Autistic characters in fiction

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22 May 2007, 4:24 pm

I read a series called The Halfblood Chronicles by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey. It has a couple of characters that are obviously autistic.

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ixochiyo_yohuallan
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24 May 2007, 3:44 am

Noetic wrote:

I absolutely loved "Speed of Dark" - the protagonist is autistic, not "Aspie", that might explain why he wasn't acting like some here expected him to.

The only "Aspie"-ish character (monologues, doesn't realise when he's not wanted, blunt, impulsive, forgetful, egocentric etc.), until he started going mental, was Don.

Isn't this just a stereotype, though? So far I got the impression that there are as many types of autism/AS as there are autistic/AS people.

Lou didn't like the fancy-dress event he went to, and found people in costumes baffling and frightening (and I presume Elizabeth Moon based him on some existing type of autistic personality - if not on her son, then on someone else who is on the spectrum, since she said she interacted with autistic people for years before writing the book); on the other hand, Donna Williams writes, I forget where, that some autistic children feel more comfortable when a certain barrier is created between them and other people, so putting on a persona, as one does when dressing up in fancy dress, might help the teaching process.

And if one wants someone who is or at least used to be overly talkative, prone to monologuing about the same things, brutally honest, and impulsive, one might consider Temple Grandin.

As for Don's character, I don't see what's so AS about him - he's just an irascible, impulsive, selfish person.

ixochiyo_yohuallan
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24 May 2007, 4:21 am

Dvora wrote:

I absolutely HATED The Speed of Dark, it was written in a real 'tear-jerker' style and very convincingly, but I had two very big issues with it. First of all, the Aspie protagonist doesn't talk about his obsession. At all. I read and read and read, hoping to find out about his job, but no details. Instead, he ranted on and on about his social failures. If I fixated on my social failures that bad, I'd have killed myself already!! I think the author completely missed the point that Aspies have these very intense interests and they are interested in that most of the time, not their social failures. I think about my social failures, well of course, I sometimes get very worked up over them, but not ALL the time! My life would be a sorry little existence if it were like that. And then the book takes a completely pointless curebie angle (I don't want to spoil much again, so I won't say exactly why pointless - I mean pointless even in the context of the book, not due to general political considerations). I think this is a very dangerous book, because most SF fans will read it, people interested in autism will read it, and then they will believe the false premises and the false conclusion that stems from them, because the overall style of the book is, as I've said above, very convincing. I read the reviews on Amazon and I actually broke down and cried.

I wouldn't be so sure that "The Speed of Dark" is pro-cure. Frankly, I don't know what the author's stand on the cure issue is altogether. This is what ruined the book for me, it left me emotionally confused and in a muddle because I couldn't tell what the author had meant to say. I wish she had stated it more clearly. If she does, indeed, support the cure, then I think the book achieves an effect opposite to the one she had intended. Lou's accepting the cure was a tragedy, and one only feels more sorry for him because he thinks it was worth it.

I agree about Lou's excessive self-consciousness and his thinking in the black-and-white terms of normal vs. not normal. I felt uneasy with it too.

Noetic
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24 May 2007, 5:52 am

ixochiyo_yohuallan wrote:

Noetic wrote:

Isn't this just a stereotype, though? So far I got the impression that there are as many types of autism/AS as there are autistic/AS people.

AS is one subtype of autism (as in, the AS Hans Asperger described), and Don, before he went over the edge, strongly reminded me of that subtype.

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24 May 2007, 5:58 am

ixochiyo_yohuallan wrote:

I wouldn't be so sure that "The Speed of Dark" is pro-cure. Frankly, I don't know what the author's stand on the cure issue is altogether.

Have you read the dedication of the book? Something along the lines of relishing differences etc. She doesn't strike me as pro-cure at all although you can always Email her and ask her (Email on her site, just google her name).

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24 May 2007, 6:01 am

Well it was like the guy committed suicide, so i dont know how people can think it is pro-cure.
However, there were a lot of religious overtones near the end. This is what i didn't like.

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25 May 2007, 10:29 am

Sorry for my absence, the holidays were awfully busy. I have very short time right now, too, but I'll be back later G-d willing.

Speed of Dark:
Well, I didn't want to spoil the ending, but if everyone's read it then it's all right Basically this is why I said "pointless in the context of the book". I don't know how the author intended it (I can surely ask) but ultimately it comes down to how people interpret it.

Anyway, I finished Oryx and Crake and I think it is actually worse :wink: The author wants to make a point about the ethics of science, but at one point chooses Aspies as target practice material. Basically, only a little bit of the book is about Asperger's but in there you get to know that Aspies look down on NTs, they have inadequate personal hygiene and they don't know how to use utensils. Ah well whatever. I try not to get too worked up over it because it's just a small part of the book and most readers will just gloss over it anyway. *sigh*

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25 May 2007, 11:59 am

I didn't mean to gloss over it, but I did miss it completely nonetheless, because I wasn't looking for it...it's been a while and I have a bad memory and questionable reading comprehension at times....Was it Crake who was supposed to be an aspie??..oh..the guys working for Crake in the bio-dome thingy??....Sorry...

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25 May 2007, 8:43 pm

I haven't read it, but I think "The Regulators" by Stephen King (As Richard Bachman) has an autistic character.

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26 May 2007, 11:34 pm

I would say Hiro Protagonist from Snow Crash by Neil Stevenson struck me as being autistic to some degree. I think all the protectors of the Pak race in Larry Niven books seem to act like autistic people.

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27 May 2007, 6:03 am

Noetic wrote:

AS is one subtype of autism (as in, the AS Hans Asperger described), and Don, before he went over the edge, strongly reminded me of that subtype.

Of course, but what I meant was, that there is no set personality type for either Asperger's or Kanner's syndrome (neither is there any strict border between the two, except for speech delays and the general degree of severity - which is something fairly obscure and may change over time). There is one large spectrum on which no two points are alike. So to say that everyone with AS has to be blunt, impulsive, forgetful and inclined towards extended monologues is too much of a sweeping statement. Some people with AS are; some are not; some people with classic autism are exactly like this even though it was not AS they were diagnosed with; finally, there are some NTs (or people with issues other than autism) who are this way, too.

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27 May 2007, 12:39 pm

ixochiyo_yohuallan wrote:

But Don is more than a personality type IMHO. It's his behaviour not his personality I was on about.

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27 May 2007, 11:29 pm

They don't quite say she is autistic, but she fits in my opinion.

River from the Firefly/Serenity TV series and movie.

Noetic
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28 May 2007, 9:14 am

txstorm wrote:

They don't quite say she is autistic, but she fits in my opinion.

River from the Firefly/Serenity TV series and movie.

True, although I guess her other (fictional) gifts might cause such behaviour too, she strikes me as a fantasy/sci-fi version of a savant (autistic or not).

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03 Jun 2007, 5:45 pm

Still very busy with school/work, so I'm slow on replies, sorry :cry: This semester must end eventually, all the others before did!

Quote:

Crake and his schoolmates. They call themselves Aspies (they've even nicknamed the campus "Asperger's U") other people NTs, and they also use NT as a derogatory term.

I hope this is not a really big spoiler for others

***

LOL, I've always thought River was odd because she was telepathic and because they consequently messed up her brain with Evil Experiments. (this is one of my pet peeves, but NO, I'll resist getting into that rant again!!) But yes, the end result might be autistic-like now that you're saying, I was just so angry that the scientists ended up being bad guys again, with their evil neuroimaging stuff (I LOVE real-life neuroimaging stuff) that this completely passed by me. But otherwise I liked Firefly, though to my surprise I liked Crusade better. (I put off watching Crusade because everyone said it was horrible. But I watched it shortly after I had watched Firefly, and it came out better in my opinion.) But I wish both series would have been continued.

Now, it doesn't have a single autistic character, but I really hope the Dresden Files TV series gets taken up for a second season :wink:

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