Just a quick recap of the first 10 which are not necessarily in order of merit, but more in order of them coming to mind…I don’t necessarily believe in a hierarchy as such!
1. Kara Thrace aka Starbuck of Battlestar Galactica
2.Perosteck Balveda of Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks
3. Sarah Connor of Terminator I & II and The Sarah Connor Chronicles (I like the fact that the television series was named after her, not her son!)
4. Offred of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
5. Ellen Ripley of the 4 Alien movies
6. Dorothea Macdonald aka Diamond Mask of Diamond Mask and Magnificat
7. Inara Serra of Firefly and Serenity
8. Nell of The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
9. Leela of Doctor Who
If you want to write your own entry, I will publish it with full authoring credits to you. Email me suggestions or entries to godardsletterboxes@gmail.com. Otherwise, I’ll happily think up my own 100, though it might take a little while to write them all down.
And so, to number 10:
Alldera The Holdfast Chronicles Suzy McKee Charnas
Alldera has a number of things in common with Offred, our number 4. Living in a society where society has nearly been destroyed by ecological catastrophe, women are slaves, chattels of the men. Alldera is one of these slaves, a Fem, who manages to escape with her unborn child and bring her up amongst a free group of women. She eventually gets the ultimate slave revenge when she leads the escaped women to conquer the male society. Successful she is faced with clear dilemmas about how to create a society which is better, particularly in the face of the brutal revenge which many women feel the need to take against the now conquered men. Alldera is no great beauty, which she sees as an advantage to avoid the attentions of men, but she is strong and determined. An image from the books which has always remained with me, particularly through my own pregnancies, was of her fleeing slavery, pregnant, yet managing to run and run until she can reach safety.
After a while she climbed to her feet, hung her half empty food bag over her shoulder, and began to follow the tracks up toward the western rim of the valley. The climb was hard on her wasted muscles, but she was glad to be moving and doing, even though she was perhaps pursuing her own death.
That was better than just waiting for it, like a slave.
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