"Whatever it is that compels her to write so seldom": Network Analysis and the Decline of Women Writers in Pulp Science Fiction. Issue 1 (1st March 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Boswell, Suzanne F.
• Is Part Of: Extrapolation. Volume 62:Issue 1(2021)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 36
• Publication Date: 2021-03-01
• Subjects: Science fiction -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Science fiction -- Bibliography -- Periodicals; Science fiction; Bibliography; Criticism, interpretation, etc; Periodicals; 809.38762
• DOI: 10.3828/extr.2021.2
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0014-5483

Abstract

Abstract : In the pulp magazine period (1926–1946), science fiction's publishing practices excluded female authors from the burgeoning genre. Using a network analysis of over 2, 400 authors and 14, 000 stories, this article demonstrates that women's publication numbers in science fiction went down over the pulp period. Women, unlike their male colleagues, were published in ways that made it nearly impossible to gain economic stability and prestige in the pulps. The consolidation of sf into a marketing genre thus came at the expense of a female sf community who troubled the purity of a newly exclusive field.