Which is why it is often said, men commmnicte using the brain stem and their swords and fists, women use the cortex and words.

I have been a fan of Sci-Fi (primarily the "hard-core" variety instead of Fantasy) since I was about 6 or 7 years old back in the 60's. The very 1st Sci-Fi books I remember reading were The Runaway Robot by Lester Del Rey and Young Visitor to Mars by Richard M. Elam Jr. ... of course the Apollo Moon missions were on the go at that time and I was totally caught up in the excitement and wonder of all that! Started reading Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke around that time too which was the beginning of a love affair with Sci-Fi novels that lasted well into my 30's ... read most everything written by the Classic Masters, including Asimov, Bradbury, Niven, etc., etc. and bunches more by lesser known authors. Goes without saying that the original Star Trek was my fave TV show ... ended up collecting a LOT of S.T. books over the years!
Have to admit though that I haven read too many female Sci-Fi authors over the years ... really enjoyed a few of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series ... Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossesed was a fantastic book too ... as was Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time
Sadly though, in my 30's, after reading a thousand plus Sci-Fi novels since discovering them in grade school, I "burnt-out" on it ... still enjoy the occasional Sci-Fi movie, but hardly read it at all anymore ...

And.. just in case you didn't know..  Andre Norton (deceased) was female.  She started writing Sci-Fi back in the 50's

You know, they never said that, ever.    No jacket cover pics, no bio data, nothing ....


I thought Andre Norton,  he was a guy with a French sounding first name.


Ursula LeGuinn was the first woman SciFi writer I can ever remember it being bluntly said she was a woman.


Like the thread title says, there was a good bit of gender bias back then, really.

Dune, oh what a wonder that book was when it first came out.


About time for a new remake of Dune the Movie -- every maturing major director wants to take a shot at making his vision of the book come out well on film.


The first part of the Kyle McLauglin / Sting version was very very good, but it was like they simply ran out of money and had to wrap the film up quick like at the end.

(that movie panned big time when first released because unless you were a fan of the books you had NO friggin' idea about what was going on -- on second release they put a cartoon leader on to the front of the movie just to try to get non fans up to speed somewhat, but it was too big of a universe to cover in a cartoon leader and the film still got a rotten rotten review from Siskel & Ebert for being "completely incomprehensible".

No body has ever tried to do Stranger in a Strange Land -- and a few of the other Heinlein stories got butchered up pretty good when they were attempted (Puppetmasters).   Star Ship Troopers did pretty good on the very first one, but the follow ups all sucked big time.  

They never did get the Mobile Infantry armor suit right at all ....   They could do it now, Iron Man showed them the way .....

Guys (and gals) go look for a virtually forgotten collection of articles & essays by Isaac Asimov by the titles
"Is anyone there?" and "Where do we go from here?".



The articles were written in the 50s and 60s and assembled at the end of the decade.
50 years later, the assumptions made and the technology assumed are... moving...  

If only Asimov (back way then) could have had just a glimpse of today's average distributed technology (i.e., iPads and iPhones) he would have been shocked.

On the other hand, he would have been disappointed by... no Permanent Space station with a hotel in it, no Lunar Station...



... nobody on Mars yet (what? Man on the Moon in 1969 and then you sit on your hands?)...



And most of all, apparently no Close Encounters of any kind (save for the journalistic bit  )

I'm an Asimov fan, does it show ?  

Mpescatori- did you know that Azimov holds the record for the shortest short story ever written? It was written on a bet with some other sf writers over a few beers. It had to have a beginning middle and end, and a theme. It is 25 words long.