Sleeps With Monsters: Where Are The Older Women?

So my latest Sleeps With Monsters column is up at Tor.com: Where Are The Older Women?

By “older,” I mean women whose concerns are those of motherhood, middle age, old age: women who believe in their own mortality, who wear the weight of their pasts as well as their responsibilities to the future, who have a place in the world: a place that may or may not be comfortable, or suitable, but worn in around the edges and theirs. By in science fiction and fantasy I mean acting as protagonists, or as mentors whose importance to the narrative is not sidelined or minimised by relentless focus on the youthful angst of less mature characters.

Unfortunately, some of the commenters appear to interpret “older” as “in their (maaaaybe late) thirties,” which was rather not what I was aiming for. It goes to show how very disappeared elder women are, in media and literature.