Women Destroy Science Fiction

I stumbled upon this announcement for a special edition of LIGHTSPEED featuring women who write Sci-Fi.  Or rather, destroy it.  Intriguing!

I have always loved Sci-Fi.  I can’t even remember the first time I watched Star Wars, because I was so young.  I grew up on Star Trek: the Next Generation, Buck Rogers re-runs, Thundercats, Ulysses 31… the list goes on.  At the same time I was playing video games, which quite often put me in the pilot seat of a Sci-Fi adventure.  I wanted my own lightsaber and X-Wing.  (I have them after a fashion now, so yay me!)

I’d like to say that when I wrote The Eye of theBeholder, I just wrote it and didn’t have any doubts about how it would be received based on my gender, but sadly that just isn’t true.  I can’t remember where I heard it, but I was vaguely aware of the idea that a Science Fiction book with a woman’s name on the cover would be more easily dismissed than if it had a man’s name on.

For a very short while I pondered about publishing under a male pen name.

There is a famous author from my home town you may have heard, of called George Eliot.  There is a statue of her in the town centre.  Yep, you read that right; her.  George’s real name was Mary Anne Evans.  She didn’t publish her work under that name for fear that it wouldn’t be taken seriously. 

Her most famous book is probably Middlemarch; published in 1872, and now recognised as “one of the greatest novels of the English language.”

1872.

That is over one hundred and forty years ago.

One hundred and forty years, and I had the same fear.  Wow.

I decided to go with my real feminine name (No one is going to mistake a “Sarah” for a guy like you might with a “Sam” or an “Ash”) for several reasons, but the primary one was that I wanted people to know a woman could write Sci-Fi.  It wouldn’t be fair for people to read the stories, enjoy them, and then credit them to a guy and perpetuate the myth that woman don’t write good Sci-Fi.  Thus far, I’m not aware of anyone passing up my book because of the name on the cover, but then I wouldn’t know if they did!

Likewise, I want girls to be able to read Sci-Fi, to see that it is an okay and normal thing for a girl to do.  I’ve come up against that myth far more:  People telling others my book is “for boys” because of the Science Fiction themes in it.  There are male characters in my stories, but there are also female characters, and there is even one story that features a spaceship as the main “character”!

I hope that if a girl sees a female name on the cover of the book, they will realise that women are equally allowed to enjoy the genre; it’s not an entirely male dominated thing.

How did the George Eliot story end?  Well, she admitted to being the novelist that the pubic had become so interested in; and she didn’t lose her fanbase because of it.  Would she have had the same initial success if they had known she was a woman from the start, or would they have passed her books over in search of a “proper” story merely because of the name?  No one can say.

Well, I’ve got a short story on the go to submit to this edition of LIGHTSPEED.  I don’t know if I’ll be lucky enough to get published or not.  I hope there will be plenty of women submitting their stories, even if that means a lot of competition! ;) At the end of it all, it’s about having fun and enjoying the genre we love.  It’s okay for people not to like the stories, as long as they do so on the basis of the writing, not on the irrelevant fact that the person writing it is female.

So for men and women around the globe who love good Sci-Fi, I’d ask you to check out this Kickstarter and offer your support, either monetarily or with a Share, so we women can destroy what Sci-Fi is seen to be, and join in on what Sci-Fi is all about; exploration, discovery and adventure!

Free Kindle Book!

It's been a year since The Eye of the Beholder came out!

To celebrate, this weekend the Kindle version will be available free for download.  So if you haven't got it yet, now's the time to grab it!

It's been a very busy summer, (and early autumn!) but I promise updates on my other projects are coming soon!

An Easter Story

Once upon a time there was a bunny.  He laid an egg.

Within the egg was a white of dark matter and dark energy.

Within the yolk, atomic matter swirled.

The atomic matter formed clusters.

Within those clusters, fusion reactions sparked to life.

Around those reactions, debris and dust coagulated into balls of rock and gas.

Upon one of those balls of rock water thrashed and churned.

Within the water a small creature struggled and swam.

As the water receded it clambered onto land.

Among the plants and trees it crawled.

Then it ran.

Then it hopped.

Then, it laid an egg.

Happy Easter! 

Image credit: Wikipedia

Merry Christmas!

The last blog post of the year.  It’s both scary and exciting looking forward to what 2013 will bring.

I don’t think I could have imagined being able to hold my first book in paperback form when I started this path.  I partly still can’t.  Every time I pick it up I go “Wow, it looks like a real book!”

Of course the Kindle is what started it all, and if you are one of those lucky people getting one for Christmas, please do check out the first story of The Eye of the Beholder for free!

I want to say thanks to everyone who has supported me on this crazy career path so far.  I hope you enjoy the fantasy novel as much as you’ve enjoyed the sci fi stories!  The word count currently stands at 31539, plus a lot more world history and drawings of maps in other documents.  It’s really beginning to flesh out!  As a teaser for things to come, here is a preview of part of the world!

Finally I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and (whether you celebrate Christmas or not), I wish you happiness and hope for a peaceful and prosperous new year!

All images copywright Sarah Cosgrove 2012

A Halloween Sci-fi Story!

The ship’s hull loomed up out of the darkness, their spotlights sliding over the pallid metal, momentarily bringing the husk to life before moving away to return it into the cold black.

“No response to any hails.”  Kat peered at the freighter.  “It looks old.  I wonder how long it’s been out here?”  

“Not that long.”  Mike swivelled around in his chair, and tossed a flip chart over.  “It is an old ship, but it’s been on active duty.  I matched the registration to a Mirage company freighter that was returning from the system a few days ago.  The Amazon.  Should be able to get a bounty off them for its return.”

“Okay.  We’d better head over and check out the damage.  See if we can find out what happened to the crew.” 

“We should wait.”  Robert had remained quiet up until now, just starting at the ghostly wreck on the screen. 

“What for?”  

“Do you know what the date is?” 

“Yeah.  Star date four one-“ Mike started, but Robert waved a hand.

“No, no.  I mean the proper date. On Earth.” 

“I guess that depends where you are…”

“It’s the thirty first of October.”  He glared at Kat. 

“So?”

“Halloween.  The night when the barrier between the living and the dead is at its weakest.”

The silence stretched out. 

“You’re joking, right?”  Mike started to laugh.  “Does Halloween even count in space?”

“Of course it does.  You think ghosts care if they are in space or not?”

“Seriously Rob, we’ve got a job to do here.  If we don’t lay claim to this salvage someone else might get it.  And the faster we get it back, the higher a price we can drive.”  Kat got up and went to the door.  “I’m going to engineering to update Linda and Adam on our find.  We’ll go over an in an hour.”

Spaceships are Shiny. (Or: Why Twilight isn’t crap.)

Once upon a time, I was working on some compositing for a module at university.  Part of the scene I was putting together involved a spaceship lasering another spaceship.  As placeholders for this, I quickly modelled a couple of basic ships and textured them up to look a bit battered; a few rust marks, some blast scars.  That kind of thing.

While I was part way through the work, my tutor came over to see what I’d got so far.  She wasn’t so interested in the way I’d put the scene together.  Her feedback was:  “Spaceships are shiny.  Make the ships shiny.” 

I was a little puzzled as to why she thought that spaceships had to be shiny.  After all, real life spaceships aren’t shiny.  Many of the favourites from TV and movies aren’t shiny.  In the end, I did make them shiny for her since she was the one that was going to be marking it.

Personal preference can colour a lot when it comes to art, literature, music.  Which leads me onto the second part: Twilight isn’t crap.  Before everyone protests that it really is, take a moment to think about it.  That book sold millions of copies.  Subjectively, those people didn’t think it was crap.  They enjoyed it, and went on to buy the sequels.

Maybe, at the end of the day, some people just like their vampires shiny. 

…I mean spaceships.

“I don’t like sci-fi.”

One of the most interesting comments I’ve had since the release of “The Eye of the Beholder” is how many people I know that said they “wouldn’t usually read that kind of stuff” (that kind of stuff being sci-fi), then added on “but I really enjoyed it, and I’ve told such and such to read it too.”

You can probably guess that this is from people I know who wanted to support me, like aunts and uncles, who would not normally venture into the final frontier. 

It got me thinking.  Why do people say they don’t like sci-fi?

Sci-fi is a huge genre.  It covers everything from the past, present and future.  It can be as simple as a present-day world with one change, such as advancement in medical science or robotics, to the grand space operas which take place in galaxies far, far away.

I think a lot of people who “don’t like sci-fi” don’t actually realise that they have probably been watching or reading stories that are sci-fi.  They may actually mean to say “I don’t like stories about spaceships.”  (Which is weird anyway, I mean, who doesn’t like spaceships?!)

Perhaps they just got stung once.  After all, not all sci-fi is great - just as not all fantasy, romance, crime or general fiction is great.  However people are much more likely to have read a sci-fi book, and assume it represents the entire genre, than they are to read a general fiction book and say “Well that’s it.  I don’t like fiction.”

I think most people do like sci-fi; they just don’t realise that they do.

So why not give it a(nother) chance?  You might like it.

The Eye of the Beholder

It's the moment you have all been waiting for!
The Eye of the Beholder is available on Amazon Kindle now!

Take a look, read the first story for free!
(And please leave an (honest) review!)

Don’t judge a book by its cover...

Unless you think the cover is awesome, in which case, feel free to judge away!

Presenting to you, “The Eye of the Beholder” cover art.

As you may have guessed, this means I’m onto the polishing stage for the collection, and I’m looking to launch it within the next couple of weeks.  I’ll have an official date for you as soon as possible!

So get your Kindles ready and I’ll see you soon!