I write science fiction and I was thinking the other day that the most memorable characters I’d created had come to life when I was a sophomore in college…over 20 years ago.
That thought alarmed me, until I started thinking about memorable characters in other SF I’ve read, even the masters…and it occurred to me that most SF writers only come up with a few really memorable characters in their writing careers.
Larry Niven had Louis Wu, Speaker to Animals and…?
Robert Heinlein had Lazarus Long.
Poul Anderson had Dominic Flandry and Nicholas Van Rijn.
David Weber has Honor Harrington.
Any others that come to your mind…not that you had to look up to remember, but that just stuck right there in the front of your brain, indelibly inked next to the name of the writer?
I suppose Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger counts
Orson Scott Card’s Ender Wiggin
Maybe some other Heinlein characters – Valentine Michael Smith; Podkayne; Mike (of TMIaHM)
Really, this is a toughie: literary SF isn’t really “about” iconic characters to nearly the same extent that either screen SF or other genres of literature are.
Much though this gets said, and much though Heinlein certainly re-used character molds, he did have at least 8 or 10 distinct characters.
And two mentions of Asimov already, with neither of them nominating Dr. Susan Calvin? Also from Asimov, less far-spanning but still distinctive, I’d mention Henry the Waiter from the Black Widower stories, Stephen Byerly from one of the robot stories, and Arkady Darell from the Foundation series.
L. Sprague de Camp – It’s too bad that he’s probably better known for his Conan the Barbarian rewrites and edits (for which purist fans have excoriated him), because de Camp was an excellent writer of SF and Fantasy on his own. His Harold Shea (the “Incompleat Enchanter” series) has gone off on its own life, with Christopher Stashieff writing new stories after de Camp’s death. I think his Martin Padway (hero of Lest Darkness Fall is iconic as the post-Mark Twain, tech-savvy time traveler, even though he only appeared in the one novel. His Reginald Rivers was only in his classic rebuttal to Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder”, de Camp’s own “A Gun for Dinosaur” for a long time, but near the end of his life de Camp wrote a whole series of stories about him, collected as Rivers of Time. It would be the ultimate irony if de Camp were remembered for his awful “Johnny Black” stories.
Robert Sheckley – His AAA Ace Interplanetary Decontamination series, starring Arnold and Gregor as the not-completely-incompetent space businessmen. Think of the ship Firefly if it were run by Gilligan and the Skipper (only they didn’t crash into deserted planets every week).
Stanley G. Weinbaum – Tweel, without a doubt. He’d be iconic if he only appeared in his “A Martian Odyssey”, but Weinbaum wrote a sequel, too. Tweel fit perfectlyu the John Campbell ideal of an “alien who thinks as well as a man, but not the same way as a man”, and Weinbaum more than adequately showed that in AMO. There are issues with the story, as many critics have written over the years, and after all this time it creaks a bit, but it’s still a great story and a great character.
To be “iconic,” doesn’t a character have to transcend his genre?
Even people who rarely or never read or watch mysteries recognize Sherlock Holmes or can quote lines from Sam Spade. That makes them icons. But even devoted P.D. James fans know that Adam Dalgliesh isn’t an icon. I love Nero Wolfe, but he isn’t an icon. Neither are Spenser, Fletch or Kay Scarpetta.
Thus, almost none of the characters RikWriter cites strike me as iconic in the same way. They aren’t well known to people who aren’t rabid sci-fi/fantasy fans. And I hate to say this, but even Paul Atreides and Ender Wiggin wouldn’t ring a bell with most people.
The only “iconic” literary sci-fi characters I can think of come from older books and stories a lot of people wouldn’t even regard as true science fiction -like Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, or H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man (Griffin).
The most iconic sci-fi characters aren’t literary- they’re movie characters like Flash Gordon and Han Solo.
I don’t see why. An “iconic” character has to be a recognizable, important one. Stanley Weinbaum’s “Tweel” wouldn’t be familiar to the General Public, hasn’t appeared in other media, and falls outside the radar of anyone not interested in Science Fiction. But within the SF community, I think that an awful lot of people would not hesitate to call him “iconic”.Likewise Isaac Asimov’s characters listed above., or Kimball Kinneson A lot of the others, a bit less likely. You’d have to be a Fan with a capital F or Of A Certain Age to list Professor Jameson or vEric John Stark as “iconic”, but they’re arguably in the same legendary class.
True. Mr Kiku, Ted and Cynthia Randall, Peewee and The Mother Thing, Lazarus Long, D.D. Harriman, Star: Emperess of 20 Galaxies, Rod Walker–all exactly the same character. :rolleyes:
I’d add Gully Foyle to the list as well as Genley Ai and Estraven (Left Hand Of Darkness)…I prefer Shevek (Dispossessed) but if I’m honest, he’s not nearly as iconic.
