Data Help: SF/F Project

[Shaun]

I need your help, everyone. Please spread the news about this. You can find the post for it on my blog here! (http://wisb.blogspot.com/2008/02/reviewers-help-me-help-us-all.html) I'm just going to post that here though. I really need your help though. The more data I get the better.

(Note: Please keep an eye on this as it will change from time to time)
(Edit: I'm looking for books printed late 2007 or at any point in 2008)

Okay, so the title is a little corny, but it fits in a way. What I'm asking from all of you reviewers out there is to help me with a project for the year: determining social/religious/ethnic biases in SF and F.
This came up in a conversation with Tobias S. Buckell on his blog and what I'd like to do is really get a wide array of information from all over to cover as much as humanly possible. I want to see what the bias really looks like from a more broad spectrum, rather than the readings on one or two people. There are a lot of reviewers out there and if you can just take no more than a minute of your time for every review to write down some info and save it, then we can make this more of a reality.
What I'm asking is this:
For every book you read in the SF or F genre, take a note of which ethnic, religious, social groups are present within a work in a significant way. What this means is if the main character or a significant character is White, Black, or Asian, then write that down. The same applies to religions and significant social groups (feminists, ACLU types, etc.). They must be significant presences, not just a mention. If there is a strong Catholic presence, say so. If you don't know what religion is present, but there is one, just say unknown.
Edit: Also, I'd like to address gender too. Mention main characters that are male or female and secondary, but significant characters that are male or female (make them separate to differentiate).
This will allow me to gather as much data as I can on this. I want to see how it all pans out when there are loads of us gathering this info. For a quick look at all the info I think is relevant:

--Author and Title of the book (just so I can differentiate between books so I don't double up when people read the same thing)
--Genre (so I can differentiate again to put the data in one large chart and two smaller genre specific charts)
--Ethnic presences (White, Black, Asian, whatever)
--Religious presences (Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Unknown, whatever)
--Any other relevant info you can think of.
--Social presences (Feminists, ACLU types, whatever)
--Gender (For main characters)
--Gender 2 (For secondary, but significant characters)

The result of this, I hope, will be a load of data that will help determine just how bad the bias is. I think after my discussions with Tobias that I have to agree there has to be some level of bias, but I don't know how bad it is, or at least has prevalent.

Will you help me? Do you have questions?

Edit: Here is an example format of how I'd like the info:
Author and Title of the book: The Dead & the Gone (will be printed in 2008)
Genre: Science Fiction
Ethnic presences: Hispanic, White
Religious presences: Catholic
Social presences: None
Gender (main): Male main
Gender 2 (secondary): 2 female secondary and 1 male main

Also, send data either to my email - arconna@(no spam)yahoo.com (remove the no spam)
OR post it here. Either one works fine!

[Carraka]

Sorry if this book has already been done, but I needed to do this.


George R. R. Martin's The Song of Ice and Fire series
--Genre: Fantasy

--Ethnic presences: I think they're all white. Some of them are described as dark-skinned, but I don't know what that means. The Dothraki are darker-skinned though, like Native American colored, but maybe that's because they're in the sun all day. But yes, mostly white.

--Religious presences:
There's the Old Gods--worship of nature, especially trees that had faces carved into them by the Children of the Forest. Ways of worship are not organized.

Faith of the Seven- Pray in a sept to the Six different Gods (because unless you're weird, you don't pray to the Stranger). So there's the Mother, Father, Warrior, Maiden, Crone, Smith. This is the most common religion in Westeros. Male clergy are septons, female clergy are septas. Highly organized, much closer to the government, there's a High Septon and everything. Um ... most of the great Houses except for the ones in the north abandoned the Old Gods for the Seven.

R'hllor, Lord of Light, God of Flame, etc. He has an enemy called the Other, and they are always at war with each other. They have red priests and red priestesses that can gaze into the flame and see visions. There's also a prophecy that Azor Ahai, the Prince that was Promised, will wield a Lightbringer, a sword on fire, and ... help with the battle? Yeah, I don't remember the rest.

Those are the major three, but there are more: The Drowned God, worshipped by the Ironmen, and there's a lot of stuff with drowning and being reborn. Mother Rhoyne: Worshiped in Dorne, as some sort of personification of a river back home. And the Others: North of the Wall, some of the wildlings worship the ice zombies and make sacrifices to them so they'll be left alone. The God of Many Faces: Worshiping Death. This is still unclear.

Anyway, I don't know if any of those religions are similar enough to the religions in this world, but there we go.

--Social presences: For the most part, nah. There are people that aren't quite normal, but none of them are looking to start movements. They're more preoccupied with war, I think.

--Gender: In the first book, four male POVs and four female POVs. In the second book, five male POVs and four female POVs. In the third book, six male POVs, and four female POVs. And the fourth book, six male POVs and six female POVs.

--Gender 2: Heh -- I would go look at the appendix and list a few hundred names, because they're all significant! Who is not a viewpoint character but is still significant? Men: Robert, Stannis, Renly, Loras, Sandor, Bronn, Robb, Varys, Viserys, and I'm just grazing the surface. Women: Melisandre, Gilly, Ygritte, Meera, Shae, Margaery, Myrcella, Lysa -- but this is much harder. Then again, it's a patriarchal world. What do you expect?

[Shaun]

Carraka, it's only for books printed at the end of last year and any time this year, not for books printed way back when :P.

Also, that's way too specific. I don't really need that much info. I'll give you an example of how you should do it:

Author and Title of the book: The Dead & the Gone (will be printed in 2008)
Genre: Science Fiction
Ethnic presences: Hispanic, White
Religious presences: Catholic
Social presences: None
Gender (main): Male main
Gender 2 (secondary): 2 female secondary and 1 male main


That's all. It doesn't need to be specific to names or what sort of religion. If the religion isn't Christian or Catholic, as in not a religion from this planet, then you just say "unknown" or "other".

[Carraka]

Aww ... Well, I hope I enlightened you with made-up religions anyway, and I'll look for newer books.

So ... if Dance of Dragons comes out this year, I can make a post for that!

If. -.-

[Shaun]

Yup, that would work :). If it comes out this year, or anything else that's fantasy/SF.

On a side note, I'm going to edit the main post as I add stuff to the original post, so keep an eye on that.

Thanks!

[Carraka]

Sorry this took me a while. I didn't want to flip through the entire book again, but I felt like I had to make up for my earlier mitsake.

Author and Title of the book: Inside Straight: A Wild Cards Novel (Yes, it came out this year!) It's collaboration, so it was edited by George R. R. Martin (YAY!) and written by Daniel Abraham, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Carrie Vaughn, Michael Cassutt, Caroline Spector, John Jos Miller, Ian Tregillis, and S. L. Farrell -- and GRRM wrote stuff too. That's given.

Genre: Superheroic Fantasy?

Ethnic presences: White, Hispanic, African-American, Egyptian, Russian, Indian, Arabic, German

Religious presences: Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Old Egyptian Gods

Social presences: I don't really understand this enough. I think there are feminists, though. And racists. Definitely racists.

Gender (POV): Six males, two females + someone that has POVs in both genders, because s/he can be both-- The person with the most POV chapters (I think) is male.

Gender 2 (secondary): ... I don't want to do this. I'll do contestants, then. 12 female, 16 male? But some of those aren't nearly main enough. I don't think this section should apply. The only main character that doesn't get a point of view would be Curveball. Yeah.

There's definitely stuff I missed, but GRRM wrote/edited it, and it came out this year, so yes! Next you're going to tell me collaboration novels don't count.

What do I remember of Hunter's Run?

[Shaun]

Thanks so much car!

Edit: About social groups, if you're not sure, then just assume it isn't a significant presence. If racism is definitely a part of the story, then you would know. So just treat it as something that should be obvious.

[Carraka]

Okay. Racism is definitely part of the story.