Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Female science fiction fans now outnumber men for the first time.

The digital television channel Sci Fi UK has seen a 10 per cent rise in the number of female viewers over the past eight years and 1.4 million women now tune in - 51 per cent of the audience. The channel, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, links the rise in "girl geeks" to the proliferation of heroines such as Buffy, Lara Croft and Xena.

Adam Roberts, a science-fiction author and a professor in English at Royal Holloway, London University, said fantasy television programmes and films were becoming more character-led. "Programmes are moving away from the emphasis on machines and zombies in the 1960s," he said. "More women are tuning in to see the relationships develop between wittily-written, complex central characters they can identify with. A film like The Matrix attracted female viewers partly because it was about complicated concepts of life and death. It also had Keanu Reeves running around in leather, which helped."

Ann McMeekin, a 29-year-old web accessibility officer from north London, said: "People have an impression of sci-fi fans being small men who sit in the dark watching Star Trek but it’s not like that now.

"There has been an increase in positive female role models, whereas in Star Trek, all the women were either aliens or wore short skirts. I have been watching sci-fi since I was two or three and the shows are better written and more mainstream." The new wave of shows has also encouraged scholarship. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, has inspired several books and essays, and an online journal, Slayage, dedicated to critical studies of the programme.