F. P.’s Reviews > Lady Audley's Secret > Status Update
F. P.
is 48% done
This part where R. Audley both attacks & extols women--when he says he thinks some women push incompetent men to sit in high places who then impose their "poor, muddled intellects" & make confusion & incompetence in society--uh, too many women effectively do the same thing & push incompetent male writers to the top. But don't get me started because 1) no one wants to hear it & 2) it won't make any fucking difference.
— May 30, 2026 08:49AM
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F. P.’s Previous Updates
F. P.
is 85% done
Back in the old days, some disgraces were apparently worse than others…ooops. Maybe in these days too.
— Jun 02, 2026 05:21AM
F. P.
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"...he knew that this strange and icy calm was the first numbness of a heart stricken by grief so unexpected as for a time to be rendered almost incomprehensible by a blank stupor of astonishment..."
— Jun 02, 2026 04:03AM
F. P.
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"What if I am wrong after all? What if this chain of evidence which I have constructed link by link, is woven out of my own folly?"
— May 31, 2026 01:32PM
F. P.
is 57% done
"It was there that the young cornet had first yielded to that sweet delusion, that fatal infatuation which had exercised so dark an influence upon his after-life."
--So many beautiful lines and so much memorable imagery in this book. I particularly love that "sweet delusion." How many people have been that way toward someone else...probably too many people....
— May 31, 2026 09:02AM
--So many beautiful lines and so much memorable imagery in this book. I particularly love that "sweet delusion." How many people have been that way toward someone else...probably too many people....
F. P.
is 50% done
I just accidentally deleted my last 50% update from 5 hours ago--duh! But here it is again and then there will be the other update I just tried to add but screwed up:
"When last he had looked at the old house it had been gay with visitors, every window glittering like a low star in the dusk; now, dark and silent, it faced the winter's night like some dismal baronial habitation, deep in a woodland solitude."
— May 31, 2026 08:58AM
"When last he had looked at the old house it had been gay with visitors, every window glittering like a low star in the dusk; now, dark and silent, it faced the winter's night like some dismal baronial habitation, deep in a woodland solitude."
F. P.
is 47% done
"As if happiness were not essentially accidental--a bright and wandering bird, utterly irregular in its migrations; with us one summer's day, and forever gone from us on the next!"
— May 29, 2026 05:48PM
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F. P.
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May 30, 2026 08:52AM
I'll just say here that, IMO and experience, people are heavily socialized and propagandized to do all of that sex-based nonsense, and this is one area where I think there really is no hope for anything to change.
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Hm, that's a great insight, F. P. But may I ask what specific trend in publishing triggered this thought for you? As far as I'm aware, it is often the women authors who struggle more for recognition, so is it really them doing the pushing?
"As far as I'm aware, it is often the women authors who struggle more for recognition, so is it really them doing the pushing?"--Hi again, sana, and yes, way too much for both parts of your sentence: most times women are struggling for recognition as authors more than men are, but women are also causing that situation sometimes, and unfortunately are especially causing it in a certain type of sci-fi.
What I'm going to say I've said before many times in many different ways, including on Goodreads.* It has not made any difference, and I doubt many people will appreciate it; they will probably hate it, but I'll try one more time in this thread...
Hard sci-fi is something that’s typically been read by mostly men, and not necessarily read by all male readers. And statistics have repeatedly shown that too many men either do not read or read barely anything. So the usual audience for hard sci-fi tends to be pretty small. The only time hard sci-fi and a hard sci-fi writer breaks out into massive reads and sales, and massive numbers of high accolades and high ratings is when lots of women readers are added into the mix; they ultimately make that male hard sci-fi mega-success happen.
Even when a hard sci-fi guy could not spell his book-deal publisher’s name right and the writings on his website demonstrated repeated bad literacy problems, women still made that male hard sci-fi writer mega-successful, and society even gave him a huge sci-fi award--and not only that, some apparently even think of and even call him a scientist when his bio shows that he doesn’t have an iota of real science experience, as does any of his real-life comments about real science; in my opinion and experience, his knowledge of science is minimal-to-poor.
And science fiction is fake. There’s no real science being done in any science fiction anymore then there’s real medicine being done in a medical thriller. Real science is done in the laboratory, the classroom, in nonfiction professional science publications, etc. But when the writer himself goes around telling everyone his book(s) is "real science" and has "real science" in it, too many people foolishly believe it.
Great marketing unfortunately can make great successes out of shitty writers.
Too bad that no female hard sci-fi writers get the nirvana of massive support that male hard sci-fi writers get.
(Is it any wonder there are so few women writing hard sci-fi? [Or at least it looks that way because they are pushed into obscurity.] Where are the mega-success role models of women writing hard sci-fi? They don’t exist. And it looks like they never will exist.)
It seems that women who write hard sci-fi are just not going to get a massive amount of attention from male readers of it because they’re looking to read what their bros write about it, and those women hard sci-fi writers will also not get a massive amount of support from women readers for what I think are various reasons (at least so far they have never given that massive support to women writing hard sci-fi). So then those women hard sci-fi writers just will never achieve a massive success, will never have a massive audience size, get massively high ratings, get massive accolades, book deals, movie deals--etcetera! That has only ever happened to MALES, to MALE hard sci-fi writers.
It is those women who rush-to-gush about male hard sci-fi writers and their hard-sci-fi works who really push the success of those males to the very top.
Hard sci-fi is the real glass ceiling in sci-fi. In my opinion, society’s equation unfortunately still is, even in too many women’s minds apparently: science = male. Anything with the word “science” in it or anything with science-ish sounding content (which sci-fi also is)--that’s still often seen, whether consciously or subconsciously or both, as a male domain, as a male sphere of excellence. It’s what I call genius-by-penis: have a penis, capable of genius, especially in science, or in anything science-sounding; don’t have a penis, not capable of genius, especially in science, or in anything science-sounding.
All of this above leaves no sizable visibility and therefore no sizable audience for women writing hard sci-fi. The science = male equation’s then reinforced more, again leaving women hard sci-fi writers to never reach mega-success. Plus, many people only want to read what they see as or are told are the popular books, so if it’s only males at the hard sci-fi top, those writings by males will get read even more--it snowballs, further locking women writing hard sci-fi out of the mega-success equation.
Again, hard sci-fi remains the hardest sexist glass sci-fi ceiling to break.
In my opinion and experience, this science = male is just the way the world is still largely operating. The numbers show this in many areas, both real and fictional. I wish it wasn’t that way, but I wish for lots of things that haven’t come true and probably never will.
*See my review of Asimov's Foundation and my review of a book about Leigh Brackett's hidden-by-Hollywood screenplay of The Empire Strikes Back.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
