Sci-fi Writing Groups: Where Are the Women?

Well the only other woman in my offline sci-fi writing group moved away. Originally there were 5 of us out a group of 17. Over time people joined, left, re-joined, new members, etc. but as each woman left she was replaced by a man. Where are the women sci-fi writers? Even online writing groups seem to be dominated by men. I feel a little weird being the only woman in the group, but I know the guys and feel comfortable talking being friends as well as writing associates. I'm gonna try to get more women to join though.

How about you, what's your experience? If you are part of science fiction writing groups either online or off, what's the male:female ratio? Do you think it matters?

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Futuristic Motherhood Writers Announced

Writers whose short stories will appear in Futuristic Motherhood:

Aimee Amodio
Francine L. Baldwin
SuzAnne C. Cole
Tristan Davenport
Stefanie Freele
David W. Hill
Deborah P Kolodji
Melissa Krause
Laura Lehman
Wendy Palmer
Katherine Patterson
Rob Rosen
Kay Sexton
Yvonne Eve Walus
Kaaron Warren

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Did You Read Omni Magazine?

Do you remember Omni Magazine? It was published from 1978-1995. I was such a huge fan of the magazine and even had a subscription for a short time in my teens. There were so many great short sci-fi stories in there as well as tech news, it was awesome. From Wikipedia:

OMNI was a magazine that contained articles on science fact and short works of science fiction. The first issue was published in October 1978, the last in Winter 1995, with an internet version lasting until 1998. Bob Guccione described the magazine in its first issue as "an original if not controversial mixture of science fact, fiction, fantasy and the paranormal."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omni_(magazine)

I was tooling around the net looking for Omni info because I want to buy some old copies. Here are some interesting Omni-related sites:
Omni Magazine: Fiction Index
Omni Magazine Shrine Wiki
Omni: Venosa's Art
Omni Magazine Fan Site


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Do You Use Quantum Teleportation In Your Stories?

I used to love reading teleportation stories when I was kid, I thought they were the coolest. So far I haven't used it in any of my stories, but I plan to. I remember when faxing became huge in the 1980s, I thought for sure we'd be teleporting by the 1990s, LOL. Clicking around the net I found this on the IBM website:

Teleportation is the name given by science fiction writers to the feat of making an object or person disintegrate in one place while a perfect replica appears somewhere else. How this is accomplished is usually not explained in detail, but the general idea seems to be that the original object is scanned in such a way as to extract all the information from it, then this information is transmitted to the receiving location and used to construct the replica, not necessarily from the actual material of the original, but perhaps from atoms of the same kinds, arranged in exactly the same pattern as the original. A teleportation machine would be like a fax machine, except that it would work on 3-dimensional objects as well as documents, it would produce an exact copy rather than an approximate facsimile, and it would destroy the original in the process of scanning it. A few science fiction writers consider teleporters that preserve the original, and the plot gets complicated when the original and teleported versions of the same person meet; but the more common kind of teleporter destroys the original, functioning as a super transportation device, not as a perfect replicator of souls and bodies.
Read full article on research.ibm.com

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Do You Know This Story?

My fellow sci-fi buffs: do you know the name of the short story about this guy with a mesmerizing personality, he convinced people to be in constant, in-person contact with each other?

Like even in public bathrooms, no privacy, no one was allowed to be alone. Then the galaxy police came & sent him away & had to deprogram the populace? At the end he was left to play in the sand and was busy trying to control the ants. Anybody know this story? It's scratching around my brain.

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Kurt Vonnegut on Writing Fiction

Eight rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

-- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1999), 9-10.

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