Sci-fi media coverage dominated by men, survey shows

Annual figures show reviews remain disproportionately by men, about men – although there are some signs of improvement

In early 2011, the American group Vida published the first iteration of its now-annual Vida Count, finding a striking gender imbalance in literary press coverage. Far more books reviewed in the previous year were by men than women; most of the reviewers were men.

Vida focused, understandably, on the best known general literary journals. As the editor of a magazine devoted to science fiction and fantasy – genres that tend to be covered only infrequently by, say, the LRB, but which have their own active critical culture – I wanted to know what the situation looked like in my corner of the literary world. The result was the Strange Horizons SF Count, now in its sixth year.

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