Writing a fun character who is a woman in a science fiction story
One of the chief reasons I was compelled to write the Azure Cove Series, was to write my favorite character in it, Sarah Huber. It was important to me that the effective leader of the group be a woman. It was important to me that she would be a scientist, a branch of science, theoretical physics, that has been male dominated. It was important to me that she would be a strong character, but also that she would be a fun character.
Looking back on science fiction and fantasy storytelling, context is important. Writers putting women in their stories were largely bound by limits of the time they were writing in, but they did push against those limits. Frankenstein, the first science fiction novel was written by a woman, but all the active characters in it were men. Robert E. Howard had his swordswoman series of stories, but of course Conan is more famous. In Tolkien, the women were mostly love interests or mothers. George RR Martin has a number of strong women in Game of Thrones, but they’re not necessarily fun. Tyrion gets to be fun, Bronn gets to be fun. Kudos for tough women, and to be fair it’s a pretty dark setting, but the closest we get to fun for a woman is Arya, and even she is very serious. Joe Abercrombie, who is more recent, has a few women that I think are fun characters, especially Vigga in his most recent novel, The Devils. The tide may be turning finally, and points to Robert Jackson Bennett for making Ana a very fun character in his Ana and Din mystery series. Similar credit to the writers known as James M. Corey for Chrisjen Avasarala in The Expanse series.
In science fiction movies there was a clear transition from women being scientists to being damsels in distress to by the late 1960s getting the chance again to being scientists and action heroes. But even then they were often undone by the male-dominated writers rooms. Doctor Who is a good example. The companion character Liz was an excellent example of a strong woman and a scientist, but the writers seemed intimidated and uncertain of what to do with her, and her tenure on the show was short lived. Blake’s 7 kept making the effort to introduce strong women, but again the writers didn’t seem to know what to do, and any woman in the ship’s crew soon had more lines about clothes or safety than about fighting the enemy. Only Servalan, the show’s main villain, was consistently a strong woman character, as it seems that the writers were comfortable with a character being a strong woman so long as she was the villain.
Perhaps my definition of fun needs to be clearer. As things evolved there were women characters who were tougher and stronger and some of them got to have fun moments. Ellen Ripley got some good good lines while she was kicking ass. Michelle Yeoh in Supercop, or Michelle Yeoh in Wing Chun, or Michelle Yeoh alongside Maggie Chun and Anita Mui in the Heroic Trio movies were all badassed with occasional glimpses of fun. It’s as though the writers had accepted that women could be great fighters, they were even allowed a sense of humor, but they still had to be pretty serious and almost flawless in character. It didn’t hurt matters any that Michelle Yeoh was available to play so many parts.
Looking at my favorite characters, almost all of them are men. I don’t think it’s just that being a man I relate more easily to them, I think it has to do with the fun. The men can get away with things we’re just beginning to allow women characters to do. Jackson Lamb from Slow Horses is not someone that should be considered a role model, but he’s fun to read about or watch in the AppleTV series. Walter Bishop is a blast to watch on Fringe, but watching as he ingested hallucinogens and smoked weed I wondered, would a woman character be allowed to do this? Would producers credit audiences with being able to accept a woman being fun? This sort of fun?
Dana Scully on the X-Files was a great character. She’s brilliant in that story. She’s so brilliant that she actually inspired women in reality to become scientists. But I wouldn’t describe her as a fun character. Again context is important. In context this is to be expected. That character is ground breaking, but she had to be the serious one always at that time. I think this is also often true of reality. Men can fail upwards. Men can fuck up repeatedly and get more chances. Mulder gets to be the wacky dreamer, Scully is assigned to keep the dreamer tethered to reality.
It was with this all in mind that I wrote Sarah Huber to be a grumpy scientist who gets to take the hallucinogens and make snide comments and swear and be, hopefully, not merely a strong character, but a fun character to read.
The first and second books of the Azure Cove Series, The Azure Cove Assignment and The Many Worlds Interpretation of Azure Cove are available at Amazon. The third book is currently in progress.
