![To the eye obscured [iii]](http://reading.kingrat.biz/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/to-the-eye-obscured.jpg "To the eye obscured [iii]")
One of the blogs I read, Feminist S.F., is currently looking for obscure but superb speculative fiction that features groups that are still generally ignored. In other words, the protagonists are women, black, Hispanic, gay, etc. After seeing a list of Top 10 Obscure But Superb Science Fiction Novels
, the kind of list that seems to sprout up every other week or so on the S.F. blogosphere, the Feminist S.F. bloggers noted that yet again every author was a white male, and the characters in every book on the list were white males.
If you look over the list of works I’ve read in science fiction and fantasy you’ll find only a smattering of female authors and only a smattering of books with non-white male protagonists. I’ve never gone out of my way to look for any, mostly because I don’t want to read crap. Now before anyone gets their harumphing going, I’m not saying such writing is crap. I make a lot of my fiction choices because the buzz the books receive, hoping to weed out titles I won’t like before I buy. I wait until books start receiving good buzz before I buy. Which means that the large percentage of it is by white men, about white men.
I can’t contribute to the selection of the works over on their blog. I don’t have the knowledge.
However, in an effort to broaden my reading, I am dedicating August to book reviews from the resulting list. I am assuming they will come up with a top five or top ten list. I’ll order the top five (if still in print), then read and write about all of them during August.
Anyhow, don’t give me titles to buy here. Head over to their nominations post and nominate there. I just hope the top five books aren’t door stop weight. I do prefer shorter books. But whatever wins gets bought.
Photo To the eye obscured [iii] taken by Flickr user Jasmic used under a Creative Commons By-Nc-Nd license.
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[...] to make an addendum saying not to nominate books that had won those awards. That is until I read this post by a man who is vowing to expand his horizons and read the Top 10 we come up with. It made me [...]