Mainstream science fiction has been pretty terrible at populating its worlds with anyone other than straight white dudes, Devon Maloney writes at The Cut.Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and others wrote almost exclusively about their demographic. Onscreen science fiction, from Star Wars and Back to the Future to War of the Worlds and Blade Runner, is little different.But sci-fi history actually has featured ahead-of-its-time, female-identifying authors and creators who have challenged conventional notions of race, gender, and sexuality head-on for centuries. Here is a rundown of 25 of the most feminist moments in sci-fi history:
Starbuck Gets Gender-Swapped (2004): The original 1978 Battlestar Galactica series portrayed Lieutenant Starbuck as a womanizing, cigar-smoking rogue, but the 2004 reimagining of Starbuck as an incredibly flawed, adaptive, and brilliant woman made the character unforgettable.Read the article~~~~~
Women Who Conquered the Comics World
As both a comics creator and historian, Trina Robbins is particularly interested in the unknown history of female cartoonists, Lisa Hix writes for Collectors Weekly. Robbins has published a Fantagraphics book called Pretty in Ink: North American Women Cartoonists, 1896-2013.
The subject is particularly relevant right now, given that new comic-book-based movies are hitting the big screen every few months, yet not a single one has revolved around a female hero. But Marvel has taken bold steps by making a Pakistani American teen the new Ms. Marvel, in a comic-book series written by a woman, and turning Thor into a woman in its upcoming revamp of the series.
In the new “Ms. Marvel” series—created by two women, editor Sana Amanat and writer G. Willow Wilson, and one man, artist Adrian Alphona—the heroine is Kamala Khan, a Pakistani American teenager living in New Jersey. (Via Marvel.wikia.com)Read the article
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10 Great Books Based on Other Great Books
Literature is a never-ending, overlapping, sometimes circular conversation — between writers, between readers, between books themselves, Emily Temple writes in Flavorwire.
There are some novels that are better if you have a little bit of background going in — and sometimes that background is nothing more or less than another great novel.
Here are a few books you should pair the way you would a fine wine with an excellent cheese — each enhancing the other and making for a very satisfying evening.
Before reading: Madame Bovary, Gustave FlaubertYou should read: Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
Flaubert first read Don Quixote when he was 11 years old. He wrote a letter to a friend that he had decided to become a novelist: “I’ve already got some ideas for my first books. I’ll write about Cardenio, about Dorotea, and one about Ill-Advised Curiosity.” Of course, anyone who has read Cervantes knows just what little Gus is talking about. There are many parallels in the two books — one of the most interesting is Emma Bovary herself.“Emma embodies, in one person, the conflict between idealism and pragmatism that Cervantes divides between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.”
Read the article
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35 Things To Do With All Those Books
Many of these ideas are utterly bizarre, but I do like this staircase library.
buddingbibliophiles.comRead the article
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THIS ‘n THAT
12 Awesome Things at the Library, e.g.:
You can stream stuff for free. Using your library card, you can check out a service called Hoopla. Using Hoopla, you can stream movies and TV shows without spending a dime. It’s not as stable as Netflix or Hulu but if you can stand the bugs you can watch some pretty good stuff for free.
Read the article
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Quote of the Day
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” ~ Oscar Wilde
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Alma Alexander
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