More Must Read Athena

No surprise, the very best piece written on the occasion of the death of Sally Ride is Athena Andreadis' Those Who Never Got To Fly, which draws indispensable attention to the sexism and heterosexism that freighted Ride's marvelous efforts and achievements, in the larger context of the ongoing sexism and heterosexism of NASA culture (she tells again the still neglected still crucial story of the superior cohort of women trained and then discarded as astronauts), in the larger context of the ongoing sexism and heterosexism of science-fiction and pop-science cultures (Arthur C. Clarke is given his due, and more so still in the comments section, and the ugly transhumanoidal love of sexist evopsycho pseudo-science on the road to the dumbass wetdream of sexbot singularity fulfilment is very edifyingly and necessarily lampooned).