Iâd like to nominate Samantha Carter in Stargate, as well as Lieutenant Susan Ivanova and Ambassador Delenn in Babylon 5, to be added to that list - it always saddens me to know those shows continute to remain so largely underappreciated.
That said, Iâm curious to hear who other readers and commenters would like to see added! Let us know which female sci-fi characters youâve been inspired by!
Thereâs an odd comment in the article that the author âfeels sorryâ for someone who hasnât read Octavia Butler. Iâm not sorry for them at all â Iâm jealous! Because they still get to read it for the first time.
What about Miss Austenâs contributions?
Edit:
The one who I am surprised was not mentioned is Sheri S. Tepper: (although, I doubt that she has any major âmomentsâ in her career)
Sheri Stewart Tepper (born July 16, 1929) is an American writer of science fiction, horror and mystery novels. She is known for feminist science fiction, often with an ecofeminist slant.
I only got one paragraph into this article. How can the author possibly maintain credibility after summarily dismissing Robert Heinlein as writing almost exclusively about his own demographic?
He did no such thing. In fact, he was notably far ahead of his time in creating characters who were absolutely not from his demographic, even in his earlier juveniles.
Podkayne of Mars revolved around a teenage girl at a time when that was unthinkable in science fiction. While the hero in The Star Beast was an all-American boy, the ruler of the planet Earth is an African, Mr Kiku. Rod Walker, the main character in Tunnel in the Sky, is black.
He did even more in his Hugo award winning work. Juan âJohnnyâ Rico, the hero of Starship Troopers, is Filipino. Manuel Garcia OâKelly-Davis, the lead in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a melding of many ethnicities as the name suggests.
While everyone is at least partly a product of their time and Heinlein didnât even describe himself as tolerant, he was notable for trying to break down barriers. His most important characters consistently span barriers, of gender, race, age, sexuality and religion.
Iâd argue that he should be all over this article.
Dana Scully Babysits Fox Mulder in The X-Files
Heh heh heh. Itâs funny because itâs true.
The author also tries to pull the standard âLiterary books dealing with obvious science fictional topics arenât really science fiction but speculative fictionâ (in regard to Atwoodâs Handmaidenâs Tale) which is one of my pet peeves. Why do people feel that calling something science fiction is an insult?
Surely the first woman to win a Hugo for fiction and the first woman to win a Nebula (and also used to make the actual Nebula trophies) should get a mention. From Pern to Ballybran, her work has always featured strong, brave, competent women; indeed, her first published novel was a direct swipe at the teatment of women in âmodernâ sci-fi works.
Anne McCaffrey
So a âtop ten listâ type article for political correctness basically?
Anyway since it is mandatory to complain about oneâs favorite genre example being excluded from a list, I hereby formally object to Chris Moriartyâs Spin trilogy not being present in the article.
âZOMG PATRIARCHY!!!eleventy1111â or something like that I guess?
Yeah I suppose. If you have no sympathy for the struggles of women to be accepted on merit in literature or society in general, you could probably read it that way.
What a lovely straw man! Wherever did you get it?
Youâre welcome to expand on your comment and force me to reconsider mine. Iâm not sweating it just yet.
Lieutenant Commander when the character first appeared, Commander for most of the show, Captain when she left.
Hell yeah. Even with those first few episodes and the terrible lines they gave her at first. Amanda Tapping, the actress who played her, has also talked about something that Iâd say shows dedication as an actor. Carter got a lot of technobabble lines because sheâs an astrophysicist. Amanda Tapping would get those lines and actually do research so sheâd know the science behind them.
Because one time they read a story or watched a movie that was dumb and they didnât like the experience. That story was from the science fiction section, probably from the middle of a little subsection from the same series of books or movies that look like something they wouldnât like, either. So, because the massive city-sized dump truck full of entertainment theyâre firehosed with must be filtered, they add a filter, âscience-fiction stories are often simplistic tripe desperately hanging from the thread of a single improbable premise.â That filter isnât necessarily wrong, theyâve inadvertently discovered the filter that can be applied to all genres, including the genre of âliteratureâ.
My initial comment was on the article itself rather than whether or not I have an opinion on âthe struggles of women to be accepted on merit in literature ore society in generalâ. You might have noted that I also commented on the omission of an award winning hard SF/cyberpunk trilogy by a woman with a female lead character as well but instead you chose to cherry pick and setup a straw man reply. It was in fact a straw man since you didnt actually address my full comment but rather chose to make an assumption on my position rather than asking for clarification.
As to why I dismissed the article as a top ten list, there was little actual content besides listing authors/characters and based on the writerâs omissions (tip of hat to @dawtrina) and the seemingly forced usage of the politically correct term âcisgenderâ, Finally, there was nothing in the article to justify the headline claim of most feminist moments in sci-fi history at all. The article was in fact underwhelming.
I was following along until StarbuckâŚ
No, nope, that character was one of the many reasons I stopped watching. And it has little to do with Starbuck just being female. As pointed out you can have serious badass potential in either genderâŚbut this version of Starbuck was just too much a girl. I donât say that in some sexist way, I honestly like Katee Sackhoff in a lot of other roles, but Iâm not even sure what the producers were going for here. Because you canât just say, alright the male Starbuck was all alpha male, testosterone all the time, so lets make that into some type of female Starbuck. Thatâs only vaguely what happenedâŚinstead you ended up with a somewhat emotionally unstable Starbuck who swings wildly from arrogant badass to pity party for one. Which for me makes little sense, perhaps with enough back story I could get there, but from the get go sheâs all over the map. And I donât see it having a lot to do with exploring the character or something, if anything Iâd pick Aeryn Sun to be the basis of Starbuck. In 4 seasons she goes from military commando to badass renegade who develops a heart.
Speaking of which, I believe Lois McMaster Bujold has five Hugo awards. (Four for novels and one for a novella) and three Nebulas. Connie Willis: eleven and seven, respectively.
Why do people feel that calling something science fiction is an insult?
I donât see where the author of the article insults science fiction or implies that it is lesser than speculative fiction. His example of The Handmaidâs Tale doesnât feature science or technology in a way thatâs necessary or central to the narrative. The only thing that makes it vaguely science-fiction-ish is that it happens in a post nuclear war US. In general, âspeculative fictionâ describes it more accurately than âscience fictionâ. Personally, Iâd be tempted to classify it as horror considering how harrowing and claustrophobic the premise is.
