But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction — what, has that got to do with a room of one’s own?

- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

If there’s one thing I learnt from Virginia Woolf*, it’s not to accept any premise at face value when it comes to gender discussion. You may or may not accept it at the end, but…

At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial — and any question about sex is that — one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.

[ibid.]

So, delighted as I was to be asked to contribute something to a Pornokitsch interview about The Girls’ Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse, I couldn’t just let it lie and accept the question at face value:

Why are apocalypse and post-apocalypse settings drawing so much attention from female writers and artists at the moment?

It’s part my natural taciturn nature, and part what Virginia said.

Adele asked me for a paragraph, and I gave her eight. She was gracious enough to preserve them rather than asking me to cut them down. Anyone who’s talked to me about The Walking Dead (if you could get me to do it after my initial outburst of disappointed rage that nobody else seemed upset) will understand why I was bursting at the seams about this. I’m sort of proud of the result. Go read my bit, along with everybody else’s, here.

*Actually, there’s a very great deal to learn from A Room of One’s Own, not least the thing about the room and the money, and you should all go read it now - it’s available for free, online - but this was the point that was most relevant here.