I’m still gearing up after my holiday hiatus, but I’ve got some great ideas in the works for the Danger Gal blog in 2009. In the meantime, I came across this article titled Ellen Ripley Paved the Way for Strong Female Leads via John Scalzi’s list of articles he’s written for AMC’s SciFi Scanner blog and it’s all kinds of goodness. Money quote:

. . . I’ve had cause to think about women’s characters in science fiction, and the single most important female character in the history of science fiction film: Ellen Ripley, of the Alien series. What makes her important? Because she’s a pivot point in the history of science fiction film, and how women inhabited the genre. In a nutshell — Before Ripley: Barbarella. After Ripley: Sarah Connor.

It was writing ZOE’S TALE that prompted Scalzi to contemplate the state of female characters in Science Fiction. That makes all the work I’ve done with this blog worth it, because highlighting great female characters in Science Fiction helps to the potential for more, new, great female characters. Yes, ZOE’S TALE is on my TBR list. I’m not going to make my 50-book goal this year since I took most of November off from reading to write until my fingers bled. So now I’m catching up. I’m just about finished reading Sandra MacDonald’s OUTBACK STARS (love it) and I have several books someone sent me to read/review (DeNardo, pay no attention to this post. . .) one of which is Scalzi’s AGENT TO THE STARS. Then I can read ZOE’S TALE.

One of the first characters I profiled for the Danger Gal Friday articles was Ellen Ripley.