Science Fiction Stories for Teenage Girls? 161
Sooner Boomer asks: "Not having met 'Mrs. Boomer' yet, I'm buying Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews. Whether genetics or just good luck, almost all of the young 'uns are girls. I've been slowly introducing them to the classics of science fiction: Heinlein ('Podkayne of Mars', _'Starship Troopers', etc.), Asimov short stories, Ann McAffrey (the Dragonrider books), Alan Dean Foster (the Flynx books and others), Douglas Adams and Terry Prachett, some Neil Gaiman (Stardust, Good Omens), as well as the mandatory Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. This is just a partial list, but what would Slashdot consider to be good (or even essential) science fiction for teen and pre-teen girls?"
This is Slashdot - (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This is Slashdot - (Score:5, Funny)
Science Fiction Stories for Teenage Girls? (Score:2, Funny)
If it's your first time, you can't get pregnant.
Re:... for Teenage Girls? (Score:4, Funny)
Didn't your school have the Special Assemblies where the girls and boys were separated and watched the different films? Well, the girls watched The Abyss and the Boys watched Predator.
Re:Asimov, gender-archaic? (Score:3, Funny)
Foundation - various dudes in space.
Foundation and Empire - dude and his girlfriend unknowingly take the enemy of the foundation on a trip in space
Second Foundation - Young girl travels in space looking for the second foundation
Foundation's Edge - Two dudes try to find Earth. They pick up some chicks on the way.
Foundation and Earth - The dudes find Earth as well as a robot.
Prelude to Foundation - A dude meets a chick and a kid and has adventures on Trantor
Forward the Foundation - The last days of the dude and the old galactic empire.
I haven't read any ones after this, are there really more? and only the first three could hope to be called "classic" but if you look at the 7 books that were written by Asimov there were exactly 3 useful women characters: Arkady (the heroine of Second Foundation), the Gaian chick from Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth (who was a sidekick to the two male leads) and Dors who again was a sidekick to Hari, and was a robot to boot. Dors' whole thing was that she was fierce. 20,000 years in the future it is still notable, in a freakish way, that a woman is fierce?!
Maybe you really think that the female characters in the Foundation series were given appropriate roles and abilities. If so, contrast the roles and abilities of women in the Foundation series and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.