Last night, Terri Windling explained some very interesting aspects of my current thinking and writing in epic fantasy. Not that she had the least notion of doing any such thing. She was giving the fourth annual Tolkien lecture on fantasy fiction at Pembroke College, Oxford. It was fascinating on many levels. It was being recorded and should that become available online, I’ll make sure to flag it up.

For now, I’ll offer you last year’s lecture in this series by Lev Grossman. Equally interesting while being distinctly different. It’s half an hour of your time, by the way, so grab a tea, coffee or other beverage of choice and settle in.

One of the many good things about Terri’s talk last night was the number of women writers she referenced and recommended. As you Bobs know, issues of visibility and diversity are a particular concern of mine.

This week Liz Williams wrote an uncompromisingly realistic piece on the nature of writing careers for Sarah Ash’s ‘Nobody Knew She Was There’ blog series; Schrodinger’s Writer Authors, at whatever stage in the game, should most definitely read this.

Something I’ve been thinking about this week is the role SF and fantasy may well have played in me raising two sons to be young men well aware of diversity and equality issues. My younger sister, now also the mother of two sons, is finding her children surrounded by toys, popular culture and history where the message that it’s men who are important and powerful is constantly reinforced. So this video she flagged up to me was of great interest to us both.

Through the Inspiring the Future initiative, young children were encouraged to draw a pictures of a surgeon, a firefighter and a fighter pilot. Then their class was visited by women working in those three roles. Watch it for the evidence of assumptions already inculcated in those children, and then at the little girls’ reactions…

Still, we are making progress. The BBC reported this week on The men who are taking a stand against ‘dude fests’. Specifically, in recent months increasing numbers of high-profile men have been speaking up against the all-male panel at conferences. Which is excellent. While also illustrative of gender issues itself, in that this is now newsworthy because men are speaking up, in a way that the many women’s voices saying just the same has not been…