Recurring Characters

Donovan and Powell on
Mercury.   image source

Back in 2010, I had a blog post called "Plotcharacter" in which I commented on the relative importance of plot and characters in science fiction stories. I'm rather amazed at the low frequency of recurring characters in science fiction stories. 

I suppose that in the era when almost all science fiction appeared in magazines, there was not much hope that readers would remember previously published stories that used the same character(s). Still, if you have invented an interesting character, why not recycle?

Arcot, Morey and Wade
original cover art by Ric Binkley

 Back in the 1970s, the first recurring characters that I came across in science fiction were Isaac Asimov's robot trouble-shooters Gregory Powell and Mike Donovan. Asimov is not known for his human characters, and besides Susan Calvin, the robots in I, Robot are more memorable than the human characters.

In his first published story "Marooned off Vesta", Asimov had Moore, Brandon and Shae struggling for survival. Then, 20 years later, Asimov published another story called "Anniversary" which brought back Moore, Brandon and Shae for a new adventure.

Back in the 1970s, I also read most of Asimov's "juvenile" planetary adventure stories about David Starr and John "Bigman" Jones exploring the Solar System.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by
Earle Bergey, Wojtek Siudmak and
also see this french cover.

Last October, I commented on "The Double Minds" by John W. Campbell, a story that features the recurring characters Penton and Blake. Campbell also published a series of Arcot, Morey and Wade stories. I suppose Asimov was strongly influenced by Campbell and mentored to make use of recurring characters.

I've also previously commented on all of Jack Vance's Magnus Ridolph stories. However, Vance is probably most well know for his character Kirth Gersen who was the protagonist in all five of Vance's Demon Prince novels. I wonder if Vance had more fun writing his stories about Gersen or those that followed the life of Glawen Clattuc.

I suspect that Asimov's most popular recurring character was probably Daneel, the positronic robot. Daneel became something of a guardian for the entire human species and was written by Asimov so as to be a humanoid robot who had an admirable human-like personality.

interior art by Leo Summers 

Lefty Baker.
I recently read the six "Lefty Baker" stories that were published by Roger Phillip Graham between 1947 and 1961. Readers are told that Lefty never graduated from high school and his I.Q. is 84 + 420i, making him the "greatest imaginary genius in the known universe". In "... But Who Knows Huer, or Huen?" (1961), readers are told that Lefty's 420i can be measured with a psychometer, a device which measures his ability to have hunches that turn out to be true.

Poor Lefty has a series of encounters with assorted crazed psychologists, inventors and aliens... all of which lead to comic adventures and it seems that Lefty is destined to remain institutionalized for the rest of his life, either because he is a magical magnet for weird events or because he is simply too imaginative.

James the robot with a loose nut. Interior art by Leo Summers

I've previously commented on the 1950 short story "Love My Robot" by Roger Graham. The third Lefty Blake story (1949) was called "The Insane Robot". Having previously gotten himself locked up in a mental institution through his "chance" run-ins with an inventor who devised a wish-granting machine and a scientist who made immortal rabbits, now Lefty meets a robot, a mechanical man, named James. The robot explains that he was invented by professor Hamfeather.

However, readers are told that since James believes in impossible things (such as dehydrated water), Hamfeather institutionalized the poor robot. That cover story begins to fall apart when Lefty has a visitor: Helen, the cute niece of professor Hamfeather. She asks Lefty to help James by being his friend, explaining that is just what the robot needs to get over his psychosis.

James tells Lefty to start taking notes on the staff of the mental institution and soon enough that is taken as a good sign of mental health and Lefty is released into the custody of professor Hamfeather.

Huat (left), Marge and Lefty (bottom).
interior art for "It's Like This..."

Sadly, I get the feeling that either 1) "The Insane Robot" was truncated by the editor or 2) Graham simply got tired of the story and quit writing. However, it may be that the correct interpretation of this story is that the whole series of events with James, Helen and professor Hamfeather was all the creation of Lefty's imagination. The next story in the Lefty Baker series, "It's like this..." begins with Lefty back in the mental institution as if none of the events in "The Insane Robot" ever happened.

Ancient Aliens. For "It's Like This...", Lefty meets an alien named Huat who explains that long ago humans were sent to colonize Earth, but something went wrong and the species degenerated. 

Lefty helps make
immortal rabbits.
interior art by Bob Keyes

However, Huat has discovered that Lefty and Marge (she's the cute switchboard operator at the mental institution) have the needed genes to get the human race back on track. Huat ends up using his advanced alien technology to quickly make millions of babies with the "corrected" genes, and Marge picks out one to raise as her own. Sadly, at the end of the story, poor Lefty is still locked up in the mental institution.

Graham clearly had a lot of fun crafting the Lefty Baker stories, but I suspect he was mostly having fun at the expense of over-used plot elements from the science fiction genre. I think Graham probably also wrote his female characters Helen and Marge so as to poke fun at the way human sexuality was often made invisible in the pulp magazines. When Lefty and Helen kiss, readers are told nothing. Later, readers are made aware that the kiss took place, but only in Lefty's memory of the event. When Huat must mix together Lefty's and Marge's genes, Lefty and Marge seem to black-out, so readers don't get even a dark-washed sex scene. Later, Marge is making plans to marry Lefty, but he gets thrown back into the mental institution and in the next story of the series it is again as if Lefty's latest girlfriend (Marge) never existed.

Next: a 30 year grind