Last comment (hopefully) on SF

BTW--in case I wasn't direct enough, the editors were right to put a white guy on the cover of Streetlethal. They correctly believed that a black face would mean lower sales. To my knowledge, Octavia makes most of her money on the Feminist literature circuit. Chip makes his money in academia. That makes me, possibly, the ONLY black SF writer to make a living in the field. What about Asians? They're greatly under-represented for their population as well, pointing out again: SF quite possibly is less welcoming of "others" than white fans want to believe. They want to believe it is open and warm and wide-minded. Sorry. They're only human, and in some key aspects, some of the most closed-minded around. In other words, there aren't more minorities for the same reason that black and Asian men don't have sex in films--white guys don't buy it, and that drives the economy. So prospective writers can write about people of their own ethnicity, and earn less money (most writers lead a darned marginal existence--this additional burden is killing!) or they can write about white guys, all the while wondering if the very people they write to and for have any respect for them. It's quite an emotional ball of snakes.

Steve