Over the Hill: Five Not-So-Youthful SFF Protagonists

Protagonists in their late twenties or even older are still alive
in many senses of the word, and can still have adventures, of a sort.

Brought to you by a conversation I overheard between teens.

https://reactormag.com/over-the-hill-five-not-so-youthful-sff-protagonists/
--
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My patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/jamesdnicoll

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In article <v7b8k7$d1l$1@panix2.panix.com>,
jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:

Over the Hill: Five Not-So-Youthful SFF Protagonists

Protagonists in their late twenties or even older are still alive
in many senses of the word, and can still have adventures, of a sort.

Brought to you by a conversation I overheard between teens.

https://reactormag.com/over-the-hill-five-not-so-youthful-sff-protagonists/

I was going to add a few titles in the comments, but various people
named each one that I had thought of.

--
"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."
Imperial Auditor Miles Vorkosigan describes progress in _Komarr_. ‹-----------------------------------------------------
Robert Woodward robertaw@drizzle.com

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In article <v7c210$2jmsq$1@dont-email.me>,
William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:

Leaving out immortals or quasi/immortals:

In Julian May's Galactic Milieu, regeneration treatment seems to be
both reliable and commonplace, so humans only die of old age because
they've chosen not to undertake the treatment. (Still plenty of other
causes of death, like physical trauma.)

In Saunders' Commonweal there are evidently a number of species that
do not senesce, which is distinguished from immortality in some
unexplained technical sense. Other species have significantly different-from-human-norm lifespans that have the same statistical
structure as ordinary-model humans but with different expected length.

It is notable that so many sff civilizations seem to be stuck in the
mode of "people live for 75 +/- 10 Earth years". I suppose it's easy
enough to carry that assumption into your worldbuilding if that's not
something you expicitly set out to reconsider.

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can, wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

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James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

Over the Hill: Five Not-So-Youthful SFF Protagonists

Brought to you by a conversation I overheard between teens.

In numerous Chinese webnovels, the teenage protagonists are put off
by being hit on by young-looking multicentenarians.

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On 7/18/2024 2:37 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 7/18/2024 4:36 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:

On 7/18/2024 9:25 AM, James Nicoll wrote:

Over the Hill: Five Not-So-Youthful SFF Protagonists

Protagonists in their late twenties or even older are still alive
in many senses of the word, and can still have adventures, of a sort.

Brought to you by a conversation I overheard between teens.

https://reactormag.com/over-the-hill-five-not-so-youthful-sff-protagonists/ >>

I have read "Little Fuzzy" and "Memory", both excellent books.

An excellent addition to this list would be would be "The Forever
Hero: Dawn for a Distant Earth, The Silent Warrior, In Endless
Twilight" by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Lynn

Forgot the URL:

https://www.amazon.com/Forever-Hero-Distant-Warrior-Twilight/dp/0312868383/

No.

Just because the title is too long.

--
I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
dirty old man.

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William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> writes:

James Nicoll wrote:

Over the Hill: Five Not-So-Youthful SFF Protagonists
Protagonists in their late twenties or even older are still alive
in many senses of the word, and can still have adventures, of a sort.
Brought to you by a conversation I overheard between teens.
https://reactormag.com/over-the-hill-five-not-so-youthful-sff-protagonists/ >>

Leaving out immortals or quasi/immortals:

Captain Henry of Laumer and Dickson's "Planet Run" is 135, though a
dangerous rejuvenation treatment at the beginning of the book reduces
his physical age. He is not immortal as each treatment has an
increasing chance of being fatal.

Louis Wu is 200 in the later stories.

Heinlein had quite a few older protagonists, even ignoring LL. Jubal Harshaw, for example.

In Anderson's last Flandry book, the hero is rather getting on, though
young for his age and Van Rijn is never young.

Vance's protagonists were a pretty active bunch, but IIRC Magnus
Ridolph was at least in late middle age.

William Hyde

Has anyone yet mentioned Lucas Garner, from Niven's ARM stories?

-Don-

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James Nicoll wrote:

Over the Hill: Five Not-So-Youthful SFF Protagonists

Protagonists in their late twenties or even older are still alive
in many senses of the word, and can still have adventures, of a sort.

Nathan Brazil of the Well World books is I guess billions of years old?
It's a little uncertain as to how much time passes whenever he reboots
the Universe.


Brian

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On 18 Jul 2024 14:25:11 -0000, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll)
wrote:

Over the Hill: Five Not-So-Youthful SFF Protagonists

Protagonists in their late twenties or even older are still alive
in many senses of the word, and can still have adventures, of a sort.

Brought to you by a conversation I overheard between teens.

https://reactormag.com/over-the-hill-five-not-so-youthful-sff-protagonists/

One wonders what these kids would think of Lazarus Long

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On 18 Jul 2024 14:25:11 -0000, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll)
wrote:

Over the Hill: Five Not-So-Youthful SFF Protagonists

Protagonists in their late twenties or even older are still alive
in many senses of the word, and can still have adventures, of a sort.

Brought to you by a conversation I overheard between teens.

https://reactormag.com/over-the-hill-five-not-so-youthful-sff-protagonists/

Being sixty-eight years of age, I found the piece comical.

John Savard

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On Fri, 19 Jul 2024 23:37:48 -0600, John Savard
<quadibloc@servername.invalid> wrote:

On 18 Jul 2024 14:25:11 -0000, jdnicoll@panix.com (James Nicoll)
wrote:

Over the Hill: Five Not-So-Youthful SFF Protagonists

Protagonists in their late twenties or even older are still alive
in many senses of the word, and can still have adventures, of a sort.

Brought to you by a conversation I overheard between teens.

https://reactormag.com/over-the-hill-five-not-so-youthful-sff-protagonists/

Being sixty-eight years of age, I found the piece comical.

John Savard

As did I - being the same age. Went through that page and realized the
ONLY one of the books I had read there was the Miles Vorkosigan book -
and am enough of a fan of Bujold's work that I am sad I got rid of the
issue of Analog (or was it Asimov's? Can't remember - I subscribed
both but ended my subscriptions when I started grad school as I had to
move every 4 months for 2 1/2 years...) where the first story in the
series was published.

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