The Bystander

 Currently Reading: Moonbound, by Robin Sloane

When I first started trying to write fiction (I was twenty-two, just out of college), I had this idea that authors always choose the extraordinary people to write about, and how unfair is that? Harry Potter gets a series because he's the chosen one, marked by his scar, and rises to become the hero to face off with the Dark Lord. Percy Jackson is the son of Zeus. What about the rest of us, who don't have divine parentage and aren't special? Do we get a story too? I tried, with my first attempt at a novel, to write about an "ordinary" girl, and I quickly discovered how boring that is, to have a character so like myself in real life, with few desires, a mousy adherence to schedule, and a generally happy life. 

Reading Moonbound, I think I can finally see something I couldn't understand at that age. Robin Sloane chooses the extraordinary characters to write about - the city-smashers, the technological revolutionaries, the best of their guild, and the one-of-a-kinds. But it's not because he thinks those types of people are inherently better or more interesting than the rest of us (though doubtless they are, and I've come to terms with that a bit more in my middle age). Sloane writes about these top-notch individuals because the main characters of his book are not actually individuals: they're civilizations. 

In Moonbound (I haven't read his other novels yet), Sloane writes the story of the human race. He shows us the rise and fall of multiple civilizations, and it's the extraordinary people who make things move. It's the chosen ones, the kings and the wizards--they're the ones who have enough power to be on the scene, to be in the know, when the real events in the story go down, so they take center stage, not because the story is about them, but because the story needs them.

It's a good feeling--to hear the story of "us," of humanity. And Sloane takes us on a thrilling ride through the ups and downs of the millennia. In his epic, I can read about characters with mental, physical, and scientific powers far beyond my own, and I don't feel jealous; I don't feel like I have to inhabit these characters. Instead, I root for them like they're the home football team. They're carrying us all, this whole mess of humankind, into the future.

But maybe I haven't grown all that much since my twenties, after all, because after arriving at this new perspective on heroes, I still find myself stubbornly pushing back. Can there be a story about the shaping events of civilization--told purely from the perspective of a bystander?

The old man walks out the door to get the morning paper and peers off to the city skyline, just glimpsing Iron Man catch a nuclear missile and carry it up through an alien portal--then the elderly gentleman shrugs and goes off to drink his orange juice. A Tasker enters an apartment to install a TV and, finding an extraterrestrial species sitting in the living room, asks for a signature and continues with the installation as planned. Can those kinds of scenes be more than just a gag, and can they form the entirety of a novel? Is there a bystander big enough to bear witness to an entire story from beginning to end, and what would it be like, what would it say about the story and our experience of it, to tell it from that angle?

I'm trying to think of whether I've heard any stories written primarily from the perspective of a bystander, and the closest I can think of is an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "The Zeppo." After feeling isolated from the rest of the gang because of his lack of powers compared to a Slayer, a Witch, and a Watcher, Xander goes on his own side adventure to stand up to a gang of undead jock bullies. In the closing scene, he finds himself at school, chasing and being chased through the hallways, and we catch glimpses of Buffy, Willow, and Giles fighting off a crazed tentacle monster that has erupted from the floor of the library. But the story for once leaves Buffy on the sidelines and centers on Xander, who finds his equilibrium and his own worth in his own private (quiet and powerless) showdown against the undead, even though he remains a (quiet and powerless) footnote in the story of the Slayer.

Does anyone else know of any stories written from Bystander perspective? Are there any authors out there who want to write the ultimate Bystander Story, and what would it be about?