Re: First SF-Book

From: farah mendlesohn (fm7@YORK.AC.UK)
Date: Fri May 23 1997 - 09:50:19 PDT


On Wed, 21 May 1997 08:15:46 -0400 sue hagedorn wrote:

>
> Once I discovered Heinlein's juveniles, though, I was thoroughly
hooked.
> Yes, even though the "hero" was almost always male, they were
good stories
> of adventure and courage. As I read, I usually consciously just
changed the
> sexes around! Even today, DECADES later, in times of extreme
stress my
> "comfort" books are Citizen of the Galaxy or Tunnels in the Sky. I
don't
> know that today, though, I'd recommend starting a young girl out on
> them--there's so much available now with intelligent heroines!-

My problem with this is that of the many novels with girls as heroes I
have read, there are remarkably few where the girls are free from
gender in quite the same way that boys are allowed to be. To hark
back to an earlier off subect angle, this is why the girl stories from
the 30s were so good. The type of childhood they wrote about was
one in which girls were to be asexual. This doesn't seem to be
allowed anymore.

Farah



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