[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I don't have a problem with a book being primarily mono-gendered.

I think most writers write their own gender best, and I'd rather have good characterisation than bad merely to fill up a quota.

If the book is supposed set well into the future, then I expect that things to be quite a bit more centered & realistic. This book isn't even realistic by todays standards.

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I have to disagree here.

Would you say that a book that featured almost all women was "simply unacceptable"?

Of course I would, since it isn't the least bit realistic!

Do you want those books (and everything else) that have to have one person of just about every definable group, including the smart kid who is, naturally, a geek, and the one in the wheelchair who is always optimistic about everything, because they give you a frontal lobotomy along with your wheels? The books whose message is "life sucks; deal with it" because they have to be "relevant" to kids whose lives suck, instead of being, say, some of the Tom Swift books, that presented something really cool to aspire to? How many women is "enough" women? How many men is "enough" men? Where do the people who don't present as either fit in?

I don't count characters. I don't check to see how many of them look like me. When you get right down to it, nobody but me is exactly like me anyway. What I care about is whether a character is interesting to read about, not whether they stare back at me when I look in a mirror. All my life I've read about people who are younger, older, different races, different genders, different nationalities, and I don't think it was until I got into high school that someone told me I was supposed to care. I told them where to get off, and went back to reading the books I enjoyed.

Good stories are what matters. A good story can have anyone in it. If someone writes good male characters, or good female characters, or good characters that they carefully avoid mentioning any sex in connection with, more power to them; if it's a good story, I'll read it. And if the story is no good, it doesn't matter if it's got ten clones of me in it; it's still no good.

Freedom from discrimination means freedom from discrimination, not just discriminating a different way. Counting characters ... saying a book isn't acceptable because it doesn't have enough women, or enough men, or enough left-handed, black, bald, tall, middle-aged, unmarried, Nigerian truck drivers, is just another sort of discrimination. Isn't that what we're trying to get away from?

Good stories are what matter to me as well. But as I said, if the book is set in the future, and it doesn't even come close to being even slightly realistic even by todays standards, then it is very hard for me to take it seriously. The same goes for any books that are women centric to almost the exclusion of men.

I'm not looking for a representative of me, but I am looking for something that is hopeful, and realistic of what is true now & should be even more so in the future.

This was & still is the appeal of the original Star Trek. If a writer today, can't even write a book supposedly in the future by even those standards or todays, then in MY personal opinion, it isn't a very realistic or good book.