At issue, the dress code at Roger Bacon Academy in Leland, North Carolina. This is a charter school, meaning that it receives funds but is independently run. Republicans love charter schools, seeing them as ways to give parents more choice. Other people love them because they are often open to…

…no breeder would treat broodmares like that. Some of the abortion bans being put forward in red states allow abortion only in the case of a full blown medical emergency. You have to be actually dying. People are saying this is treating women like broodmares. I’d like to set the…

At one point a lot of us were waiting for our Hogwarts letter. Then J.K. Rowling turned out to be a transphobic asshole and some of us tore them up (My Ravenclaw pin is now hiding in a drawer). Naomi Novik was almost certainly waiting for hers, because she was…

A romance between a woman and a magic sword is something I should absolutely be there for (it’s a long story, but…) Unfortunately, I found Swordheart a little disconcerting. It also wasn’t quite as original as some of Kingfisher’s other work. I could predict much of the plot…it certainly wasn’t…

The headlines mostly say the same thing. We have lost the original Uhura (the character was recently recast and is now played by two wonderful actors — Zoe Saldana in the Kelvin Timeline movies and Celia Rose Gooding in Strange New Worlds). The focus is on that one role from…

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book free in the Hugo packet. Different authors give you different expectations. I know Mercedes Lackey is going to give me a light, straightforward read. I know C.J. Cherryh is going to delve deep, oh so deep, into anthropology and sociology and how…

In February, 1973, a new kids’ cartoon aired in the U.K. The cartoon was incredibly simple…a stop motion animation with a narrator who said everything (so, it wasn’t even full cast). The episodes were only five minutes long. The narrator was the late, great Bernard Cribbins. It was based on…

Science fiction has a long term ableism problem. I’m ashamed to say I haven’t always been the best at dealing with it myself. There tends to be an attitude that in “the future” there won’t be disabled people because, well, we’ll have fixed those issues. …