish FANTASY as a publishing category.

So one thing I'm analyzing ...

Been working on my spreadsheet on SFF publishing b/t1972-1991. The results are wild.

Here's a brief sample. Throughout the 1970s, Berkley Medallion was a major SFF publisher, and in the first four years of my data set, they published 55 novels .... and all but two were written by guys.

I already know that I tend to over-prep for classes ... but I just finished my final lesson plan for ENGL 380: LITERARY ANALYSIS, and I've just bested my own record.

All told, my total lesson plans span 110 pages and nearly 60,000 words of content. I also created five cinematic powerpoints.

Re-reading THE ESSENTIAL ELLISON .... and damn, I'm just going to come out and say it. Harlan Ellison's the best prose writer that SFF has ever had. Fight me.

"Maybe" it's an unpopular opinion? I can already hear the howls.

Significantly, this is very much a rank-based issue. Contingent faculty are probably much more open to this sort of thing. I suspect that TT folk, though, would generally (but absolutely) refuse.

Are you a grad student working on post-1945 culture? Could your research benefit from incorporating some data, even minimally? Want feedback from journal editors?

This Post45 Data Collective virtual workshop may be for you!

Applications are due DECEMBER 1: data.post45.org/news/grad-wo...

A few of my students have already seen it, and highly recommended it!