Well, here it is at last—the final instalment of my “heroes” series (using “heroes” in the strictly non gender specific sense at this point. 😉 ) The series began on May 27 with “Six Great Heroines of SFF: Part One” and continued with the first instalment of  “Six Great Heroes” on July 8. But I always promised that I’d consider “Six Great Non-Human Heroes”, as well, and now the time has come …

But you know what—there are so many of them! I had a really hard job narrowing my list to just six. So in the end, I had to have a few additional criteria to help winnow the contenders out. One of the most important ones was that the non-human heroes couldn’t be “humanoid”—which ruled out characters like Athaclena from David Brin’s The Uplift War. But fear not, David Brin fans, there was already another Brin character in the mix …

Once again, as with the previous two instalments in this series, I have restricted the list to characters drawn from books, not film or tv (which I suspect would have blown my longlist completely out of the water!) So onward—here are the first three of my “Six Great Non-Human Heroes of SFF”

C is for Creideiki from David Brin’s Startide Rising.

Creideiki is the dolphin captain of the Terran spaceship Streaker, in a future where humans are constantly skirmishing to maintain their independence in a far-from-friendly alien universe—and where dolphins and chimpanzees have been “uplifted” to sentience.

The crew of the Streaker is predominantly dolphin, with one chimpanzee and a handful of humans amongst its complement. Creideiki is an experienced spacer, but Streaker is the first expedition captained and predominantly crewed by dolphins. When the story opens they are fleeing for their lives, having made a discovery of galactic significance.

I liked Creideiki from the beginning because he is what the jager-monsters in Girl Genius would describe as a “schmott guy.”  At the point the story opens, he has managed, despite almost overwhelming odds, to outsmart the pursuing alien fleets and keep his ship and crew free. So Creideiki is a leader who performs under pressure, but he is also a thinker and a philosopher, pursuing keneenk, a hybrid style of reasoning that combines human logic and cetacean philosophy.

Yet as the story starts, Creideiki faces not only danger from without, but mutiny from within his crew as some of the uplifted dolphins revert to animalism under the psychological stress of their plight. The mutiny results in an attack on Creideiki and brain injury that seems irrecoverable.

One of the risks of having lead animal and alien characters is that they are essentially anthropomorphic, human in all but outward form. Yet the aspect of Creideiki I liked most is that the way in which he forces himself to recover from his injury draws exclusively on his dolphin heritage—in contrast to the reversion to animalism of some of his crew.  So he is a brave, smart, and resilient character, but also interesting and credible as a non-human protagonist.

Besides, as several people pointed out when I talked about writing this post: Creideiki is cool, end of story.

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H is for The House in Scott Westerfeld’s The Risen Empire duology

Scott Westerfeld is probably better known for his YA writing, but I very much enjoyed his recent Risen Empire space opera (published as two books under the one title here, but as the Succession series in the US, I believe.) And The House was probably my favourite character in both books (which are really one story told in two parts.)  In a space empire of nanotechnology and AIs, this particularly house, built as a holiday retreat for a senator, is accidentally seeded with more artifical intelligence than such constructs are supposed to have. Throughout the book it quietly builds–and then enhances–itself and in the final part of the story has a vital, and for many people within the empire, startling part to play …

To say any more would be a spoiler, but I loved the House’s quiet self-sufficiency and also its humour—not to mention its willingness to ‘come to the party’ when the chips are down.  Definitely a favourite non-human character in my SFF pantheon.

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I is for Iorek Byrnison in Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (UK)/The Golden Compass (US)

Sometimes a book comes along that just seizes your imagination and for me, Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights/The Golden Compass was one of those books. I just loved it—and there was no character in it that I loved more than Iorek Byrnison, the panzer-bjorn, i.e. an armour-wearing polar bear. Sentient, armour-wearing polar bear, I hasten to add. Although at first I wasn’t entirely sure of the sentience: surly but perhaps limited, was what I initially thought when Iorek entered the story—but the character definitely grew.

And that’s the point. When the reader first meets Iorek he is on the skids and in a very bearish way.  But through his interaction with Lyra Belacqua and other key characters in the story, such as the aeronaut, Lee Scoresby, Iorek recovers both his armour—vital to the psyche of a panzer-bjorn–and his sense of self.  He remains savage—the panzer-bjorn are mercenaries, after all—but loyal in his friednship to Lyra, despite considerable personal risk to himself.

Iorek Byrnison is a great character, but he would have had to be on the list anyway. I mean, an intelligent, armour wearing bear—how cool is that?!

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I’ll be back on Friday with the second half of my “Six Great Non-Human Heroes of SFF.” But in the meantime, who are your favourite non-human characters? And why?

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And don’t forget, tomorrow is Fun With Thornspell day! There have already been some great character comments suggested here and here, but do keep them coming! The judges are keen to have a really great selection to work through. 😉