Sci Fi Women Who Are Excellent Human Beings Regardless Of Whether They Are Excellent Women

Cafe Society
21

Adele Mundy in the RCN series[first book is With the Lightenings, available for free over here] is interesting. David Drake churns out military SF potboilers. Very formulaic, but a good popcorn read.

The society Adele is from is very roughly based on a future that is like the Aubrey-Maturin series Master and Commander potboilers set on the high seas using plots from earth history to base the stories on. Instead of sailing ships and their valiant crews off chasing pirates and righting wrongs by strength of arm, it is set in the future.

Adele is a female librarian who is inordinately talented at what she does, Daniel Leary is a talented and somewhat feckless junior Lieutenant on one of his first cruises, a diplomatic mission that goes wrong. Shit happens as it will, and Adele is instrumental in making everything turn out right. In the rest of the series, she is actually working for the equivalent of the CIA under cover as the lowly communications officer for Lt Leary as they go on missions that never seem to turn out to be what they start as.

They are sort of an acquired taste, but fun. As I said, potboilers, formulaic, but when I am sick and not up to reading anything that takes thought, a good popcorn read.

And I second Anything by Lois McMaster Bujold, especially her Wide Green World or Chalionverse series more than the Vorkosiverse - though Vorkosigan books have strong females, they focus on a hyperactive little guy running rampant through his adventures. She has a stand alone, The Spirit Ring that follows the adventures of a young woman as she foils a plot [of course] based on the life and times of Benvenuto Cellini and Agricolas De Res Metallica.

22

Did you mean Mallory? I second Captain Mallory in Downbelow Station and the Lois Bujold recommendations.

23

Do you think there is a valid masculine ideal, and a valid feminine ideal, such that every good human being fits one of those two ideals?

If not, then I’m baffled at your bafflement.

24

(Thanks for the suggestions so far, btw.)

25

No I don’t, so I don’t know what you mean by an “excellent woman” or “good specimen of woman” or whatever. It sounds like you’re talking about someone who is excellent at being a woman, whatever that means. If you’re just looking for excellent female characters whose “excellence” is not specifically related to their gender, that would make more sense.

26

Right, Signy Mallory, Mazian was not even a woman. Mallory showed extreme grace under pressure.

27

Count me as another one who is confused about why an excellent person who is a woman wouldn’t automatically by definition be an excellent woman and thus doesn’t understand what the loving hell the OP is asking for.

28

I checked the thread twice and didn’t see Ripley on it - I think she’s the archetypal answer, as she was originally written as a man, right?

29

I also don;t understand what you are asking. All I can think of if you want a female character that is written as a good person with “human values”, but who is written in a generic way so that them being female is irrelevant.

30

Perhaps she could investigate the work of female SF writers. Connie Willis is active now. Alice Bradley Sheldon (writing as James Tiptree Jr) had some interesting takes on gender issues. Do you want adult works in which female & male characters are a mixture of qualities? Or YA books with Female Role Models?

Has your wife ever read SF before? Do you always select her reading matter?

31

I’m really confused by the OP’s question as well. Is he talking about a concept similar to the Bechtel Test (i.e., a work which contains at least two women who have at least one conversation about something other than a man or men)?

32

I’ll illustrate why it’s irrelevant what I think an excellent woman is, or even whether I think there is such a thing:

Here are quotations from two hypothetical authors:

Author A and Author B both make the woman character’s excellence as a human being ride on her excellence as a woman. They also both have very different ideas about what makes for an excellent woman. So when I say I’m looking for authors not like A and B, I don’t need to clarify what I mean by an “excellent woman” because what I’m looking for is authors who don’t make their notions of “excellent woman” central to their notion of what an excellent human being can be if that human is a woman.

33

I think that I understand the question, and I recommend various works by James H. Schmitz, especially *The Demon Breed *and Telzey Amberdon; the latter is a collection of short stories published by Baen Books. *The Witches of Karres *is terrific, as well, but the main character is male and the main female character is kinda-sorta romantically attached to the male lead. In the other stories the main character’s gender is incidental or irrelevant to the story.

This is in contrast to, say, The Ballad of Lost C’Mell by Cordwainder Smith, where the gender of the title character is, if not central to the story, at least central to the character (whose job title is girly girl).

34

Color me confused also - good characters are good characters regardless of what their bits look like.

There are authors who can write believable characters, and there are authors who can’t. I do think that there are a decent amount of otherwise good-character-building male authors who let the idea of “omg its a girl, what do I do!” get between them and their creative process, so they write good male characters and not good female characters.

I also think there are authors who go beyond writing believable characters and manage to create really interesting imaginary people, and I don’t think that gender matters there either.

Some suggestions in SF and fantasy of authors who I think create very believable characters, regardless of gender.

David Webber, particularly in the Honor Harrington universe.

Orson Scott Card, particularly in the Ships of Earth series (a little more flawed as it gets towards the end, and a bit on the stereotypical side, but still interesting people)

Charles de Lint in anything he ever wrote, but particular interest in The Mystery of Grace and The Blue Girl

Patrick Rothfuss in his series (unfinished as of yet, high fantasy, ~1000 pages for each of the two extant) even though there are not yet any female ‘main characters’ all of the secondary characters (male and female) are developed beautifully

Jim Butcher in both the Dresden Files series and the Codex Alera. Wonderful men and women in both of those.

Elizabeth Moon in Vatta’s War (sci-fi) and Paksenarrion (fantasy)

Asimov in anything he ever wrote, but Susan Calvin of the Robots stories might be of particular interest.

35

The following argument form is invalid:

X is an excellent Y
X is a Z.
Therefore, X is an excellent Z.

For example:

John is an excellent painter.
John is a muslim.
Therefore, John is an excellent muslim.

Simlarly:

Jane is an excellent human being.
Jane is a woman.
Therefore, Jane is an excellent woman

“Excellent human being who is a woman” is a different concept from “excellent woman.”

36

Except that woman is a subset of human beings, unlike painters and Muslims.

Unless you can provide an example of what you DON’T want, I don’t see the point. I mean, can’t you just simplify it? Your wife doesn’t want sexist sci-fi? That’s what it sounds like to me. So just say that, because right now I’m questioning whether either of you understand English.

37

Eliabeth Moon writes excellent sci-fi with female protagonists. Check out the Heris Serano and Esme Suiza series, as well as the books mentioned by Lasciel in post 34.

Eric Flint writes characters, male and female, that are excellent without gender being an issue. Don’t get me wrong; sex exists in Flint’s stories. He’s just not hung up about it. His entire 1632 series has many strong (and some not-so-strong) female characters of a wide variety of ages. He has a particular fondness for what he sometimes calls “tough old biddies.”

38

Many in the thread are making perfectly relevant suggestions.

39

This is also an invalid argument form:

Z is a subset of Y
X is an excellent Y
X is a Z.
Therefore, X is an excellent Z.

For example each of the following four statements could be true simultaneously,

Every liar is a communicator
John is an excellent communicator.
John is a liar.
But John is not an excellent liar.

For another example, suppose I have an object which is both a hammer and a pair of scissors. It’s an excellent hammer, but a terrible pair of scissors. So:

Every pair of scissors is a tool
This object is an excellent tool
this object is a pair of scissors.
But this object is not an excellent pair of scissors.

Someone I respect once said that the clearer he is, the less people understand. I thought this was crazy talk at the time. But I’ve been seeing it confirmed all over the place lately. This is one such case.

40

Can you include fantasy?

Pterry has lots of interesting female characters (Angua, Susan, Sybil Vimes, Lady Margolotta, Tiffany Aching, Adorabelle Dearheart) who are decent human beings, without necessarily being stereotypically feminine, or making the “good girl” choice.

Neil Gaiman, in particular the Sandman graphic novels, has well-written female characters.

Audrey Niffennegger writes interesting female characters, although the characters in her second novel probably don’t count as “good” people.