Autistic characters in fiction

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I want to read all novels which feature major characters on the spectrum. My only criterion is that the autism must be canon, ie. it should be directly mentioned either in the book, or the author should claim it publically. (Well, maybe I could catalog every appearance of autism - wasn't there an autistic telepath in The Stars My Destination? -, but first of all I want to read the ones with major characters.)

If you know of others I haven't listed, please comment. I think we could also discuss these here, because I haven't managed to locate a thread that had a general "fiction about Aspies" theme... or maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough?

This far I have read the following:

* Mark Haddon: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
* Elizabeth Moon: The Speed of Dark
* Cammie McGovern: Eye Contact
* Philip K. Dick: Martian Time-Slip

I am currently reading the following:

* Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake (this far it hasn't had autism explicitly, but Wikipedia claims it does, so I'll just need to read on...)
* C. S. Friedman: This Alien Shore

And my opinions...

The Curious Incident was quite good, though the language felt kind of simplistic, but I didn't read it in the original English so maybe it was the translator's fault. (Overall, I think English can get away with shorter sentences, this clipped rapid-fire prose style.... though this book was nothing like that!) The others I've read in English.

Eye Contact was a big disappointment, it felt like a typical "women's book" of the kind my Mom reads. Which is not bad, but I expected something else given that this was supposedly a crime novel. If you like crime fiction, you'll be disappointed because it goes against many of the conventions of the genre (eg. it has a ... well I don't want to talk about the ending, so let me just say you'll probably dislike the ending).

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.

Martian Time-Slip is really dated, and it isn't Dick's best works... his oeuvre is really uneven, I've read a heap of his books and I continue to read more, but I never know what to expect. This one I had trouble finishing, it was simply boring.

Oryx and Crake is interesting this far, but I'm kind of afraid it will turn out like "(Asperger's = EVIL) + (Biotechnology = EVIL)" I hope not, because this is the third book of the author's I'm reading, and I really like her style, so it would be very sad for me if she thought Aspies were evil.

This Alien Shore is surprisingly good this far, my only qualm is that the League navigators are a blatant Dune ripoff. What is even more weird, they are better written than their Dune counterparts! At least this far. I reserve judgement until I finish the book. But this one shows promise, and might be the best of all of the above. Maybe because it's not a "autism is fashionable so let's write about it" book, it's straightforward science fiction that doesn't even mention autism. (The author does say is is about autism, though, which is why I included it here.)

The problem with online resources is that there are heaps of speculation about characters in books who behave somehow autistic, and we have no way of knowing whether the author intended them to be autistic if it isn't said anywhere. So I would prefer if those were very clearly marked as "My Own Speculation" or something. I think I also have a set of "My Own Speculation"s, maybe next time

You may be in luck... if you wait a couple of years. I'm making a story set on a fictional planet, and one of the main characters is on the Spectrum, and they do directly refer to it and the diagnosis even comes as a shock when the character finds out that everyone but HER knew. However, being a different planet they've named it differently: Efburgeson's Syndrome.

That's cool!! Are your characters humans, humanoid aliens or neither?

I'm into worldbuilding, and my main universe features a planet which is populated by humanoid aliens who are autistic (they are a splinter colony of a larger group of humanoid aliens who are not autistic)... I originally intended it to be a setting for a novel, but three years and still no novel in sight, while I have worked out completely irrelevant (irrelevant to the novel) segments of the world in huge detail. What I've been recently thinking about is that maybe I should just give up on the novel and write a nonfiction book about worldbuilding. I have a lot of material (though it's in completely disorganized text files) and by now quite a large experience on designing fictional settings, and I'd love to use it for something in addition to my personal wish fulfilment fantasy Plus I know I can write lengthy nonfiction, I should be working on my master's thesis right now

I wrote something that is being called worldbuilders! I don't remember reading such a word before!

In Gibson's Idoru there is a character that is not NT, but I don't know if autistic.

Humanoidy. Their bipedal, and are furry, but that's about it. They're called Renons, and they live on the fictitious planet of Inithial (named in the likeness of Minas Ithil, or Minas Morgul). Inithial is one of three or four inhabitable planets orbiting the star they call Buline. Inthial is roughly 1/5 larger than Earth, and spins 2.5 times slower, which means that they have 150 seconds in a minute to account for this. They do not have contact with Earth or even know about it, it's discovered some way into my story and the main characters go to it.

Want more?

Neuromancer:
worldbuilding is quite popular in RPG circles (I do it for its own sake though... well OK originally it was intended for a novel). A Google search should come up with some pretty useful material (though I admit I never did those lists myself... I started them but each answer grew so long!)

KBABZ:
Yup!! Do they know other planets with intelligent species, or is Earth their first alien contact? Also, if they can both be Aspie and NT, that means their cognition is quite similar to that of humans, do they have some sort of link (like common ancestry, or one descended from the other) or do you assume convergent evolution? This problem came up in my world as well, but I couldn't appeal to convergent evolution - it would've been overkill, because for plotline purposes I needed them to look as human on the outside as possible. So they have a common ancestor with humans (who tampered with the Earth's ecosystem).

I'm thinking Peter Watt's Blindsight.

Kosmonaut:
Wow, I'll make that next up after Oryx & Crake and This Alien Shore. I searched it on Google and I'm really interested now! Thanks a bunch.

Well you know, im not sure it passes your strict 'canon' criteria. All the characters in it are freaks, but autism is certainly a theme.
It's a good read; i don't have the patience to read a lot of the sci-fi that comes out nowadays, i hardly ever finish a book there's so much rubbish out.

I actually enjoyed Speed Of Dark, but i know what you mean, it's full of faults and i could really slate it if i felt like it.

At the moment, i am going through some classic sci-fi books which for some reason i never got around to reading. Im halfway through Flowers for Algernon, i would reccomend this also, but you have probably read it.

Well, yeah it sounds like that, but the REASON behind it is actually in a Spiritual area of things. Here's how it works:

The entire Universe is just one reality. Each reality has certain things different from ours. For instance, one reality could have that AS personalities were NTs and 'NTs' would be the ones on WP! Another one is that I could have blonde hair, or maybe another where George Bush is actually doing a good job. As such, there are an infinite amount of realities that exist.

In THIS particular reality, Renons happened to have evolve in a similar way to humans. Each dimension shows that there's no such thing as destiny, merely things just 'happen' to occur due to that realities 'timeline'. However, to get things TRULY different, you need to go into alternate dimensions. It isn't actually things like 2-D and 5-D and stuff, but rather like an alternate set of rules of physics and stuff. For example, 'counting' to 'two' could 'give' you a 'cake' which 'you' can 'use' to 'buy' a 'car', therefore 'earning' you a 'high mark' in 'school'. That sort of thing reinforces the belief that everything's an illusion. All dimensions, however, also have a guiding force, who would probably be whoever runs the Universe (be it God or an alien in a spaceship). That means that our reality would be the 'normal' and preset timeline for all the others to deviate from. So that means that Renons were always destined to become, look similar to, and think in the same way that humans do.


Sorry for confusing you!

Seems like a dream, coincidences like this hapen too me followed time, what suggests I read it and then forget about it, nevertheless... wow... seems mystic...

I must do this surch, must know a litle about this and probably change the title I choose.

Thanks

Kosmonaut:
I don't mind if it's not canon as long as it is clearly said so... though I've just searched the full text of the book and found 5 hits for "autis*" so maybe it is canon after all. But I'll have to see what those five hits are, and I'd prefer to start reading the book from the beginning so it'll have to wait!

I did read Flowers for Algernon, and I'd also seen the movie adaptation as a small child. At that time my mom was big on my not watching films that are not "suitable for children", but she for some reason let me watch Charly. (BTW I want to read all Hugo- and Nebula-winning novels, I'm not quite there yet though...)

Other replies later IY"H because I have to go now!! I wanted to reply "oldest ones first" but I apparently can't finish right away

Don't know if you like international espionage action thrillers, but Robert Ludlum's Covert-One series has an Aspie character named Marty who's a computer genius. I'm not sure how well the books depict AS though, since I've read only one. But this is how I first heard of Asperger's.

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.

I personally think Lou ended up much more alone after the "treatment" than he was before, by the way.

There's a fair few books by Stephen Baxter with autistic or Aspie-ish characters, by the way.

Seconding Stephen Baxter. Asperger's is a fairly major element of his book Manifold: Time, and one of the principal characters of Coalescent is implied very heavily to have Asperger's or some sort of mild autism.

Funny..I didn't notice anything about Aspergers in Oryx and Crake..maybe it went over my head because I wasn't looking...I mean Crake was apretty intense fellow with some pretty strong obsessions...I will have to read the Wikipedia article I guess.

I am reading a book called Ragtime
http://www.amazon.com/Ragtime-E-L-Docto ... 0452279070

And there are some Aspie-like characters in there...like the character referred only to as "Mother's Younger Brother"...seems VERY Aspie-ish..down to being sired by a much older father...
and also the "little boy" character seems to have an Aspie streak.

I am absolutely loving Ragtime...it takes place in one of my favorite historical periods and there are lots of famous historical characters in it..only I am now compelled to research them all to see just how fictionalised the accounts in the book of them are.