Who are your favorite characters from fantasy & sci-fi stories?

[haiiro]

Who are your favorite characters from fantasy and science fiction stories? It's been awhile since I've seen a thread along these lines, so I thought it might be fun to start one up again.

Personally, I have trouble choosing a single favorite, so I limited myself to 2 per category:

Fantasy: Bronn, from George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice & Fire series, or Rincewind the Wizzard, from Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.

Bronn is a supporting character, and maybe a bit of an odd choice. There's something about his intense practicality, casually mercenary attitude, and choice of "friends" that really appeals to me. Rincewind, on the other hand, believes in cowardice as a way of life (at least, until the chips are down), and everything about him pretty much cracks me up.

Sci-fi: William Gibson is responsible for both of my SF favorites: a tie between Blackwell, from Idoru, and Case, from Neuromancer (and others).

Blackwell is a toecutter with a unique aapproach to violence and an array of interesting toys, while Case is the classic drug-fueled cyberpunk hacker/shadowrunner. Both of them are utterly fascinating.

How about you?

 

[shilsen]

Fantasy - a bunch from Pratchett: Granny Weatherwax, Death, Captain Carrot, Samuel Vimes. Despite my wide reading habits I usually can't empathize with characters from fiction, but Pratchett has a habit of writing ones that I can to some degree, and that's especially true of Granny Weatherwax and Death.

Yes, I empathize with a fictional anthropomorphic personification of human mortality. Why do you ask?

 

[Dagger75]

Fantasy: Arya Stark. She is my favorite character in that series.

Sci Fi: Not really Sci fi but Jason Bourne. Damn was he cool.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Fantasy: Gord the Rogue. (Yes, I said Gord the Rogue!) Kragar the Jhereg for Best Supporting Character.
Sci-Fi: Miles Vorkosigan. Simon Illyan takes the Best Supporting Character with both hands tied behind his back.

-Hyp.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Corwin of Amber

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

Fantasy: Eowyn

SF: Zaphod Beeblebrox

Does It Count?: Zhuge Liang (Kongming) and Cao Cao from Romance of the Three Kingdoms

 

[David Howery]

Not sure if this fits into either catagory, but my favorite literary character of all time is Allan Quatermain from King Solomon's Mines and a bunch of other books. Unlike so many other literary heroes, Allan is a short and wiry man who is no coward but not reckless either. He's also pretty clever and got out of a lot of tight spots using his wits.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Fantasy: Jon Shannow from David Gemmell's Stones of Power. I'd love to have my RPG characters be as baaaad as he is.

Sci-Fi: Andrew LaFollet, from the Honor Harrington books. It took me a while to realize it, but I really do like his viewpoint sections the best.

Brad

 

[Wombat]

Well, my top guy is still King Arthur, but he kinda varies by who is writing about him

In fantasy, I have a strong love for old Samwise Gamgee, Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, Carrot, Vetinari, and Granny Weatherwax (I think this is a Discworld thread in hiding!), Ged of Earthsea, and Jilly Coppercorn from de Lint's Newford stories. Several others could be mentioned, but this seems like a good start.

In sci fi ... well, this is harder. Ender Wiggin comes to mind, as do Prof. Arronax & Captain Nemo, but after that I tend to draw a lot of blanks. There are several sci fi books that I enjoy, but not necessarily characters, because, I think, more of these books are about ideas than about characters, per se.

 

[haiiro]

Sci-Fi: Miles Vorkosigan. Simon Illyan takes the Best Supporting Character with both hands tied behind his back.

There are a lot of characters I know and also like in this thread, but these two I've never heard of -- care to share some details? I'd rather hear it from you than Google it.

Granny Weatherwax and Corwin of Amber...ooooh, good calls.