[Wildgoose]

Diversity problem? Nonsense! Just look how many succesful Speculative Fiction authors are female: Andrea Norton, Susan Cooper, Connie Willis, Ursula Le Guin, Julian May, Nancy Kress, Octavia Butler (black, as well as female) and dare I say it, J.K. Rowling - all off the top of my head.

Then there are well known award-winnning gay authors such as David Gerrold.

And I've just finished reading last year's Hugo Award winning novel "The Three Body Problem" written by Cixin Liu, a Chinese SF author.

If anything, SF is the field of fiction which has the least problems with "diversity" - its readers are open-minded almost by definition!

[bryanlarsen]

It's "Andre Norton", not "Andrea Norton". Her real name was Alice.

It'd be nice to think we'd advanced far enough that females wouldn't feel it was necessary to use male pseudonyms, but it's "JK Rowling" not "Joanne Rowling" to avoid scaring off the boys.

[nommm-nommm]

Yes, Joanne Rowling was asked by her publisher to publish Harry Potter under two initials because they thought boys might not want to read a book written by a woman. Not having a middle name she choose K as a nod to her paternal grandmother, Kathleen.

[dotsamuelswan]

It's certainly been getting better. I have no argument there.