> David Brin wrote:
> >--- Jim Sharkey
> >> It seems to me that the most important trait to DB's
> >>protagonists is stubbornness.
> >Interesting! I certainly say so, explicitly, about the character
> >in KILN PEOPLE. And yet, I hardly envision it as an unwillingness
> >to contemplate changes in tactics. I thought Maia changed tactics
> >several times.
...
> >I'd be interested whether others also feel I over-use this
> >technique.
>
> I don't believe that you "over-use" it, necessarily. A lot of authors have a
> favorite theme that pops up often in their works, and I was just wondering if you or
> the other listees had seen that as one of your main themes. Especially since even
> some of your secondary characters succeed the same way. If the Thennannin
> ambassador in TUW wasn't so stubborn in his search for Garthlings, for example,
> they'd have never gotten a new client race, to use the first example that comes to
> mind.
...
> Jim
I'm still mulling over the wider stubbornness issue. I'd
certainly agree that the main characters do not succeed because of
inborn greatness, a cliché well avoided. There ARE some lucky
coincidences, but one could argue that somebody had to get them...
But as for Kault, the Thennanin ambassador, it was his
phlegmatic character that kept him from noticing many of the
(planted) signs of the Garthlings. If he hadn't been so thick,
he might have succeeded sooner.
---David Hobby
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