I don't usually get directly involved in discussions of my writing style, characters, etc., from a critical perspective. There are a lot of reasons for that, including the fact that it could easily turn into a bottomless swamp if I started trying to "defend" or "explained" why I'm doing something. Another reason, frankly, is that readers are fully entitled to their opinions, even if I do occasionally wish that they might express them a bit more . . . tactfully, shall we say?
And yet another reason is that communicating through an electronic interface rather than face-to-face creates all sorts of opportunities for misunderstandings.
In this instance, though, there are I think a few things that I should probably explain — or at least expand upon — slightly.
First, there is most definitely an American bent — or even a bias, I suppose — in my writing which stems from the fact that I happen to be an American. Sorry about that, but it's one of those little facts that I'm sort of stuck with.
Second, as someone else has already pointed out, I deal with sex and sexuality when I think it is germane to the story I'm telling and the characters about whom I'm writing at any given moment. If I think it will contribute to the storyline, you will see it discussed; if I don't think it contributes to the storyline, you
won't see it discussed.
Third, I think it is exactly correct to argue that when building a believable (or at least a textured) imaginary future history it
has to be built from current day or historical building blocks. That is, I don't really believe that a convincing future history could be constructed without using referent material which the
readers are going to be familiar with. Material which has "handles" they can use to manipulate and internalize the artificial construct which is being offered for their entertainment.
Fourth, I think the most effective way to argue in defense of change is to assume that by the time we get two thousand years into the future, the change in question will be a “done deal,” so thoroughly accepted by and internalized by the future society that it’s difficult for them to conceive of the time when the change (from our perspective)
wasn’t part of the natural order of their universe. Hence the fact that until W.E.B. du Havel specifically made the point in a political conversation, I don’t believe that
any “in-universe” character had
ever referred to the fact of Queen Elizabeth’s or Mike Henke’s African heritage. In fact, a friend of mine who is black had actually read the first four novels before
he realized that was the case. And when I wanted to give Honor some good old-fashioned sexism to deal with, I had to create a logical reason for there to be a society which was so backward in that respect that her gender ever became an issue in the first place.
Fifth, while I haven’t brought it front and center in any primary character’s relationships, I rather thought that the diversity of romantic and sexual relationships in the Honorverse had been established as part of the background. There are Allison’s thoughts about Beowulf — including the fact that she is relentlessly monogamous in a society where that clearly is not the norm. There are also Allison’s thought about the bisexuality and homosexuality which has been a part of Grayson due to the sexually unbalanced birthrate predating Grayson’s alliance with Manticore. As someone has already mentioned, Emily Alexander-Harrington has commented on the fact that once upon a time she would have been physically attracted to Honor even if Hamish had never been part of the mix. I haven’t dwelt upon the mechanics of the relationships of
anyone when those relationships have not been pertinent to the stories I was telling, and that isn’t likely to change.
Sixth, the mixture of names and ethnicities within the Star Kingdom represent the original colonization mix, which came from a specific geographical area. Over the last four centuries or so, since the discovery of the Junction, quite a lot of additional and very different components have been added to that mix, but place names, aristocratic titles, etc., were all established before that influx, so there is going to be an overwhelmingly North American and Western European flavor to them.
Seventh, if there is any particular bias towards “bad guy” surnames in my writing, I am unaware of it. It’s also not something I intend to spend a lot of time worrying about in the future, because, frankly, I think it’s a nonissue. Moreover, I would point out that in the Honorverse, family names more often than not tend to be divorced from the national, ethnic, or racial origins of the names. That doesn’t mean that there is
never any such connection; it simply means that you are going to get platinum-haired, blue-eyed, ivory-skinned characters with African names and that you are also going to get red-haired, green-eyed characters with names from the subcontinent of India. I might also point out that sense I am writing from an American centric perspective (being, as I think I pointed out above, and American myself), I am coming at this from the perspective of the incredible melange of family names found here in the United States. As such, there is a tendency in my mind to decouple last names and perceived connections to historical groups, nationalities, or any particular history associated with them. I happen to think that those sorts of direct connections between names and ethnicities are more likely to persist on Old Earth than on any of the planets which were colonized later because they have so much more in depth and history behind them here than they will someplace like, say, Beowulf or Sphinx, but it’s not something that rises to the point of my making an issue of it in the stories. Oh, and for what it's worth, I remind my readership that my beautiful twin daughters are as Asian as Allison Harrington and — like Allison — rejoice in a relentlessly "Western" surname.
Eighth, yes, Christianity has survived to the 41st Century. So have quite a few other religions, although Christianity is admittedly the one which has been most visible. You might take a look at the conversation Honor has with her assigned chaplain in
Flag in Exile when she is discussing the religious mixture aboard one of the Manticoran ships on which she served. I don’t feel any compulsion to create a non-Christian central character simply in order to be politically correct or sensitive, but by the same token there are certainly characters in the books who are
not Christians. Since I am myself a Methodist lay speaker, and since my own beliefs are fairly central to who I am and how I view my own world and the greater universe beyond it, I suppose some might argue that I am captive to my parochialism. Obviously I don’t see it that way, however, and one of the consequences of reading my books is that all of you are just going to have to put up with me.
They were a couple of additional points I had intended to address, but part of that parochial Methodist lay speaker background of mine is getting in the way: I need to take my kids to a youth group meeting to stuff plastic eggs for the community Saturday Easter egg hunt sponsored by our church every year. And so, on that note, I take my hurried departure.
I hope the insight into my thinking and writing which I’ve offered above will at least serve as a starting point for
informed critiques of it.
Take care, all. And for those it won’t offend, God bless.
and, Mangy Fur the Smart Alick Spacecat.
).
Good God 
I wrote too slow. So many jumped in with guns blazing.