31 May, 2016
0 comments
23 books reviewed. 12 by women, 11 by men. F/T = 0.52
4 books by POC, or 17%
Year to date
105 books read. 63 by women (0.6), 40 by men (0.38), 2 by authors who identifies as neither (0.02). 25 by POC (0.24). To put in context:
10 May, 2016
0 comments
Strange Horizons has just posted their sixth "SF count" of representation in SF reviewing. It's very interesting and I recommend you look at it. Sadly, they never have the space to include this site so I've helpfully created a table with entries for James Nicoll Reviews, both for the whole of 2015 and also for 2016 thus far.
Enjoy!
Key: WNB stands for "women and non-binary genders", while POC stands for "person of colour". R/R stands for "reviews/reviewers". Figures in brackets are percentages; for R/R the percentage represents the site's R/R over my 2015 R/R.
| Review source | Total | WNB (%) | POC (%) | Reviewers | R/R (%) |
| James Nicoll Reviews 2015 | 329 | 195 (59) | 45 (14) | 1 | 329 (100) |
| Locus | 324 | 163 (50) | 22 (7) | 17 | 19 (5.7) |
| SFX | 165 | 48 (29) | 10 (6) | 30 | 5.5 (1.5) |
| Romantic Times | 146 | 84 (57) | 14 (10) | 23 | 6.3 (1.9) |
| Tor | 141 | 66 (47) | 18 (13) | 27 | 5.2 (1.6) |
| Strange Horizons | 139 | 66 (48) | 30 (22) | 80 | 1.7 (0.5) |
| James Nicoll Reviews 2016 | 88 | 57 (65) | 21 (25) | 1 | 88 (n/a) |
| Rising Shadows | 83 | 25 (30) | 1 (1) | 2 | 41.5 (12.6) |
| Interzone | 67 | 21 (31) | 7 (10) | 19 | 3.5 (1) |
| F&SF | 59 | 32 (54) | 5 (9) | 5 | 11.8 (3.6) |
| Analog | 58 | 10 (17) | 3 (4) | 1 | 58 (17.6) |
| Io9 | 56 | 17 (30) | 12 (21) | 10 | 5.6 (1.7) |
| Asimov's | 53 | 21 (23) | 3 (6) | 3 | 17.7 (5.4) |
| Vector | 52 | 18 (35) | 4 (8) | 26 | 2 (0.6) |
| SFS | 45 | 48 (21) | 2 (4) | 38 | 1.2 (0.3) |
| NYRSF | 42 | 11 (26) | 6 (13) | 24 | 1.8 (0.5) |
| Foundation | 38 | 9 (24) | 1 (3) | 27 | 1.4 (0.4) |
| LARB | 35 | 11 (31) | 7 (20) | 28 | 1.3 (0.4) |
| Lightspeed | 28 | 16? (57) | 14 (50) | 3 | 9.3 (2.8) |
| CSZ | 23 | 19 (80) | 8 (35) | 17 | 1.4 (0.4) |
30 Apr, 2016
0 comments
21 books reviewed. 15 by women, 6 by men. F/T = 0.71
4 books by POC, or 19%
Year to date
82 books read. 51 by women (0.62), 29 by men (0.35), 2 by authors who identifies as neither (0.02). 21 by POC (0.26)
One way to look at 21 books by POC is “a lot fewer than I wanted by this point”, but another way is to look at where I was this time last year:
| Month | Total 2015/ Total 2016 | POC 2015/ POC 2016 | % 2016/ %2016 |
| January | 25/22 | 0/3 | 0/14 |
| February | 24/18 | 2/8 | 8/44 |
| March | 28/21 | 2/6 | 7/29 |
| April | 26/21 | 0/4 | 0/19% |
| Total | 103/82 | 4/21 | 4/26 |
You have to squint to see the difference but it is there.
14 Apr, 2016
0 comments
I wonder who I have reviewed most frequently?
1 Apr, 2016
0 comments
21 books reviewed. 12 by women, 8 by men. 1 by an author who identifies as neither. F/T = 0.57
6 books by POC, or 29%
Year to date
61 books read. 36 by women (0.59), 23 by men (0.38), 2 by an author who identifies as neither (0.03). 17 by POC (0.28)
61 books in 91 days. I feel physically ill. My productivity is still crap
2 Mar, 2016
0 comments
I’ve had savage beatings that affected my ability to work less than did FASS 2016. Oh, well.
18 books reviewed. 12 by women, 5 by men. 1 by an author who identifies as neither, which I am a bit embarrassed to admit is a first for me. F/T = 0.67
My Big Plan for February was to honour Black History month. Every book I read on my own time (non-sponsored, and not part of the Tanith Lee project) was to be by a black author. How well did I do, you ask? 8 books by POC, or 44% But 8 isn’t a big number: the only reason it’s 44% is because I basically read almost nothing in February. Worse, I read two books by Butler when it would have been trivial to avoid such a cliched choice of author to read twice in this context. But at least I have a long list of books to read.
Year to date
40 books read. 24 by women (0.60), 15 by men (0.38), 1 by an author who identifies as neither (0.02). 11 by POC (0.28)
40 books in 60 days. I feel physically ill.
2 Mar, 2016
0 comments
I was involved in FASS 2016 in a fairly senior role. This ate into my ability to work a lot more seriously than I expected so these stats are going to be pretty ugly:
22 books read. 12 by women, ten by men. F/T = 0.54
3 books by POC1. POC/T = 14%. But I had a plan to make sure my February numbers would be better. More to come.…
1: I’ve been using “could be deported or worse by President Trump” as a litmus test. Given Trump’s now backed by Duke and Farrakhan, should I be counting Jews as POC?
31 Dec, 2015
0 comments
Total for the year is 329. This means I read and review more books than any one of the sites that made Strange Horizon’s round up: Locus (296), Tor (271) SFX (199), Romantic Times (127-specfic only), Strange Horizons (115), Interzone (79), io9 (74), F&SF (59), Vector (59), Analog (58), Asimov’s (47), NYRSF (45), Science Fiction Studies (43), Foundation (29), CSZ (22), LARB (17). Only more than the sum of Vector, Analog, Asimov’s, NYRSF, Science Fiction Studies, Foundation, CSZ and LARB’s numbers, though, so there’s a goal for 2016.
Not that I am keeping a grudge because I was snubbed.
195 of those books were by women, for an F/T of 0.59.
My total for writers of colour (using the “Assuming a Trump Presidency, could their race be used to justify deporting them from the US, even in the cases of people who were born in the US’’ for edge cases): 45 (14%) for the year. Bah. Hoped to be at least a point or two higher. Another goal for 2016.
31 Dec, 2015
0 comments
25 Dec, 2015
0 comments
My second since this site was launched.
Merry Christmas to all my readers and especially Adrienne L. Travis for creating and managing this site, Karen Lofstrom for turning my daily word salad into reviews, all of my patreon supporters for supporting me[1], and everyone who has ever commissioned a review. And everyone who suggested an interesting book for me to try.
1: Some of whom I owe reviews. Working on it.