Inspired by Mallory Orburg’s wonderful Male Novelist Jokes.
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: The buxom young barmaid winked at him as she leaned over the bartop, her full breasts brushing the wood in a none-too-subtle metaphor for touching his penis, which was where the encounter was heading. (He had, after all, rolled a natural twenty for charisma.)
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: [600 pages of hard SF blurbed as ‘a futurustic tour de force – a compelling, detailed glimpse into an unimaginable new world’; all the main characters are white men, twentieth century gender roles are still observed, and it fails the Bechdel test]
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Bare-breasted, the High Priestess of the Conveniently Promiscuous Goddess sashayed down the steps to greet the errant general, running an absent hand across her stiff, pale nipples, because why not. Watching her, his resolve – as did certain other, fleshier regions – hardened.
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: It wasn’t the war that broke him, Carter reflected, downing a sextuple shot of Alaxian moonshine and staring hard at the leather-clad thighs of the vixen sitting opposite. It was the realisation that killing was all he was good for.
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Gods, thought the grizzled warrior. I’m so damn old. I’m too old for this! Unless, he amended, watching the pert, round buttocks of the comely enchantress, we’re talking about sex, in which case, I’m young enough to chuck in my entire career as a heartless, violent mercenary for the first pretty woman who doesn’t tell me to go shag a kumquat.
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: ‘Get out,’ Onyx Nightsward told the tearful whore, his disdainful voice dripping with magely contempt. Oh, but she was so beautiful when she cried! If only she knew how much he truly loved her, there’d be no need to maintain this awful charade of despising the every fibre of her worthless, peasant-born being. How cruel is love! he thought, and Woe, my tormented angst!
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Rocky Brant ran his hands down the laser-guided phaseoblaster, thinking as he did so that the weapon looked like a giant metal cock. I am the straightest man in the galaxy, he told himself, a sturdy pillar of law-abiding justice. I hope my men are watching this. They could really learn something.
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: ‘Conquest is a metaphor,’ growled the handsome prince to the captured princess. ‘A sexy, imperialist metaphor.’
‘Go have sex with my country, then,’ said the valiant princess, her sapphire-jade eyes flashing with wilful langour in the passionate glare of the lamplight. ‘Fill my nation’s furrows with your manly seed!’
‘With pleasure,’ rasped the prince, and promptly went out to fuck a cornfield.
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: The robot was an emotionless shell, incapable of weak, human sentiments like love, grief and empathy, and fuelled instead by anger, a superiority complex, and the overriding conviction that it was always right. The scientist smiled at his perfect creation. ‘Rise!’ he shouted. ‘Rise, my devil’s advocate, and go forth! The internet needs your impartial wisdom!’
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: ‘I’m so alone,’ whispered the king’s assassin, choking back tears as he slit the throat of the woman sleeping next to him. He could have loved her, he knew, if only he wasn’t a sociopath obsessed with feudal obedience who also hated women. ‘I really need a hug.’
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: ‘Help me! Oh, gods, help me!’ squealed the helpless, wide-eyed blonde who only moments earlier had been demonstrating her wilful nature by running off into the forest without any tools, skills or forward planning in order to prove how smart she was. ‘I’m turning into a strong female character!’
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Sucking on his phallic-shaped space cigar, space detective Larry Neutron lay back in bed beside the space hooker and stared moodily up at the ceiling, as though he were alone in the room, which he might as well have been; the space hooker was a robot, and now that the sex was done, she’d gone into sleep mode and converted her sizeable breasts into lamps. Her nipples glowed like the red-hot tip of his space cigar, and with all the worlds-weariness of his ancient profession, he wondered if smoke would blow out her arse if he sucked on them, too. ‘Gotta solve this damn case and settle down,’ he told himself. ‘I’m getting too old for this shit.’
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: ‘I kneel to no man,’ said the leather-clad dominatrix, staring into the flinty eyes of the hero. ‘Why should I so much as bow to you?’
‘Because it’s my story,’ he thundered back, ‘and my manliness will be thrice enhanced by my conquest of the unconquerable. Also, my penis is lonely.’
‘Fair enough,’ she replied, and sexily relegated herself to second place.
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: What kind of frozen, hellish world was this? Steinberg was outraged. The locals wore so many layers, you could barely see their bodies, and every woman he propositioned turned out to be vilely ugly the second she turned him down. Frigid planets breed frigid women, Steinberg thought to himself, and hurried off to find a brothel.
Q: How many male SFF writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: [ten volume epic fantasy series praised for redefining the genre; all the villains have brown skin, and every female character is either raped, murdered or psychologically broken by the finale]
I’ve read all of these, in the course of my sometimes regrettable reading career.