Fair representation has always been an important factor in any art form, and science fiction is no? exception. Here are some of the best sci-fi novels with a gripping female lead to keep the playing field level.

Female leads in science fiction books

There are many sci-??fi novels out there with strong female protagonists and antagonists, for that matter. They are not necessarily all written by women either. Here is a small selection of the vast library of science fiction with female leads.

A Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

This book and subsequent books have made huge waves in the world of modern science fiction. They have garnered a lot of attention and have been made into a smash hit TV series. Margaret Atwood successfully captures the paranoia and historical oppression of ?women around the world and has artfully brought it to life in? this female-led science fiction novel.

The book digs deep into a future dystopia, not far from o??ur current timeline, in which a patriarchal society ??has turned women into a breeding slave class. Women around New Gilead are used solely for producing children for the ruling class, losing all autonomy over their lives and bodies. The book looks at the way women fight back against the new society, taking back freedoms and fighting against the powers.

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

If you're looking for some young adult fiction with a strong female lead, then The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is a perfect place to start. She takes inspiration from numerous sources, such as Battle Royal, and repackages it for a much younger Western audience. The results are a futur??e of great class divide, rebellion, and, of course, the brutal fight for survival. The collection of books is all told from the perspective of an inspirational female lead who leads the people to revolution.

The Hunger Games is a tale told many times through sci-fi, but Suzanne Collins successfully brought the concept to the masses. A future with an oppressive ruling class sits atop a downtrodden population. The class divide has become far too great to ever merge. In the world of The Hunger Games, the poor, divided ??into districts, are used as entertainmen?t. However, Katniss's determination pulls the divided people together to rise up against oppression.

The Female Man - Joanna Russ

This wild science fiction book has four female leads, all living parallel lives in different universes. The book looks at the lives of four women, all living in very ??different worlds. As each woman comes across to visit the other's universe, they change their perceptions of their own. Every universe has opposing environments, governments, and situations that deeply affect each woman. This femini?st sci-fi novel by Joanna Russ is a must-read for anyone looking for a strong female lead in sci-fi.

The four women in The Female Man come from four separate universes. The first is akin to our own world of the 1970s. The second is from a world where the Great Depression never ended and the Second World War never happened. This results in a universe with no si?gnificant feminist movement. The third is a world where all men have died out, and women use technology to breed. The fourth is a world in which women and men are at war.

Kindred - Octavia E. Butler

This is a novel often used in studies and on many universities' reading lists. It is an in-depth and eye-opening look into black history in America. The time-traveling female protagonist jumps backward and forward through time, experiencing the life of an African woman over many different time periods. Her perspective, due ?to being a modern woman of the time, is changed and challenged as she witnesses life throughout American history.

Through the medium of time travel, this book explores how a??ttitudes have changed over time. Dana, the female lead, has the attitude of a modern woman if faced with the atrociti?es of the past. The book delves into many key issues, such as race, gender, and power.

Doomsday Book - Connie Willis

Time travel is always a great setting for any science fiction book. In this one, our female lead returns to the past using typical sci-fi technology. The book itself is almost a historical novel as Kivrin travels back to medieval times, exploring life as it was then. However, this is further than people have ever traveled before, and there are risks associated with it. Thr??ough a narrative that jumps forward and backward through time, this sci-fi book tells the tale of the future and the past.

Kivrin is able to travel back to the 14th century. However, things go a little awry as both the person who sent her back falls ill and Kivrin arrives during the Black Plague. While her contact back in the present time struggles with an influenza epidemic, Kivrin has to deal with one back in time. She is vaccinated against it, but due to the circumstances, she misses her opportunity to return to the present time. Doomsday Book follows our female sci-fi lead as s??he tries to make her way back to her timeline?.

A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle

A science fantasy coming-of-age film split over many universes is always going to be a recipe for a great sci-fi novel. A Wrinkle in Time is a fantastic trip through L'Engle's wonderful sci-fi imagination as the three characters endeavor to save the female lead's father. The narrative gives plenty of space for exploring the characters' development into adulthood and the challenges they face along the way. The book has been adapted for the screen twice. However, both times have hardly managed to make much of themselves. Just another one to add to the list of terrible sci-fi film adaptations.

The three characters use the Tesseract to embark on a journey through space and time. With the guiding?? hand of two mysterious beings, they witness the world of good and evil. As they make their way to different worlds and universes, they have to help in the war between light and dark. They are on a quest to find Meg Murray's father, but there is much more to discover.

Parable of The Sower - Octavia E. Butler

Sci-fi often loves to strip humans of their emotions. A common trope of modern science fiction is to have humans reduced to almost machine-like coldness. However, the female lead in this sci-fi book suffers from the complete opposite. In Parable of The Sower, we have a character who has hyperempathy, a condition that makes her incredibly receptive ??to the em??otions of those around her.

The world has begun to fall to climate change, and social inequality is at an all-time high. Humans are becoming victims of their own tribal instincts, and disorder is growing across the world. Lauren Olamina, our female protagonist, lives in a community with her family. However, when they are killed and her community sacked by the raiders, she begins to make her journey north, looking for work. During her journey, she begins to develop a religion based on the ??idea of traveling to new planets, to begin again.

A Long Way to A Small?? Angry Planet - Becky Chambers

This sci-fi book is the debut of Chambers and the first in a wonderful series of novels. Although it focuses on many of the members of the ship's crew, the central character is Rosemary Harper, a female clerk. Chambers takes the typically vast world of sci-fi and condenses it down to the size of a single ship. In this book, we get to enjoy the ins and outs of on-board life. A Long Way to A Small Angry Planet is a beautifu?l observation of human nature as the?? crew members interact with one another and build beautiful relationships.

Sci-fi doesn't need to be galaxy-spanning and generational in its s??torytelling. Sometimes, it can exist in a tiny microcosm and still use all the elements of the genre. This book is a wonderful one to pick up if you're looking for something full of love and deep and fascinating characters but still want something a little futuristic. The rest of the books in this trilogy are equally fascinating in their exploration of the human and not-so-human psyche.

Grass - Sheri S. Tepper

A plague has started to sweep across the populated galaxy, killing 100% of the people who catch it. However, the theocracy that rules denies that it is real, falling back on its typical willful ignorance. However, there is a world out there that appears completely resistant to the plague, and it is here that we meet our female sci-f?i protagonist. Marjorie Westriding Yrarier must travel to the planet to uncover the secrets of the planet's immunity.

However, in her quest, she has a number of revelations about the world she was raised in. ??Over the course of the book, she starts to rebel against the patriarchy she was a part of. As Marjorie Westriding Yrarier becomes acquainted with the planet, she finds out a lot about herself an?d starts to become a woman of her own volition. The book is a fascinating exploration of world-building, political and societal criticism and equestrian sports.

A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine

The Mayan culture is already steeped in fascinating history and mystery. In this book by Martine, tradition?al Mayan culture is translated into a fascinating sci-fi world with a brilliant female lead. Using a crime fiction-style narrative, the Mayan culture in the ??book is brilliantly expanded on, mixing ancient history with many of the trappings of science fiction. The crossover works incredibly well, blending the practices of the Mayans in an alien and futuristic setting.

Mahit Dzmare is an ambassador for her own planet. She carried with her the memories of the ambassador before her, but due to his murder, they are 15 years out of date. As she becomes embedded in the mysteries surrounding the previous ambassador's death, she becomes wrapped up in the potential overthrow of the current emperor. This book perfectly combines fantasy elements with science fiction, appealing to fans of both genres.

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A horrible night to have a curse

I wasn’t expecting a third Yomawari game. The first two games were two years apart, so I expected that they’d either remain at that pace or the series would simply end. Five years later, we have Yomawari: Lost in the Dark, and there hasn’t been a step missed. You almost wouldn’t believe this is five years removed from Yomawari: Midnight Shadows because the art and? graphics are almost identical, and it features the same incremental tweaks that you’d expect.

And that’s for better or worse.

Yomawari might be my favorite horror game series around, and it’s not because the gameplay is exciting. Holy crap, it definitely isn’t. However, as far as horror games go, Yomawari knows how to do storytelling in a way that takes advantage of the interactive medium and incorporates its aesthetic. Sure, they’re not necessarily fun to play, but it’s a small price to pay for their wonderful narratives.

Nonetheless, if there’s one thing I hoped for in going into Yomawari: Lost in the Dark, it was that it would get its gameplay on a level that matches the talent demonstrated everywhere ??else. Well, small steps, I suppose.

Yomawari: Lost in the Dark (PC [Reviewed], PS4, Switch)
Developer: Nippon Ichi Software
Publisher: NIS America
Released: October 25, 2022
MSRP: $39.99

Since I feel that narrative is the ultimate reason to play Yomawari: Lost in the Dark, I’m going to try really hard to? avoid spoilers. As you do in previous titles, you play as a young girl who has something bad happen to her in the opening moments of the game, then attempts to set things right. After the bad things happen, she’s told she is cursed, and the only way to undo the curse is to gather all her lost memories before 6a.m.

Whew! That was really difficult.

As was central to the previous two titles, this mostly involves wandering around the girl’s hometown in the dead of night armed with nothing more than a flashlight. The town is open and non-linear. You search for items that the girl strains to remember anything about, you’re then given a brief cutscene showing where she may have lost something. This lifts a fog wall somewhere in the world where you can now proceed into. Each area has its own problem and backstory, which you must solve or na?vigate in order to find the girl’s lost memory.

[embed]//youtu.be/QUv_KN1V88w[/embed]

Always trust the dogs

The approach to storytelling will be familiar to anyone who played through the first two titles. Much of what Yomawari: Lost in the Dark tells you is obfuscated in one way or another. There’s no e?xposition, so little pieces are fed to you, and they’re often vague or unreliable. By the end of the game, as with the previou?s titles, you’re generally given enough pieces to put together a picture, but it’s anything but clear.

To me, the titles tend to be coming-of-age stories told through a horror filter, which is perfect. It may be about responsibilities or the pain of letting go, but the most pessimistic views of the world are used to frame it. Yomawari: Lost in the Dark continues this sort of storytelling and does so with the same deftness. It really doesnâ€?™t miss a beat.

On the other hand, I found the subject matter focused on in Yomawari: Lost in the Dark to not be as satisfying as the previous two games. To put it strangely: it’s less dark. It’s no less of a horror game, but here, the protagonist is mainly just learning lessons of courage, whereas the previous girls had to make sacrifices. Another way to put it is that Midnight Shadows set the bar too high, and it’s maybe not surprising that Lost in the Dark falls a smidge short.

Your eyes... Give them to me

Then there’s the actual gameplay, which I’m a little mixed on. While the exploration and light puzzle-solving of the Yomawari games are retained here, the action bits have been refocused. It’s largely a game of avoidance, which the previous games also had, but this time, it’s almost entirely that. Each of the game’s memories comes with a little part at the end where you run from something, and you have to follow specific dance moves to get to the end. The dance steps aren’t necessarily going to be well communicated, and if you die, you often get sent to the beginning of whatever scene you were in. In Yomawari: Night Alone, I actually found myself rage-quitting one of these parts, and I never got to that point in Yomawari: Lost in the Dark, but if you’re looking for any ma??jor refinement, you’re not?? going to find it.

What you will find is a lot of the same shortcomings. Much of the world is actually empty, leaving only what’s illuminated by your flashlight and the sounds of the night. From an atmospheric perspective, this works fine. However, the monsters are all just annoyances. You have to avoid them, and while this was partially done with the horror-proven hiding method in previous games, in Yomawari: Lost in the Dark, you cover your eyes. This has the advantage of allowing you to remain mobile while hiding from enemies, it also means that you move about as slowly as a frozen glop? of meringue.

You will find something more important than me

Everything that made the first two Yomawari games special are here. The only problem is that nothing was added on top. This isn’t Yomawari: Plus One; it’s Yomawari: Another One. I wouldn’t even say it’s Yomawari: The Best One.

Still, if you enjoyed the first couple of titles, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by Yomawari: Lost in the Dark. It’s a solid continuation of the series, even if it doesn’t hit the heights of Midnight Shadows. The whole trilogy is a ??unique take on horror, tying in childhood and dumping a whole barrel of relatable sadness. The greatest success the series has had is not just presenting the misery to the player but making them be an active p?art of it. So, I hope you’re ready to be miserable.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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It goes well beyond swapping a model, too

Mods can keep a game alive and evolving long after it's launched, and a new mod for Deus Ex proves just that. The "Lay D Denton Project" is a new overhaul mod for Deus Ex that, si?mply put, lets you pick your protagonist's gender.

Mods that change one character into another are not uncommon, as evidenced by the many, many terrifying Lady Dimitrescu mods that cropped up around Resident Evil: Village. The Lay D Denton Project goes further, though. It restores a feature that Ion Storm had originally considered for Deus Ex, and goes to great lengths.

"While a model swap and a vocal plugin could create a cheap facsimile, we felt this would be woefully insufficient," reads the mod's description on ModDB. "Immersion is a core feature of the Deus Ex experience, and a half-implemented fema?le JC Denton would sabotage that. Either we do it right or we shouldn’t bother."

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=naDOv1W6-Cc

To start, all of JC Denton's dialogue was re-voiced by actress Karen Rohan. References to Denton also had to be adjus??ted and altered, with certain sounds and syllabic combinations being combined to, for example, turn "Mister" into "Miss."

Some other changes have involved changing or entirely replacing NPCs, for contexts the team thought didn't make sense in the context of a female JC Denton. In one case, the team added Russ, a new NPC replacing Mercedes and Tessa, who usually flirt with Denton outside a club. The switch wasn't warmly received by everyone though, and team member Chris Rohan told PC Gamer that th??????????????????????????e team is addin??g a flag in a future update to toggle that aspect.

The Lay D Denton Project as a whole looks supremely impressive, in both what it sets out to do and the scale of what it's already accomplished. The mod is currently available to check out on ModDB.

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