Helen,

You're right about Stross. I'd cite Ken McCleod and Iain M. Banks as contemporary misogyny free sci-fi, though others may disagree. Must be something in the Scottish water.

Why leave out Anne McCaffery? "The Ship who sang" is one of the best novels that can be used as an introduction to the genre.
The view of Skiffy is that it is very much a mans club. Laurie, thanks for pointing out that it is not so.
However, please dont throw out all the "Dead White Males", as life without Whyndam, Zamyatin, Orwell etc would be pretty dull.

this type of fiction has to a great extent always been used for social criticism and satire - in this context Swift wrote speculative fiction.
It took the Magic Realists decades to catch up thith Sci-Fi. Lets hope that public perception of Sci-Fi can catch up with the reality.

I am beginning to dislike literary lists of all kinds as they often just reflect those authors who are being marketed particularly well by large publishers. What is needed is far more attention to be given to independent publishers and highly successful Blogs by mainstream media. We need a Rough Trade of the publishing world. One of the greatest qualities of the science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction genre (or whatever you want to call it) is it's capacity to stimulate the imagination, expand consciousness, and challenge conventional thinking and assumptions. This is an anathema to the publishing industry unless they can see some way to profit from it. Frankly (and unlike the publishing industry) I do not care who the writer is, what their sexuality, gender, ethnic or racial origins are, as they will bring their experience to the writing and that will inform me, or challenge me, if it is well written. The biggest problem many writers face now is the big players of the publishing industry reducing books and authors to products who can be marketed successfully and, if they even win the selection lottery, then limiting their creative freedom. Decisions to publish books are therefore rarely made on merit or artistic talent alone -though they need something. You can place much of the blame for the struggles that writers from diverse backgrounds face on the industry itself and rest assured that the writers that make it through the mire aren't necessarily the best writers but are in the view of the industry the least commercially risky.

I posted some of this over at Crooked Timber but I'll repeat it here as it's not often I agree with you and it's a bevel experience:

I’d happily live in many of Greg Egan’s futures or on Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars. And what about Sam Delaney’s ‘ambiguous heterotopia’, Triton? Or Stephen Baxter's humanist and post-humanist futures? Egan and Delaney in particular have a rather fluid approach to gender. I'd recommend Egan's work to anyone who has the math for it...

Gray’s omission of women writers is unforgivable. Le Guinn’s The Dispossessed in particular is the most fully realised account of a functioning anarchy I’ve seen. In fact it is referenced extensively in Michael Albert’s Parecon, practically a bible for 21st Century anarchists like myself. Albert has cited it as an influence.

Oh, and Helen - have you actually read any of those authors you dismiss as 'misogynist'? Asimov's Robot stories feature the scientist Susan Calvin while the commander of the exploration vessel in 2010 is a female cosmonaut. And Clarke has, perhaps unsurprisingly, featured gay or bisexual protagonists, as in Imperial Earth.

While I'm here I might as well mention that Sam Delaney, Thomas M Disch, Damien Broderick and John Clute have not only written some excellent science fiction but some extremely good sf criticism too.

Frederic Jameson has also written some very perceptive articles on utopian science fiction.

"It is gratifying that Gray has finally noticed what decades' worth of critics, authors and judges have failed to recognise: that science and speculative fiction is a vibrant and important school of writing whose observations on politics and the human condition "enable us to see more clearly the elusive actualities". This particularly the case in Britain, which has long produced the best science fiction in the world, all of which has been roundly snubbed by the bourgeois literary establishment."

Although I realise it's tangential to what you're saying, I think a bit more needs to be said here. It's all very well to say that the 'bourgeois literary establishment' sidelines science-fiction, but there's no inherent reason this should be the case.

Why, for instance, has Atwood expressed umbrage at being classified at a science-fiction writer? (A fact I cannot help thinking may have contributed to her omission from lists of great SF writers.)

I think it has to be conceded that there is something in Helen's point that "sometimes ... these male writers used up all their imagination on tech, and had none to spare for social politics". There is quite a lot of SF (including quite a lot that is well regarded within the SF community) in which it seems that far future societies in far-flung parts of the universe look a lot like American society in the late twentieth century.

And really comments like "It took the Magic Realists decades to catch up thith Sci-Fi" just look patronising and defensive.

Love the Suzy McKee Charnas series, but preferred Gwyneth Jones' recent "Spirit" to "Bold as Love". Her short fiction is excellent also.

Nancy Kress, Kate Wilhelm, and Elizabeth Bear deserve a mention.

I'd give a nod to Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams, who as successive editors of Asimov's SF magazine have championed new writing from the likes of Jones, Liz Williams, Stross, the Scottish tendency, and the extraordinary work of Robert Charles Wilson and Paolo Bacigalupi.

Dozois publishes an excellent annual anthology.

This C**T probably hasn't read any of these science fiction novels and is barely capable of evaluating their content let alone their merit. Of course there are great female science fiction authors and many more from beyond the European context. Hell Shelley's Frankenstein;
or, The Modern Prometheus is a great example of classic science fiction written by a female author. However, perhaps it would be best talking about the novels John Gray chose, rather than blatantly exlcaim gender discrimination, which exists and always will. Gray's choices likely reflect the fact that he is an elderly, white, oxford educated man, rather than any intentional prejudice.

Women get over yourselves!

This is why people loath feminists - they are unwilling to evaluate things purely merit based. Instead they reiterate the same tired chorus of being unfairly discriminated against and deliberately ignored in various parts of society. Instead of just banging on the same drum, perhaps you should wonder why there aren't any great female science fiction writers, or why their are so few great women politicians and leaders. Maybe there's a reason based on an affinity towards these professions or based purely on biological differences. These things do exist! Why are there so few great women political theorists/philosophers? These are things that have been around for centuries which many greats have overcome far worse circumstances to ply and excel in their trade.

On a side note, Margaret Atwood is not only a highly overrated author, she is also a miserable and class oriented (not int he Marxist sense, more along Thatcher) person. She eats and sits a cafe around the corner from my house and treats the staff there terribly!

Lives oft the Monster Dogs - Kristen Bakis is actually a great novel. I highly recommend it. Just not anything by Atwood, she's horrible

The crucial point should also be the story, not what particular pattern chromosomes take within the womb. I do not give a flying fruitbat's fundament what an author's gender is, just whether or not I like the story they have written. People like Marianne de Pierres write damn good fiction. That MdP happens to be female doesn't change my opinion.

The idea that science fiction is a "male" genre is part of the ideological notion that men are scientists and women do other things. Until this primary problem is addressed it won't stop impacting on the cultural sphere.

i missed Mitchinson's Memoirs of a Spacewoman... otherwise whilst I could go on its ok...

Should it matter? Surely it's the writer, and the quality of the writing, not the gender nor background, that matters? A writer may be male, or female, or black, or white, or green ... all that matters is that they are great at what they do.

It matters if the pattern of exclusion is as closely linked as it is in Gray's case with a set of statements that are, frankly, wholly inaccurate as a result. Gray wants to recruit sf not only to politics but to his own despairing vision - and this is only possible if he only picks those writers who (sort of) fit. However, his exclusions of women, LGBT writers and writers of colour are only three examples of how his article tries to force into his personal box a genre too vast and diffuse to fit.