The Sword and Laser discussion

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Downbelow Station
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DBS: Power Couples
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Sharon Lee and Steve Miller also have several strong pair-bonded couples in their Liaden series.


- Sam and Sybil Vimes from Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' series focusing on the City Watch.
- Celia and Marco from 'The Night Circus' by Erin Morgenstern
- Althea and Brashen from 'The Liveship Traders' trilogy by Robin Hobb
Thoughts? Disagreements?

Also several Robert Heinlein books do. In his case sometimes it's not just a couple, it's a larger married group.

I should have thought of them. Leave it to Pratchett to subvert the norm :) Then again, Guards, Guards is centered around Sam and Sybil getting together, and I was trying to think on the lines of books without the starting of the relationship. They still count because they are wonderful, though.
Just about to start Liveship Traders, so I'll look for that one.


The only comic couple left standing is Reed and Sue Richards, but one wonders how long they'll keep that around, when you've got Namor hammering at the door.

There's also the Boy's Love manga series Fake, about two NYPD detectives in a same-sex relationship, and their adopted daughters.
In fantasy you have Simon R. Green's Hawk and Fisher series, about a husband and wife team who are the only honest town guards in the corrupt city of Haven.
Barbara Hambly's excellent Those Who Hunt the Night has former British spy James Asher and his physician wife Lydia dealing with a vampire conspiracy in Victorian England each from their own areas of expertise.
Hmm, it looks like stable family relationships seem to be a recurring device in fiction that involves mysteries or investigations, since sibling detective teams might even be more popular than pair-bonded ones. I wonder if there's a reason for that?

Romance is such an easy and interesting point of conflict, and with such a large cast of characters it's interesting that Cherryh chose not to include it. It really focused attention on the dire and precarious position of Pell.
I could not think of another book, sci-fi or otherwise that featured happily married couples who stayed happily married throughout the novel where that marriage was not the main focus of the book. It seems like if you find a couple truly happy in their marriage, it's basically a death sentence for one or both characters.
Downbelow Station was very refreshing to me on this note, but I am curious if anyone out there can think of another novel with power couples like this one.