Tootfinder

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

#biketooter #ontario #complain

i gave my son-in-law a battery daddy (fully populated), a scrub daddy set, and a gift certificate to fat daddy
#BatteryDaddy #ScrubDaddy #FatDaddy

"DrJHAmsterdam
‪@drjohamsterdam.bsky.social€
ICE/Border Patrol heeft opnieuw een vrouw in Minnesota neergeschoten.
De vrouw rende weg, maar werd in de rug neergeschoten.
Ditmaal met een niet-dodelijk wapen, maar het lijkt erop dat ze een deel van haar hand is kwijtgeraakt."
Bericht door @drjohamsterdam.bsky.social — Bluesky
#Minnesota #ice

🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBCRadio3:
#Breakfast
- Birdsong and Bach to banish those morning blues
Tom McKinney presents Radio 3's Breakfast show. To get in touch, email 3breakfast@bbc.co.uk
Relisten now 👇
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002nlqh

i think this attitude
— that all opposition is illegitimate and nothing we do can be questioned
— is probably pervasive in the
White House
and helps explain why they keep making terrible political choices
https://bsky.app/profile/jwmueller-pu.bsky.…

Jan-Werner Mueller (@jwmueller-pu.bsky.social)
Putin pioneered this. No opposition is legitimate. Regular, decent, “ordinary” people cannot possibly be against us because only we represent “the real people.” Tell-tale sign of authoritarianism.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Continent
Jembaa Groove:
🎵 Bassa Bassa
#JembaaGroove
https://jembaagroove.bandcamp.com/album/bassa-bassa
https://open.spotify.com/track/4SnMDKZEBTZs33cPj58PES

#Großbritannien hat 2025 einen neuen Rekord bei der #Stromerzeugung aus #ErneuerbarenEnergien erreicht. Wind-, Solar-, Wasser- und

Britischer Solarstrom steigt 2025 um 30 Prozent:BBC meldet Jahresrekord bei Strom aus Wind- und Solarenergie in Großbritannien
London - Großbritannien hat im Jahr 2025 so viel Strom aus erneuerbaren Energien erzeugt wie nie zuvor. Das berichtet die BBC unter Berufung auf eine eigene...

Mehr KI: HP streicht bis zu 6000 Jobs
Künstliche Intelligenz lässt amerikanische Tech-Unternehmen tausende Jobs abbauen. Jetzt setzt auch ein Computer-Vorreiter den Rotstift an.
https://www.heise.de/news/…

Zugebaute #Batteriespeicherkapazität pro Monat in #Deutschland mit Stand vom 22.12.2025.
378 Datensätze ohne #Batteriespeichertechnologie herausgefil…