Cool, somebody remembered Space 1889! Actually, first a PnP RPG before it became a videogame hampered by the tech of its time, then on to become a radio series, and currently a tie-in book series. One of the main characters is a typical "American tough gal" (Annabelle Somerset) who is a cowgirl turned space explorer. Total Annie Oakley type-- not a suffragette but doesn't really have time for men who think she's likely to faint at the first sign of a Big Dangerous Alien. There were a lot of real women like that on the frontier (see also Nellie Bly-- like you said, a totally real and kick butt feminist of the time. She went around the world in LESS than 80 days!).Therumancer said:I'd kind of point fingers at things like the old "Space 1889" game, along with various "Wierd West" games like "Deadlands" given that around the time the victorian stuff was going on in Europe, we had a lot of the late end western stuff going on down here in the US.
I think Space 1889 and similar universes have the right idea: put it all on fiction versions of Mars and such. Modern sensibilities wince at some of the patronizing attitudes the colonials had towards natives, but nobody blinks when you call the bestial High Martians bestial. Because, after all, they are!