This week's Sci-Fi Friday post comes from Ashley K Voris, who's awesome kids picture book about puppies came out last week. You should totally go check it out, and then scroll down to read about her favorite women in Sci-Fi.

Hello, everyone. Today's Sci-fi Friday will be hosted by me, your friendly neighborhood Ashley. I have been asked to write a post and so I have. Fair warning, I like to ramble, go off on tangents, and write in ADD. I will try to keep that to a minimum since this is not my blog.

My Top 5 Favorite Women in Science Fiction

Before we begin, I would like to point out that this list in MY opinion. There are plenty of kick ass women out there in space, but these are the ones that I like. Please feel free to add to the list in the comments. Also, possible spoilers.

1. Captain Janeway- Star Trek Voyager
I love Star Trek. I was introduced to it early since my grandmother was in love with Kirk. (Hey, who wasn't?). My favorite was TNG, and there were plenty of great women in the series that were really awesome, but Janeway was my favorite. She had the best resting bitch face. She was a real leader. She believed and encouraged her crew to do their best with what they had. She picked them up when they failed but did not put up with any crap. She wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty and do work on the ship. She was strong and she could lead.

2. Princess Leia- Star Wars
Okay, so this one is a gimme. But, honestly, though, total badass. She steals plans for the Death Star. Survives torture and her planet being destroyed right in front of her. Gives so much sass to the scruffy looking nerf herder. Yeah, she falls in love with him, but she does it on her terms. She is not afraid to fight for what she believes in and fight she does. She also, eventually, (according to canon that they will hopefully keep) becomes a Jedi. Princess Leia with a light saber? Yes, please.

3. Zoe Washburn- Firefly
How can I have a list like this and not include Zoe? She is a war veteran and second in command of Serenity. She is not one you want to make angry. She is not afraid to call out Mal when he needs it, like in “Serenity” when Mal shot the guy holding on to the vehicle thingie. She can take a bullet and still kick your butt. She was married, but again, it was on her terms. When Mal hired Wash, she couldn't stand him. “He just bugs me.” Even after losing her husband, she still did what she had to do to put the ship back together and protect her crew.

4. Donna Noble- Doctor Who
The thing I loved most about Donna was the lack of romantic attachment. We had to deal with the Rose/Ten love drama that, after a while, was really annoying, followed by the Martha trying to get Ten to fall in love with her while he was still mourning Rose. I mean, yeah, Martha finally realized that it wasn't going to happen and left, but still the constant, “Oh the Doctor doesn't love me boo hoo” made me was to reach through the TV and smack her. It seemed that way with the other companions as well. Sarah Jane, for instance, was rather upset when Ten showed up again and even told Rose to find her if she needed to one day because she understood the heartbreak that comes with falling in love with a Time Lord. Donna, on the other hand, just wanted to travel. She just wanted to see the universe and be a friend. She didn't want anything other than to be a friend. She also wasn't afraid to call the Doctor out, if needed. She had sass and charisma and such a big personality. I adored Donna. I was really upset the way her story arch ended, but that is what happens when you watch Doctor Who. You can't get attached.

5. Samantha Carter- SG1
I just recently discovered SG1 and it makes me both sad and happy. Happy that I discovered it, but sad that I missed out when the series was on TV. From the very first time she came on the screen and gave O'Neil such crap, I was hooked. It was wonderful She was able to hold her own in a cast full of men. She had a Ph.D. in astrophysics, very knowledgeable in quantum mechanics, a Gulf War veteran, and a leading expert on the Star Gate. And...AND....she was blonde and pretty, showing me that I can be pretty and smart at the same time. She had a zero tolerance for chauvinistic macho man crap but handled it with the grace and dignity of a lady or in some cases, with sass and a fist. I love Dr. Carter.


So there you have it. My list. I could go into much more detail about each person, but that would make this a ridiculously long post and turn into a tl/dr post. I would like to add a couple of Honorable Mentions to my list.

Ellen Ripley- the Alien franchise
Sarah Connor- Terminator
River Song- Doctor Who
River Tam- Firefly
Kira Nerys- Star Trek: DS9


What are some of your favorite strong female characters in sci-fi? Other genres?

So great big thanks to Ashley, I'm always pleased to not have to write a post. Come back next week, where I'll find some way to bend an entire week of posts around the book I'm launching in less than two weeks! 

Because people totes find bears from Darkest Peru just hanging out in train stations in London. 

In all seriousness, Paddington Bear is one of those characters that convinced me London was a strange, magical place, and firmly planted it on my bucket list as a place to go. And I want it to do that for my son, and for countless other kids. Hopefully the movie will help that, right?

Tiny side note, and critique? If you're buying Paddington for someone, the picture books are adorable and fun, but they aren't the same story. A tour of the Amazon Look Inside thing will show you a lot of that. I'm one of those strange people that feel like words matter, and I don't particularly like abridged books. If you think I'm wrong, tell me why down there in the comments, I'm interested to hear what you think.

I have a fever alright? And it was grocery shopping day, and then my husband wanted to go out for a date and...

Do you need more excuses, or does that cover it? Can I talk about Malefecent now?

I know technically it's not Sci-fi, and even if it were it wod be better suited to Wednesday... It's 10:28 on a Friday and I'm an I'll person. Take what you can get.

Which isn't going to be much. There's no adequate way for me to tell you about this movie without a seriously epic amount of spoilage. Just go see it, it's worth the ticket price. 

So...um...tie in. Right. 

Somewhere back a ways I talked about the "boo-hiss-man evil" trope in science fiction. Apparently I forgot it was a thing in Fantasy too. Or I think maybe I internalized it in fantasy. So much of that revolves around how precious the earth is I don't notice the correlations so much. Which makes me wonder if there's a more nuanced accounting in Sci-fi and I just havent found it yet. Any suggestions?

Okay, the sicky is going to bedfordshire now. Leave your comments/suggestions/fever dreams down in the thingy.

I gave in and watched Ender's Game the other day. And before someone points it out, yes, I know the 'bad guys' were closer to ants than moths, but if you've seen the movie you know what I'm talking about. 

You can't swing a cat on the internet without hitting an opinion, and I'm going to smack into a few of them talking about Mr Card. But for the moment we're talking about the movie, not his personal opinions on (insert subject of choice here).
Edit note, the first time I wrote that last sentence I said 'her' because apparently I like to randomly re-assign pronouns to famous people.

Now that I've said that I have to say something intelligent about the movie, don't I?


I've never read the book. I never even heard of it until I read his book on Character and Viewpoint and it was part of his author blurb. And before we get sidetracked on that whole 'nobody suggests science fiction books to girls' thing it's probably more to do with nobody ever suggested books to me at all as a kid. I read what I read. If there'd been dinosaurs in it, believe me I'd have found it. 

So I went into the movie with basically no information. I knew it was about kids fighting war, and that the author had foot-in-mouth disease according to the internet. And for a long time I debated trying to read the book first, because I like sci-fi movies and I have this weird issue with book/movie adaptations where whatever I see/read first is the state I attach to. With like two exceptions if I see the movie first I can't get through the book. There are a whole list of titles this has happened with that I'm sad about. Eragon, and LoTR. InkHeart.

I'm not sad this time. According to the person who's read the book they stayed close to it, and I wouldn't have made it through the beginning. Ender's brother is a psychopathic sh*t and the over-all military society it's set in would have shut me down before any potential problems with his treatment of female characters could have manifested. Maybe in the book we meet Ender's parents (we see his tearful mother for like half a second), or see if he had friends before they shipped him off to battle-school. Maybe his squad-mates had personalities. I know a lot of that get's lost in the five seconds you get in the scope of a movie.

But it wasn't bad. The cinematography and artistry were good, and it's a decently presented story-line. The female characters all center around Ender, but the entire universe centers around Ender so that's no sort of surprise. I did have a moment where I thought it would have been much better if his brother got to be the compassionate one, and his sister was the psychotic reject.

So, the ultimate question. If they made more movies in the Ender Universe, would I go see them in the theater? Probably not. But that's more to do with my general malaise about sequels than with anything they did wrong.

Now. Post note about Mr Card and his expressed views. I can't decide if I care or not. He seems to have retracted a few of them, in the last year. Maybe that was in preparation for the movie, maybe he had a change of heart. I don't have a knee-jerk 'evil' response to Mormonism, but I'm not forgiving either. I have a whopping giant button about hypocrisy that frequently gets an exercise in regard to the Church of Latter-day Saints from about every direction. And on good days when I'm calm and rational all of that means precisely zip. If he wrote books I liked to read I'd still read them (he may, when my to-read pile gets shorter Ender's Game might wind up on there). For better or worse, I always feel like the content should matter more than author context.


But there's something to be said for a persons attitude mattering, on the whole. I find his religious viewpoints and unpopular views much less damaging and off-putting than all those authors who try to nuke people for disagreeing with them. He expresses his views and clearly, frequently, I don't agree with them. That seems an extreme reason to decry everything he's ever done. Authors who plagiarize, who bully reviewers or anyone else who gives them a critique, who vastly over-react to being disagreed with I wholeheartedly support  boycotting. But we're so quick to claim the moral high-ground on the internet, and I think sometimes that happens at the detriment of remembering that equality means sometimes leaving space for people who don't agree with us. Screaming 'YOU'RE WRONG' never convinced anyone of anything.


I'll still suggest his book on Character and Viewpoint to people because it's one of the best writing books I've ever read. And maybe if I read the book I'd feel differently, like his religious viewpoint was more agitating than it was in the movie. 


Crap. I'm gonna have to read the book now. I love how I talk myself into these things.


ps. I was totally going to leave a teaser about Friday here, but I honestly don't remember what I wrote. Yep, it's been that kind of week so far.