10 Great Fictional Female Hackers Power Grid by The Mary Sue Staff | 12:33 pm, November 29th, 2011 You are seeing this message because you have javascript disabled. To use our slideshows you need to enable javascript. There's no cross domain hackery or tracking voodoo, it's just some sweet jQuery animations. Please, think of the animations. In the meantime, enjoy the html version below. I guess. If that's your thing. Allow Us To Explain The secretly female computer whiz is such a common trope these days that I've almost come to expect it. Oooh, there's this super 1337 hacker who the whole male cast is in awe of, but they have no idea who they are and they need their help. Then, unexpectedly, the first time they meet, that hacker is totally a hot chick. Shocking! "I, uh, I thought you'd be..." stammers the main character. "Taller?" says the hacker chick, as the movie's creators sit smugly thinking they've pulled one over on a gender normative audience. "GET ON WITH IT," yells the audience, "THIS HAPPENS IN EVERY MOVIE." Then, about half the time, there is sexual tension. But as tired as the reveal is, we have to admit that the trope itself has given us some of our favorite characters in movies, TV, and literature; obviously nerdy, intelligent girls who kick ass and sometimes get boys. It also goes hand in hand with our favorite anachronistic tech-films, but we'll get to that. This grid is dedicated to the runners up, Mouse (from Reboot, not The Matrix), and Willow. Oracle Is it a coincidence that most of the hackers on our list were famous in the 90s? It seems like the era was hacker heaven but the true test of electronic expertise is when you can evolve with the technology and still pwn n00bs. And well, no one has done that better than Barbara Gordon. When Barbara transformed into the superhero persona Oracle, the former Batgirl didn’t have to reach very far. She already had an eidetic memory, a genius-level intellect and worked as the head of the Gotham Library. And we all know libraries are just the hipsters' internet. “Oracle” made her first appearance providing her skills to the government in the Suicide Squad #23 in 1989 and later went on to assist the superhero community at large with all their hacking needs. As head of the Birds of Prey (pre-reboot), Oracle not only managed her teammates remotely but allowed them access to locations that would have gotten them all arrested otherwise, kept herself arrested, and sometimes even subtly helped the cops out too. It hasn’t all been simply surfing the web though. At one point, Oracle was possessed by Brainiac, the Superman villain who is pure technology. For a short time she gained the ability to interact with computers psychically but after losing that ability, had a few more virtual reality-like experiences that allowed her a presence inside her favorite machines. During her time as Oracle, Barbara fought against the villain known as Calculator, a man who also has a penchant for breaking and entering online. His creation of the Ünternet (yes, that was a thing) was a huge web (pun intended) Oracle had to fight her way through and out of. She also got a pretty cool virtual avatar of Batgirl from Batman in order to fight virtual crime as part of Batman Incorporated. Needless to say, if you’re in the DCU and need tech help, Oracle will be there (Unless your'e in the DCnU... /sigh). And if you’re in the DCU and are searching for illegal meet-ups on Craigslist, expect to never order anything online ever again. Juanita Marquez Juanita Marquez is the ex-girlfriend of Hiroaki Protagonist (Hiro, for short), the main character of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Like Hiro, she was one of the core group of hackers and programmers that created the foundation of the Metaverse, the immersive virtual reality simulation that the Internet has evolved into by the near-future setting of Snow Crash itself. A linguist as well as a progammer, Juanita's specialty was in unspoken, nonverbal communication: the tiny tics of face and body that say so much more than our actual words or tone of voice. Her ultimate goal was to make interacting with a person in the Metaverse just as communicative as interacting in real life, when users might be jacking in using all kinds of different levels of input gathering hardware. While business and social interactions were booming on the Metaverse of the book, Juanita was never completely happy with her work, except in one respect. You see, she and Hiro were dating while she spent the majority of her time working hard on responsive facial algorithms and, naturally, her usual testing partner in troubleshooting sessions was Hiro. This makes the estranged lovers the only two people in the world who can have a real conversation in the Metaverse, at least according to Juanita. Juanita's focus on the roots of language and the differences between verbal and non-verbal communication not only lead her to the central conflict and mystery of Snow Crash before Hiro, but she also manages to find the answer to it as well. Hiro's skills allow him to stop the dissemination of the coma-causing Snow Crash mind-virus, but his role in curing its effects with the nam-shub of Enki are limited to the role of distributor: Juanita's the one who decodes and codes it in the first place. Yes, all Neal Stephenson books are like this. Ed Ed is the floppy, flexible, frenetic and, in her own way, unflappable teenage hacker who joins the bounty hunter crew of the Bebop in Shinichiro Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop. Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV (real name Françoise Appledehli) was known worldwide on earth as the mysterious hacker Radical Ed, and implicated in a high-profile act of vandalism. Namely, she was accused of hacking a number of defensive satellites in Earth orbit and using their onboard lasers to carve a number of Nazca style lines into the surface of the earth. As it turns out, the culprit wasn't Ed, it was the decrepit artificial intelligence of an old American spy satellite who directed the lasers, and it was willing to defend itself with those lasers against anyone who would like to shut it down. But, under Ed's direction, the crew of the Bebop manages to download the whole thing after getting close enough to make a wired connection with the satellite, only to find out that the authorities will only hand out bounties on living culprits. It's too late, though, Ed's already ensured that she's a full time member of the crew. And yes, Ed is a girl. A skinny, goofy, possibly crazy chit of a gender-ambiguous young lass; who eats horrible space monsters in her sleep and gives grandmaster chess players week long runs for their money. Erica Dansby I don't know how many of you out there remember Ghostwriter. It was an award winning and popular PBS show starring a group of interracial urban teens who solved mysteries (and dealt with issues of racism, ageism, environmental disasters, bullying, gang violence) and was otherwise generally awesome. The show was eventually cancelled, not due to a lack of popularity, but because PBS could no longer afford to produce it. Even if you remember Ghostwriter, you might not remember that Julia Stiles (of alt-girl anthem 10 Things I Hate About You) was in it. Twice. But for this grid we're mostly concerned with her introduction to the show, a story called Who Is Max Mouse? where a series of technological attacks by a hacker cause everything from false fire alarms in the characters' school, changed grades, messages about their principal's (false) death, and planted police evidence that a student has been committing credit card fraud. Stiles plays Erica Dansby, the most over-the-top-to-an-almost-frightening-extent hacker character we've ever seen. Well, we say over the top by on today's standards. We're already talking about a series of episodes that aired in 1993, and contain a scene where a computer science teacher makes a joke about putting a computer virus on a CD that I honestly didn't understand until I remembered that in 1993 nobody put CDs in computers. And yet, as ridiculous as Who Is Max Mouse is, Julia's character, Erica Dansby, endears us. Maybe it's the nose ring on a middleschooler. Maybe it's the 90's grunge chic. Maybe it's that she name-drops Neuromancer. Naaah, it's the ridiculous hacker lingo. "Jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace," "wake up and smell the cyberfunk," "a really grungy hacker mind," "techno-hip." If you don't mind me spoiling the end of the episode, Erica turns out to be a great big mouthy red-herring. She might be hip to the lingo and shout "hacker power!" when the school alarms go off for the fourth time in a day, but the real culprit turns out to be that mousy girl who no one pays attention to, who is trying to get a little attention. Yes: this Ghostwriter episode has two hacker girls for the price of one. Trinity In a world where you’re part of the system, how do you become a master hacker? Download the information into your brain of course! When The Matrix was released in 1999, I fell for Trinity hook, wireless and sinker. The mysterious woman who frequents goth clubs but could also kick ass with guns and without was undeniably formidable. Her history before the time of the film is mostly a mystery but it’s safe to say she had some skills previous to being awakened by Morpheus, otherwise he never would have found her, and Neo never would have been impressed by the mention of her handle. She did, however, crack the IRS database which I certainly couldn’t do. Trinity is also among those chosen to wake other people up from inside the Matrix and one of the best there is. Trinity is different from most of the other hackers on this list because while we see her interacting with people and computers inside the Matrix, in reality she’s plugged into a chair, using her mind to affect what’s going on around her there. The Matrix is a sophisticated computer program and therefor her ability to “hack,” once being unplugged from the Matrix, is what she must rely on to be able to fly a helicopter, drive a motorcycle or do some serious martial arts. And well, since I’m assuming the majority of you haven’t gotten past the films, I won’t even get into her role with the Biological Interface Program from The Matrix Online. Let’s just say it has to to with turning human DNA into machine code and leave it at that. The most important thing about Trinity though? During the three films and corresponding media, her real name is never discovered. Now that is the truest test of a hacker, not getting caught. Dulcinea Anwin Ahh, Dulcinea Anwin. Major spoilers for Tad Williams' Otherland will follow. Dulcinea Anwin is a criminal hacker by trade, very comfortable in the digital side of the business, but not so much on the running, jumping, executing prisoners side of things. But, in fact, this is how she is introduced: working her first wetwork job, when a hack had to be done inside the home of a well protected business man. She winds up being pretty disturbed by getting in over her head and having to kill a guy, despite her best efforts to be a cool headed outlaw, and in the midst of that emotional turmoil she makes one of the worst mistakes of her life, possibly one of the worst mistakes made by a character in the series. She decides to accept a job as the partner of Johnny Dread, who she thinks is just another Black Hat operative, running a long con infiltrating the most amazing virtual reality network she's ever had the opportunity to jack into. In reality, Johnny Dread is that... and a professional assassin, a horrific serial killer who preys exclusively on women, and a telekinetic who can wreck electronic systems with a twist of his thoughts. By the end of the four book series, you've pretty much forgotten that Dulcinea is an international terrorist and murderer because Williams has done an excellent job of making you "dread" the moment that Dread finally ceases to find her useful and flays her alive. In the end, she discovers his secret (Dread has a predilection for stealing security camera footage of his murders while he uses his secret power to wipe the drives of the evidence, so that he can later apply his own original symphonic scores to them), but just as she does, Dread realizes it. One knife in the back later, Dread leaves her for dead on the floor of their office, and with what appears to be her last breath, Dulcinea manages to dial the police and expose all of Dread's secret footage to them. This allows the Australian detectives that have been fruitlessly following the trail of the killer known only as John Wulgaru for months to apprehend him. We do get a hint, by the end of the series, that Dulcinea survives, albeit without the use of her legs. I could go on here for paragraphs about the broad swath of female characters in the enormous cast of Tad Williams' Otherland, but putting Otherland on Power Grids is already so self-indulgent (I've never met another person who has read the books) that I'll just sum up. The women in Otherland are deceptively awesome. I was on my second full read-through of the series before I realized that there wasn't a single one who wasn't a capable and rounded mother, sister, daughter, hacker, teacher, teen, or friend, and even Dulcinea, the one with the most character flaws, someone who you could rightfully hate for the way her actions affect the main characters, ultimately redeems herself. Otherland is a series that has some seriously evil and seriously good human beings in it, but also one with an understanding of all the grey areas in between. Kate Libby Oh, the glorious late 1990s! What a technology revolution we had, what with that sudden Internet Machine that showed up in our very own homes and allowed us to communicate with people without ever having to actually see or hear them! This was the environment in which filmmakers wondered out loud to themselves, "What could be more technologically profound than the 28.8K modem?" And then Hackers was born, along with the movie's resident lady-hacker, Kate Libby aka Acid Burn, played by an unknown, be-pixie-cutted actress named Angelina Jolie. Kate is the one with the sweetass laptop featuring the super-ultra-not-to-be-believed 28.8K modem. She might even triple the RAM -- to 24MB! But make no mistake -- despite the characters being completely unaware that they are in a period piece, they take Kate very, very seriously. Kate knows her stuff, and you'd be stupid to bet against her in a hacking duel. (There is one in this movie, by the way.) And as hot as everyone acknowledges she is -- because she is Angelina Jolie in real life and people who don't find her hot are just trying to be annoying and contrary -- the boys are not all after her. It's not why she's there. She's not only "one of the boys," she's better at this than they are, and she's a crucial part of outsmarting the Secret Service and uncovering a dastardly corporate scheme by an evil (well, kind of evil) rival hacker. (No, The Plague is pretty evil, what with the ecological threat he's making.) Okay, Dade is pretty good, too. And he's the one who consistently challenges Kate (making her promise a date if he wins the duel -- she makes him promise to wear a dress if she wins), but not thinking he's better. Just really wanting to see what she's made of. And she's made of edgy, edgy cyberpunk badness. Lisabeth Salander The heroine of Steig Larsson's Millennium trilogy is badass for sure. She's also a genius who almost nonchalantly hacks her way into other people's computers, finding clues and information before it's even solicited. Since she was a child, she had a knack for technology and a photographic memory. But what is her motivation? Her main targets -- not necessarily for hacking -- are men who hate women. In fact, that's the original translation from the first book, Män som hatar kvinnor -- Men Who Hate Women. (A hard sell in America, right?) Before effortlessly cultivating her technological expertise, Lisbeth Salander spent her childhood escaping abuse and violence. For example, she exacted revenge on a boy when she was in school after he attacked her, but only because she felt he deserved it. And then she burned her own father alive when he abused her mother, leaving her permanently brain damaged. That rendered Lisbeth "legally incompetent" and under the watch of a state guardian. Besides the beast who is in charge of her by the time we meet her in the first book (and movie), the doctors who treated her as a child were sexually attracted to her, and Lisbeth was seemingly always the subject of unwanted and forced advances. And that aforementioned beast was responsible for the most violent abuse -- and Lisbeth sure as hell got her revenge. Though it should be noted that her main hacking target in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Michael Blomkvist, is not the bad guy. Lisbeth hacks into his computer to help him solve a series of murders, then continues to provide assistance when he tracks her down. This is a man who cares about women, so she uses her illegal skills for good. But it's all these men who hate women who motivate Lisbeth to spend her hard-earned money (which she gets as a consultant for a security firm, natch) on the best technology she can get her hands on so she can make sure that anyone doing harm to another -- especially to women -- get exactly what they deserve. Lex "It's a Unix system...I know this!" And then she saved everyone from the bloodthirsty velociraptors! At least, for a little while. While the survivors running around that dinosaur-infested island had a lot more escaping ahead of them, Lex was instrumental in buying time by hacking into the park's mainframe and getting the door locks to close so the raptors couldn't open the doors. She's a proud, awesome hacker (who just happened to be a vegetarian), despite mocking by her little brother, Tim. (In the book, it was actually Tim who was the older sibling and a hacker.) You can laugh as much as you want about the now-outdated technology, or how the entire security system is run by a graphics-based program -- an adolescent girl basically figured out how to command the entire security system of Jurassic Park after it was disabled by a seasoned tech expert. (Or at least a guy who had been doing that for a while, until he was eaten by a dilophosaurus.) But something else to consider about Lex: her experience at Jurassic Park was pretty freaking awful. But do you think she continued to pursue her techie talents as an adult? (And also stayed a vegetarian?) Cindy What do you do when you attend a school filled with rich, blonde surfer dudes, cheerleaders and gang members? Become a genius hacker and scam them all out of money and self-respect with a Purity Test. Well, at least that’s what Mac did on Veronica Mars. It may have been shady but after Veronica caught wind of her scheme she gave her a pass considering she was a genius for coming up with it. Mac was only a guest-star for the first two seasons of the show but became a series regular in the third, thanks in part to her usefulness to Veronica. As she said in the episode “Silence of the Lamb,” “With your sleuth prowess and my programming skills, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we would rule the entire known universe.” But Mac did not come free. Or cheap. She was a high school student and like most high school students, she was pretty poor. Thankfully, Veronica was able to keep her in the newest technologies with what she was getting paid for her junior-sleuthing. And also, like most high school girls would do if they had her skills would do, she used technology to spy on her ex-boyfriend. Coincidental or not, Mac also prefers the computers that share her name and defends the machines to an ubuntu fan at one point during the show. Even though Veronica Mars ended far before its time, we like to think Mac is in that same possible future with Veronica, working for the FBI. But the top reason we think Mac is awesome? She loves Ron Weasley. Follow The Mary Sue Follow @TheMarySue Like us on Facebook filed under Batman (character), Cowboy Bebop, Ghostwriter, Hackers (movie), Jurassic Park, Oracle, Otherland, Snow Crash, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Matrix, Veronica Mars
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