The ordinary hero

My writing friend Charlie Cochrane was recently blogging about the ordinary hero.  I thought it was such an interesting idea that I'm thinking about ordinary heroes and  heroines myself is morning.

In the SF world, most of the books I admire have ordinary heroes/heroines. C J Cherryh's The Pride of Chanur has a tradeship captain totally upending interstellar politics when she picks up a fugitive character.  What I like about Pyanfar is that's he's often scared stiff, she knows defying the alien Juf might get her and all her species killed, but still she defies them.

In Elizabeth Moon's Vatta' war series, Kylara Vatta is a disgraced Spaceforce cadet forced to become a civilian ship captain.  Out of necessity, she creates a space defence force against dangerous pirates, and rises to command the Spaceforce that kicked her out.

In YA SF, ordinary heroes and heroines are commonplace.  In Kathy Reichs' viral series ordinary teenagers foil illegal  viral experimentation, stop bombers, save the research institute that is their home.

In Teri Terry's Slated books the heroine is a girl who thinks she is ordinary who has been made extraordinary by government forces.  In Sarah Crossan's Breathe it is teenagers who uncover the secrets of their world and change things.

I especially like these YA heroes and heroines because they aren't traditionally powerful.  They're young people thrust into the midst of often intolerable situations who know they must act.

In my own books, my own ordinary heroines include Jian Kabana, the main character in Snowbird, who uncovers illegal terraforming and corruption on a large scale.  In Panthera : Death Spiral and Panthera : Death Song it is up to wildlife conservationist Ren Hunter to save the natural world from major abuse.  In my novel Jade, the sentient planet is defended from exploitation by Kaath, a civilian survey crew member.  All of these characters are ordinary people thrust out of their everyday lives by extraordinary circumstances.

Ordinary characters are people I can connect with.  There's an element of "there but for the grace of God go I" about them.  And I often winder if I would have their strength of character and their sheer determination to see things through if I was thrust into a similar situation.