Daily BrewAuthor under fire for claiming women can't write sci-fi books
The definition of a troll in cyberspace terms is "one who deliberately posts provocative messaging to a message board or website with the intention of causing maximum disruption or argument." Sci-fi author Jack Eason recently proved he fits that description to a T.
He left quite the message for a group of 11 female writers who had their short stories published in a popular eBook on Amazon titled Dark Beyond The Stars: A Space Opera Anthology.
Eason starts his review of the book by saying, “I'm sorry to offend fifty percent of the population but it has to be said that when it comes to writing Science Fiction, it still remains a purely male domain.”
Right away, he sets himself up for a dog fight with every female writer that publishes in the realm of science fiction. The comments only get more detailed from there…and Eason ends his thoughts with a bang:
For any scifi story to be considered to be a space opera, it should always be a mixture of fast paced action combined with a large measure of the shoot-em-up mentality.
I applaud the ladies for giving it a try, but I would suggest they forget going any further. Leave the genre to those of us who know how to write scifi, being well versed in it's many nuances...
Blogger Carolyn Cox responded quite adequately about the underlying narrow minded views that female authors face in the genre. She also did a great job of pointing out that Amazon’s book review policies dictate any comments bashing gender violated the retailer’s policies. Interestingly enough, despite the clear violation pointed out by Cox, the comments remain on the site.
Although it’s irritating that HWSNBN’s egregious mansplaining will remain on Amazon, his review does have the incidental benefit of demonstrating exactly the kind of sexism lady genre authors are up against–if you’re a man who can’t understand why some female writers choose gender neutral or male pseudonyms, allow the Voldemort of book reviews to demonstrate the kind of prejudice they’re trying to avoid.
For what it’s worth, 66 per cent of all of the reviews for Dark Beyond The Stars: A Space Opera Anthology rated the book a 5-star read. Eason is certainly out of line here and part of the minority, as the ratings and likely resulting sales prove.
And of course to no one’s surprise at the conclusion of his comments, he plugged his own book, something he habitually does on his Twitter account. It’s also no surprise that all of the books positively mentioned on his blog are written by men.
This guy is obviously testing to the “shoot-em-up mentality” of female writers, but it probably wasn’t the greatest idea ever to make himself the target.
Update: in a blog post published on Thursday, Eason claims he deliberately wrote the sexist, mysogynist post to stir up his own book sales.
A few days ago I decided to once again try a tactic I hadn’t used in many a long year, to get the Trolls that lurk on Amazon.com to attack my latest novella... I laid a trap to make it easy for them to find me on Amazon.com and Twitter by including my name and the book title in a deliberately hard hitting review of another scifi book. Predictably they took the bait.
Eason says the outrage has boosted ocmmentary and sales of his latest book, but there are only 16 review on the book's Amazon page,with an average rating of 2.4/5, so his claims are dubious. Dark Beyond The Stars: A Space Opera Anthology, meanwhile, has 74 reviews wih an average rating of 4.5/5.