• [Reactor] Five Formidable Female Characters From Classic SF

    From James Nicoll@21:1/5 to All on Wed Oct 23 19:57:15 2024
    Five Formidable Female Characters From Classic SF


    All authors are products of their time but results vary wildly.


    https://reactormag.com/five-formidable-female-characters-from-classic-sf/
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  • From Bobbie Sellers@21:1/5 to Lynn McGuire on Wed Oct 23 17:05:51 2024
    On 10/23/24 13:27, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    On 10/23/2024 2:57 PM, James Nicoll wrote:
      Five Formidable Female Characters From Classic SF


    All authors are products of their time but results vary wildly.


    https://reactormag.com/five-formidable-female-characters-from-classic-sf/

    I may have read "Federation" by H. Beam Piper.

    I would add "Candy Smith-Foster" in "Emergence" in 1984 by David Palmer
    to this list.
       https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-David-R-Palmer/dp/0553255193/

    I would also add "Friday" in "Friday" in 1984 by Robert Heinlein.

    And I would add "Hazel Meade" later "Hazel Stone" in "The Moon Is A
    Harsh Mistress" in 1966 and "The Rolling Stones" in 1952 by Robert Heinlein.  Also "Wyoming "Wyoh" Knott-Davis".

    Lynn


    Quoting from Wikepedia:
    Clarissa MacDougall. She is a beautiful, curvaceous, red-haired nurse,
    who eventually becomes the first human female to receive her own Lens.
    Their children, a boy and two pairs of fraternal twin sisters, grow up
    to be the five Children of the Lens. In their breeding, "almost every
    strain of weakness in humanity is finally removed". They are born
    already possessing the powers taught to second-stage Lensmen.

    Strangely enough at one point in my life I was a nurse but after
    IO was a nurse I was a redhead.

    bliss

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  • From Scott Dorsey@21:1/5 to Michael F. Stemper on Fri Oct 25 00:42:29 2024
    Michael F. Stemper <michael.stemper@gmail.com> wrote:

    Asimov; "The Ugly Little Boy"; 1958
    Edith Fellowes is not only formidable, she's possibly the most *real* person >that Asimov ever portrayed.

    This is true, BUT... isn't she really just Susan Calvin modified a bit?
    --scott
    --
    "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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  • From Scott Dorsey@21:1/5 to All on Fri Oct 25 00:41:42 2024
    On 10/23/24 13:27, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    I would also add "Friday" in "Friday" in 1984 by Robert Heinlein.

    And I would add "Hazel Meade" later "Hazel Stone" in "The Moon Is A
    Harsh Mistress" in 1966 and "The Rolling Stones" in 1952 by Robert
    Heinlein.  Also "Wyoming "Wyoh" Knott-Davis".

    The problem is that all of these characters are really the same person
    in different situations with different names. All of Heinlein's women
    are pretty much the same, whether they are old, young, human, alien, or computers.
    --scott
    --
    "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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  • From Chris Buckley@21:1/5 to Scott Dorsey on Fri Oct 25 14:30:23 2024
    On 2024-10-25, Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
    On 10/23/24 13:27, Lynn McGuire wrote:
    I would also add "Friday" in "Friday" in 1984 by Robert Heinlein.

    And I would add "Hazel Meade" later "Hazel Stone" in "The Moon Is A
    Harsh Mistress" in 1966 and "The Rolling Stones" in 1952 by Robert
    Heinlein.  Also "Wyoming "Wyoh" Knott-Davis".

    The problem is that all of these characters are really the same person
    in different situations with different names. All of Heinlein's women
    are pretty much the same, whether they are old, young, human, alien, or computers.

    He does tend to like competent women, doesn't he? How about Cynthia,
    in "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag"? I would call her
    different.

    Chris

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  • From Bobbie Sellers@21:1/5 to Michael F. Stemper on Mon Oct 28 17:12:45 2024
    On 10/28/24 14:19, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
    On 23/10/2024 19.05, Bobbie Sellers wrote:

    Quoting from Wikepedia:
    Clarissa MacDougall. She is a beautiful, curvaceous, red-haired nurse,
    who eventually becomes the first human female to receive her own Lens.
    Their children, a boy and two pairs of fraternal twin sisters, grow up
    to be the five Children of the Lens. In their breeding, "almost every
    strain of weakness in humanity is finally removed". They are born
    already possessing the powers taught to second-stage Lensmen.

    Smith may have been pro-Eugenics but his Arisian certainly
    were believers in that racist and disproven philosophy..


    Could you provide a specific page? I'd like to edit it to fix (at least)
    the way that Clarrissa's name was spelled in the books. I'm also skeptical
    of the idea that Kay/Kat and Cam/Con were fraternal rather than identical.

    I just entered E.E.Smith and Lenswoman in the search and
    took the answer. I think correctors of text on the Internet are
    ambitious but they need to look up using hopefully DuckDuckGo the
    not too invasive search engine the matter for themselves.

    It has been about 60 years since I read Smith's amazing
    tales of Super-Science and Arisian heroics. It was stunning until
    I saw how the output of a nuclear reactor softened Bus Bars larger
    than a human body so that they slumped on their supports. That at
    Idaho's USN reactor test site.

    bliss


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