And no, that’s not “the more things, the more relatives”, although there are times when I wonder, particularly when… oh, never mind. Chalk it down to another bad day at work and a few other frustrations and leave it at that.
Anyway, family things in everyday life often find their way into posts here – frustrating relatives, good ones, bad ones, supporting, pretty much the full spectrum of human shows up in the posts and the comments. So why, she asks in that oh-so-superior tone that says she already knows the answer, don’t you see the whole range in science fiction and fantasy?
Well… to some extent you do, just not usually in the main characters’ lives. They are often loners by choice or circumstance.
Why? There’s a number of reasons. One of them is that an unencumbered character can be taken places you’d have a hard time getting a married one into – although Sarah’s Athena Hera Sinistra would probably be there first, with several weapons. Yes, she’s one of the exceptions. Someone who’s happily married will usually think of their spouse’s welfare first (Thena is no exception to this), which often makes them reluctant to involve themselves in the kind of adventures that make science fiction and fantasy so much fun. It’s a little difficult to imagine married-with-small-child Commander Vimes getting himself into the same kinds of trouble he got into when he was just Captain Vimes and unlikely to attract anything female. It’s easier to write the character with few strong ties to family or friends because then all you need to focus on are the messes the character gets into.
Of course, when your character is the oldest of five quarrelsome siblings and learned responsibility way too early, the messes will be rather different – and probably more complicated because there’s likely to be an overdeveloped sense of duty and possibly a tendency to act as though everyone else around needs babysitting (which, even if true doesn’t usually make friends). Someone with a large, close extended family is going to respond to just about everything differently than someone who’s an only child of only children.
And yet, the default for our genre is the heroic loner, possibly with companions on some kind of quest, but without close family ties anywhere to be seen, and with any awkward apron strings discreetly tucked away out of sight. It’s not rare for the family of the lead character to appear for just long enough to be killed, thereby providing the plot of the story.
I’m not going chasing details (and I’ve written my share and some of loners, although being something of a loner myself I can claim that as a justification), but I do find it interesting that you don’t often see a hero with a demanding mother or a sibling who seems to always get things handed to them.
What kinds of family dynamics would you like to see more often in the books you read (or write)? I’m not making promises – writing family interactions that feel real is bloody difficult, and I don’t know that I could do anything complex – but I’d certainly be willing to try.
Mad Genius Club 
33 responses to “Everything is relative”
I’d add that the heroes (even if married) rarely have young children to care for.
Nora Roberts has said that her character, Eve Dallas, isn’t going to have a child soon as it means that she and Roarke couldn’t just travel elsewhere on a case. They’d have to consider their child’s well-being.
Paul,
Exactly – children force a change to how you live. You can’t just pick up and go.
You know that dream where you can’t find nor recognize your husband or babies? I have “aliens attack the earth” dreams… they aren’t scary at all until I get back to the massive underground bunker and can’t find my baby, can’t remember where I left my baby, and can’t remember what my baby looks like.
When we evacuated from Mt. Pinatubo I took a ball-point pen and wrote my social security number all over my three month old. On his arms and on his belly. I’m sure that a lot of people were thinking I was a crazy lady, but the only ones who actually said anything said, “Wow, what a good idea.”
Synova,
That IS a good idea – you’ve effectively made sure that if you’re separated from the child there’s an obvious way to reunite him with his family, and it’s one that can’t be easily removed. In the chaos of a major evacuation, that’s important. (Yes, I’m taking mental notes to do something like this sometime when it’s needed for a story).
Then there are the exceptions. Bujold’s SF is often _about_ family ties. Barrayar is a particularly good example of this.
David,
I’m fairly sure I mentioned an exception or two in the post. That’s kind of the point: when you can usually only think of a few exceptions, the generalization holds.
Oh, I saw that. I just wanted to mention the specific exception because I like Bujold’s work so much and some of it (Barrayar for instance) is so quintessentially _about_ family.
One of my all-time favorite books (as in, one I’ll re-read from time to time, which is rather rare for me) is “A Wrinkle in Time” (yes, it’s YA.)
It may just be that I first read it at precisely the right time in my life so that the main character resonated with me. Meg has siblings, a mother who is a reasearch scientist, and a father who had worked for the government on a project and gone missing, mysteriously, a year previously. The book is all about relationships — from the new one Meg is building with Calvin, whose own family life makes ‘disfunctional’ seem inadequate — to the relationships of stars, planets and galaxies. And, yes, it is SF, it is a *quest* SF, and now I want to go read it again.
Madeline L’Engle wrote many genres. Including straight romance. That meant that when she ventured into SF, the “noble loner” wasn’t what she used. Somewhat like Sarah, in that — romance teaches you relationships, if nothing else. Maybe it’s a really good training ground for other genres, just from that angle?
Great post, Kate!
Lin,
A Wrinkle in Time is an excellent book, and the relationships with the siblings are excellent. There aren’t too many who get that right, and she is definitely one of them.
While the loner character is free to do anything, that can also take away reasons to do things. As in Barrayar, Cordelia goes to rescues her child and ends up bring back the bad guy’s head in a shopping bag. It can also add timing issues. “Have to get home for the wedding” or birth or the Emperor’s birthday party where he’ll name his heir. Stuff like that.
I can see that having a character free to fall in love or lust is handy. And a female character either has no little kids or a good nanny. And parents are handy for rebelling against or running away from, but they also involve a web of dependencies that ensnare the would-be free roaming hero.
So that brings us to siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins. Relatives we can walk away from without the readers thinking the character’s morals are lacking.
In many ways, this is an example of real life being so complex and contrary to common sense that you can’t use it in fiction. If nothing else, it slows the pace to have to deal with “Stuff.”
Pam,
The free to deal with “stuff” matters a lot to a fast-paced plot. Also, it’s difficult to get enough of the complexity of family without the book turning into one of those horrendous door-stopper family saga things.
I really admire the – in my opinion – very few who get it right.
The opposite end of the spectrum is what could be called “Jessica Fletcher Syndrome” where each and every story (or so it seems) involves someone near and dear at risk, dead or wrongly accused.
I’d be interested to see a few more custodial single parents.
Have you read Dyce? Yeah, I know it’s technically mystery, but it’s set in Goldport and they do interact with Rafiel and go to the George. And Dyce is a single mom :)…
No I haven’t may have too, assuming I ever get time.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dipped+stripped+an+dead&x=14&y=25
Sarah, Mike,
Not only that, they’re fricking hilarious. Dyce has a… unique way of looking at things.
Can’t reply to Mike, so doing it this way.
Mike, do yourself a favor. Read the Dyce books. They’re *hysterical*. They’re well crafted. If you’ve read other of Sarah’s books (Shifters!) you get fun interactions with minor characters who are mcs in the others. Great fun. Highly recommended. 🙂
Yep. Every week some close friend or relative of Fletcher was brutally murdered. If it were up to me, I’d have that woman investigated. But nobody seemed to find that statistic strange. @_@
Just the fact that Jessica Fletcher is always in the neighborhood when a murder happens is “interesting”. [Wink]
Mike,
You know, if I was related to someone like that, I’d get the hell out of town, country, and if necessary planet. The risk of being someone’s next victim is way too high.
Sorta like being on the opposite side of the table as Miles Vorkosigan…
Mike,
I was thinking more “is involved with someone who managed to piss off Thena”.
Kevin Anderson gave me a rule “first, kill their entire family.” He apparently got this from Dean Koonz, his mentor, who said this was easier to make the plot move faster.
It might be, but, weirdly enough though I was — depending on how you squint — either the much younger of three or the much younger of two or a single child (one brother. Older female cousin pretty much brought up with us. 15 years younger than cousin. 9 1/2 years younger than brother who was so ridiculously precocious he entered highschool at ten. So, you see.) and by disposition a loner, I seem unable to write characters whose entire family is dead.
Yeah, Kate, Kit is a great motivator to get Athena not only where angels fear to tread, but in such a pissy mood that devils will flee. BUT then there’s Nat, in A Few Good Men, who is the oldest of seven of busy parents — meaning he ended up wiping noses, drying tears and making sure everyone ate by the time he was five or so. With the result that right now he’s trying to do the same for the (okay, admittedly green and inept) Good Man who has power of life and death over him. I mean, there are people you shouldn’t ask “Did you remember to tie your shoes?” Even if they need it.
And Kyrie who is a genuine orphan (well, abandoned baby) seems to feel responsible for half the diner. And Tom even manages to feel responsible for his crazy father. So…
Sarah,
Kill the family does get the plot moving, and gives a nice clear motive to start things off with. It rather limits the mayhem when you compare with the likes of Thena and Kit – a combination I don’t think anyone with anything resembling sanity would cross – and particularly Nat (and yes, I know exactly what you mean with Nat. I LIVED that).
You happen to be one of the exceptions and you write family with the verisimilitude of someone who knows.
I’m reminded of Douglas Adams. To paraphrase: Don’t kill the whole family in the first chapter, you might need a few of them later 🙂
Lin,
Indeed. Besides, very few people come without some kind of interesting family ties.
I guess the problem is having the sort of relatives that interfere with plot or pacing. Romance implies a lack of obstructions, such as a spouse. Clinging dependants–young children or demanding fragile parents/grandparents– only work in certain circumstances. I loved Dyce wigging out and seatbelting E and the cat in the car.
Right now I’m trying out a YA, with two teenagers. Working parents can provide unsupervised time for getting into trouble. But even so, a lack of siblings to snitch on them is handy. It’s going to be challenging to find ways to get the kids to the right place at the right time once school starts. A field trip to visit City Hall may be necessary.
Pam,
Relatives can also do amazing things for motive, as well as being handy for driving your character into such a state of irrational frustration they do something phenomenally stupid (adequately foreshadowed of course) that moves your plot along. Usually by sideways lurches.
I’d like to see more spouses that have relationships like the one between Aral and Piotr. Which may sound exceedingly strange, but I’d like to see that “when the chips are down we do not wonder for even a *second* if this person is true” thing more often. I’m talking about in Barrayar when they seem to be about to have a permanent falling out and when the sh*t hits the fan Aral immediately trusts Cordelia to Piotr. So often in fiction (so often that I can’t explicitly name an exception except Cordelia refusing to be drawn into doubt and insecurity over Aral’s sexuality, though I know I’ve encountered it at least one other time and was shocked) a husband and wife are only interesting when they are unsure of the other. Just realized that Miles and Gregor in Vor Game also typify what I’m talking about.
Having children is difficult because they do tie you down… if you think about it, Miles was removed from Cordelia… he was gone… and that is what freed her up to do outrageous things.
But I’d like to see more faith and more faithfulness in fictitious spouses instead of the anxiety and fear of betrayal followed by reconciliation that is most common if a spouse relationship is important to the story at all.
I also like extended families, siblings and cousins. The Sackett family/clan that Louis L’Amour created is so very popular because they have that bond and loyalty within the family and also generational honor/debt obligations that are taken seriously. They never expect assistance (who can tell if anyone would hear of a need in time) and get to be simultaneously self-sufficient and ready to ride across three states to help a second cousin they’ve never met.
I think that a whole lot can be done with extended families without sacrificing mobility.
Synova,
Absolutely. I suspect the reason it isn’t done more often is that it’s more difficult to do right. Pratchett does it right: Magrat and Verence will go through hell for each other, it would never occur to Vimes to doubt Sybil (or her to doubt him, for that matter). Nanny Ogg and her children and grandchildren.
The “state of low-level war until fecal matter meets rotating blades” arrangement is actually not that uncommon in families. From what I’ve seen, it seems to be the norm rather than the exception – and it’s a shame you don’t see more of it in fiction, because it can be immensely entertaining.
I haven’t read L’Amour, but I can see that family dynamic being very popular because it’s so much what many of us wish we could do. I know I’d WANT to drop everything and head halfway around the world if any of my family in Australia needed it, but there are way too many other things that would make it impossible, not least of which is the job.
I deliberately gave my character a vat-grown son she had no idea existed *and* a “family” of a spaceship crew completely dependent on her saving them precisely because she was the kind of person who wanted to avoid those kind of entangling alliances. It was fun. She had to make a lot of hard choices because there was no option that allowed her to either not have adventures or leave the kids behind.
In other words Sabrina, you followed the “what’s the worst thing I can do to my character” rule. [Very Big Grin]
Interesting point Kate. Mind you I did get a pleased fan-letter about the fact that Meb’s step-brothers in DRAGON’S RING weren’t stereotype step-relations. And Family plays a big role in Heirs books. But it does get shunted aside.