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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1367 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 30, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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I was on goodreads, and out of curiosity, I took a look on final 10 Readers' Favorite nominees in SciFi category. I generally never use contests like that as a guide, but I saw an ad and I was curious about what I'd find there and if I recognize any names (spoiler: I recognized one). What I saw made me ask some questions. Out of 10 top candidates, 8 are female authors. I read the descriptions - I have never read the books themselves and likely never will, so that's all I have to go on - and in 7, the main protagonist(s) are women, in one they are bots, one had a mixed crew and in one I couldn't determine it. In young adult SciFi category, all 10 nominees are female. So my question is - why? I also checked last year winners - 11:4 female authors.

Since we're living in a clown world in clown times, I must post a disclaimer that I have no problem with either female SciFi authors or female sci-fi protagonists, and enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) books with either. Yet, somehow I didn't expect this situation. Why is it so - is it the case that 80+% of SciFi writers are now female? 80+% of good ones? Goodreads sample is skewed? Vote is rigged or meddled with somehow? Note I am not seeking a value judgement on this situation (as ultimately I personally don't care at all who is nominated or wins), but would like to understand its genesis.

Goodreads choice awards usually come from the most popular books (on Goodreads) read that year published that year. Since publishing and readership overwhelmingly lean female it's not surprising that there's such skew. Goodreads choice isn't a great indicator of quality (rather popularity) so I'm not super bothered by it.

Since publishing and readership overwhelmingly lean female

Why? Males stopped reading? I certainly didn't, and I know many people who are male nerds like me and who read. Is it the millennial/gen Z thing? Are males only doing tiktok or games now?

so I'm not super bothered by it.

I'm not bothered at all - my concern is not having time to read what I already want to read, not to find more reading based on somebody's opinion - I am just curious as to what is going on.

The last time I was in a physical bookstore(a few months ago) and browsed through the sci-fi/fantasy genre, the majority of new books seemed to be overwhelmingly written by women in a quirky, post-2000 semi-ironic genre-smacking type style that comes across as a 'serious parody/satire' more than anything.

So if you want to find anything written that will appeal to men, you either need to go old-school or down the indie-rabbit hole, not exactly an easy thing to slog through.

Conversely, if you're being uncharitable, when women brag about how much reading they do, they're bragging about stuff like this and booktok(IE, it's all porn).

Well, I didn't read the GR tops but I am pretty sure it's not porn - at least not the thing I'd call porn - at least in the SciFi and YA SciFi categories.

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