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Of late — i.e., since the publication of Freedom’s Scion and Freedom’s Fury — I’ve been getting a lot of email questioning whether I endorse the actions of various of my characters. Really! My correspondents demand to know which of my fictional imaginings “represents me” — and to what extent I approve of his behavior. The question leaves me utterly baffled.
I know there are writers who “write themselves” into their narratives, in the guise of a prominent character. Some of them admit to it, while with others it’s unadmitted but obvious. Robert A. Heinlein and Philip Jose Farmer were well known for it. Isaac Asimov did it now and then; see his stories featuring the eccentric Dr. Wendell Urth. Gregory Markham, who appears in Gregory Benford’s Nebula Award winning novel Timescape, bears a considerable resemblance to Benford. But not all of us do that. At least, I don’t.
I can’t. My characters are all much larger than life, whereas if you’ll just open your dictionary’s entry to the entry for “boring,” you’ll find my name and picture.
Neither do I give my characters the opinions I hold. Well, most of the time, anyway. Now and then one will “slip in” due to the conflict at issue. But conflict requires an opposition of positions and opinions; therefore, if one character shares my view on something, his antagonist is guaranteed to maintain the opposite. More, the guy I agree with doesn’t always prevail.
How common is the practice of auctorial insertion into the fiction he writes? Do writers who prefer first-person narration do it more often than others? For that matter, what about writers who insert other writers into their fictions? Military SF writer Tom Kratman has told me that his colleague and friend John Ringo has put him (Kratman) into a couple of his (Ringo’s) books. Are there any other examples of this?
Whatever the case, a reader is best advised not to assume, at least without substantial corroboration, that a character in a particular book or story is intended to represent the author. Some of us might eventually meet some of our readers, and we’d rather not have to fear for our lives!