The Everyman Hero in Speculative Romance
AUTHOR: By Vicki Firth

You can have your Special Forces commandos in space and roguish starship captains (though I do still reserve the right to borrow them on occasion). My favorite type of hero is just an ordinary guy.

Take Ian Hamilton, for example. The titular character of Susan Grant's THE STAR PRINCE was living a normal, quite tranquil life as a finance major until his mom upped and married the ruler of the Vash Nadah, who became Ian's stepfather and made him his heir to a galactic empire. Ian couldn't have possibly imagined his business acumen would ever have been needed on an interstellar level; dealing with a runaway princess and a mission critical to interplanetary peace could not have registered on his scope of life expectations. Yet he rose admirably to his new role. Witnessing such an evolution of character is one factor in the appeal of the regular guy.

With speculative fiction, our ordinary guys do tend to wind up on out of this world adventures. That, or they are otherworldly to begin with, yet still remain the everyman equivalent for their planet or plane of existence.

Nolan Adelpho of Sharon Shinn's HEART OF GOLD is easily identified as a regular guy, despite the fact that he lives on a planet where society is matriarchal and people are blue or gold. Nolan is a scientist, an ordinary sort of profession that perhaps makes him more readily identifiable to us. His rising up against his society's mores and expectations is what makes him into the hero he becomes.

Sometimes an everyday guy will have a certain skill or knowledge that seems run-of-the-mill to us, but will save the day (or the world) in his out of the ordinary adventures. In Sharon Shinn's JOVAH'S ANGEL the hero Caleb is a tinker whose know-how with electronics defies even the wisdom of angels.

A character's surroundings and routines may be alien to us but if they're commonplace to him we can relate to his feelings of normalcy. Ned Henry is a time-traveling historian in TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG. In this story (and a few others) author Connie Willis has developed a near future world in which time travel is utilized by historians to study the past. As fate and good storytelling would have it, much goes awry for Ned and his sojourn to the past takes on more than a scholarly bent.

The ability to identify with the everyman hero is part of his appeal. It's intriguing to think that a husband or boyfriend or the rather cute guy next door would become a superman if such extraordinary circumstances required it of him. That ability to rise above is something we might like to see in ourselves as well.

Female protagonists are often the everywoman, probably for exactly that ease in allowing the reader to identify with the character. It's interesting to watch a character try to figure out just what the heck to do when thrown into the past in a time travel or finding herself quite literally lost in space. Susan Sizemore's heroine Claudia Cameron in her sci-fi story WALKING ON THE MOON puts her skills as a professional caterer to good use. Clair Frasier of Diana Gabaldon's OUTLANDER series saves lives with both her medical skills and her knowledge of future events.

At first thought, it would seem fantasy literature would be rife with everyman heroes. In actuality, many of the heroes begin their adventures, quests or life callings possessing a latent skill like magic or having a heretofore unknown lineage that leads them to their destinies.

However, there are still some fantasy heroes who are just normal guys going about their conventional lives before getting caught up in the unexpected. Terry Brooks' character Ben Holiday is a lawyer who decides to take up the offer of a MAGIC KINGDOM FOR SALE: SOLD! In Tanya Huff's urban fantasy BLOOD series, Vicki Nelson is an everywoman cop who falls in love with a vampire.

Perhaps the most widely known everyman heroes from the SF&F genre are two who aren't exactly human, but despite a shorter stature and furrier feet, there?s no disputing that J.R.R. Tolkien's Sam and Frodo are well deserving of the title.

The everyman hero in science fiction and fantasy literature may sometimes be a bit difficult to locate. But he's well worth the look, for the fascination of finding out what he's capable of when put to the test -- in another time or space.