In any situation, there are leaders and there are followers. Normally, I’d classify myself firmly in the former category… but when I read or watch fantasy stories? Whole different ball game, folks. Plop me into an SFF world and I’m bound to follow my captain’s orders, provided the captain is sensible and kind (though a little gruffness doesn’t hurt).
My favorite SFF captains have an unshakeable confidence about them—a knowledge that their power and decisions are capable of changing the world, and that there are always risks and costs involved. They do their duty bearing this burden, and I’d follow them to the ends of the earth (and beyond).
The unrankable: Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek
Dear readers—particularly the Trekkies among us—I have a confession to make: I have never watched any version of Star Trek. Even so, Jean-Luc Picard was the first captain that came to mind when I brainstormed the leaders I’d happily follow. Picard’s presence is so well established in the zeitgeist via cultural osmosis that even a non-Trekkie like me understands his influence, his good nature, his intelligence. If I ever set foot on the USS Enterprise, you can bet I’ll follow any order he gives me.
The unassailable: Cordell Lamar, The Salvagers
I owe the idea for this article to Picard and Lamar in equal measure. As I read Alex White’s Salvagers trilogy, I developed a strong respect for Cordell. He’s one of the hardest captains on this list, unafraid to lay down the law and decide on a plan of action despite the obvious risks. He knows a captain’s job is to make the decisions nobody else can. I, for one, would be happy to stand aside and let him dictate a mission, and I’d do my level best to carry out his orders.
Lamar’s role as captain extends far beyond the confines of doling out directives. His shield magic saves the crew from certain death on many occasions. He’s willing to put himself at risk for the sake of the crew and their mission. He’s the type of person I want leading my starship as we careen into dangerous or unknown space.
The undeniable: Zamira Drakasha, Red Seas Under Red Skies
Straight from Port Prodigal, it’s our first pirate pick! Zamira Drakasha helms the Poison Orchid, a ship crewed by daring swashbucklers.
Following some spoilery events in Red Seas Under Red Skies, protagonists Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen find themselves in Drakasha’s care. Locke, Jean, and readers soon find that the realities of piracy don’t quite fit the stereotypical reputation assumed to be true in places like Camorr. Drakasha runs a tight ship, but she cares for the community she built. She isn’t afraid to plunder a merchant vessel, but she’ll do so without risking the skins of her found family.
Sharp, witty, and strategic, Drakasha could make even this landlubber fall into line.
The unbreakable: Monkey D. Luffy, One Piece
Let’s continue the pirate trend, shall we?
Leader of the Straw Hats and hopeful King of All Pirates, gum-gum-fruit stretchy guy Monkey D. Luffy is the most lighthearted pirate captain in SFF. Don’t get him wrong, though—he takes his mission and his crew very seriously.
Luffy’s relationship with his crew is built on trust and reliance. He knows when his fellow pirates can handle a situation, but he will readily step in to intervene if they’re in danger. Everywhere the Going Merry travels, Luffy manages to ingratiate himself with one person or another, steadily building a team of experts who can’t help but fall for his enthusiasm.
Perhaps the best thing about Luffy is the fact that fans have virtually unlimited opportunities to watch him in action. The One Piece anime has more than 1,000 episodes based on the best-selling manga, and the new Netflix live-action adaptation just debuted at the end of August.
The unhateable: Ashby Santoso, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Becky Chambers is one of my favorite authors, so it’s hardly a surprise Ashby should make this list. Captain of the Wayfarer, Ashby Santoso runs the space-tunneling ship with a calm confidence. He’s generally pacifist and prefers to solve problems through diplomacy even in the most dire straits.
I love Ashby because he’s more than just a hard-headed, gruff decision-maker. He’s a full-fledged character with his own story, flaws, and desires. His secret relationship with the Aeluon Pei—Aeluons are harshly judged by their culture for interspecies relations—adds a layer of sadness and longing to his story. This complexity and sense of hidden depths makes me want to follow him all the more.
Honorable mention: The unquestionably delightful: Shakespeare, Stardust
In the movie version of the novel, Captain Shakespeare is memorably played by Robert De Niro—Neil Gaiman’s original character was called Johannes Alberic, and he had a decidedly smaller role than Shakespeare enjoys in the film adaptation.
A sky vessel presided over by a gay, anti-violence pirate captain with a loyal crew and a love of the finer things? As a Redditor once noted, “Captain Shakespeare walked so Stede Bonnet could f*cking run.”
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There are, admittedly, quite a number of celebrated captains sailing the seas and skies of sci-fi and fantasy, so please add your own favorites to the list in the comments below!
Cole Rush writes words. A lot of them. For the most part, you can find those words at The Quill To Live or on Twitter @ColeRush1. He voraciously reads epic fantasy and science-fiction, seeking out stories of gargantuan proportions and devouring them with a bookwormish fervor. His favorite books are: The Divine Cities Series by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, and The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune.
I don’t know about Drakasha – however keen she is on keeping her crew safe, it’s undeniable that she doesn’t actually manage to do so very successfully. By the end of Red Sails Under Red Skies her ship is a shambles, less than a third of its crew still alive, and we learn that she has managed to get her entire starting crew killed, plus a lot of the replacements she’s taken on over the years as the originals died off. (Gwillem was “the last of the original crew”, she says).
We don’t know what happens to her after that, but I can’t imagine that she has an easy time recruiting new hands, with that track record.
Considering piracy is innately a high-risk career and the fact that most of the losses that we see came from an unexpected betrayal, I think she does pretty well by her people. Granted, the world of Lamora is so vicious, just caring about your underlings and not torturing them to death yourself already puts you in the top 1% of bosses.
Gotta get a mention of Glen Cook’s Colgrave here. Captain of the Vengeful Dragon, and literally takes his crew to hell and back, leading a charmed (cursed?) life.
Turanga Leela from Futurama and (of course) Captain Jack Harkness from Doctor Who. (Although Jack does seem tp lose crew members at an alarming rate….)
How is Honor Harrington not on this list?
Thank you for including Captain Shakespeare! I love that movie so much, and to this day I cannot hear the Can-Can without thinking of that one scene and breaking into a grin. (Now I want to see Captain Shakespeare meet Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet; that would be epic!)
@1 Her crew was so willing to follow her to Hell that they went first?
Peter Blood
I’m so glad you mentioned Becky Chambers, I’ll read anything she writes. And I know she says she done with the Wayfarer universe, but Ms. Chambers, if you see this, c’mon! please? One more trip?
Daniel Leary by David Drake up cinnabar!
Amina al-Sirafi, splendid, opinionated, possibly cursed captain in the tradition of Sinbad. Only recently debuted in Chakraborty’s Adventures of Amina al-Sarafi she sails the Indian ocean, engages in piracy, fights pirates, squabbles with the supernatural, and generally is a rollicking sea-tale.
Shan yos’Galan, of the Dutiful Passage, in Lee & Miller’s Liaden series. He’s a Master Trader by talent and inclination, captain by necessity, and my favorite character of the whole series. I would follow him anywhere.
Reese Eddings, captain of the Earthrise, in the series beginning with the book of that title by MCA Hogarth. Reese begins as an irritable captain of a barely-functioning trading vessel with a crew of a few aliens. Things get worse before they get better, but she never quits fighting to keep the ship going and the crew safe.
Just to be old fashioned – John Grimes. In any of the alternate universes or antimatter worlds he ends up in.
Thanks, Bob @12! I was coming here to add Captain Grimes for classicism’s sake. Other fine choices would be Mal Reynolds for brash irreverence, Signy Mallory for focus and adaptability, and Odysseus for, well, all of the above.
Captain Cordelia Naismith! Keeping the faith for her crew more than 30 years on, as seen in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen.
How could you leave out this option?
The Irresponsible: Justy Ueki Tylor.
Sure, you may never figure out whether he’s winging it or actually knows what he’s doing, but it’s almost guaranteed you’ll make it home safe.
12, Indeed.
William Tsung Norton, of the survey ship Endeavour; a true professional, leads a professional crew (but without special training or equipment for the mission they are assigned) and manages a successful scientific investigation of first alien artifact ever encountered by humanity and – despite an attempt at mundacide by a competing government – prevents that AND brings the ship, and his entire crew, home safely.
Basically, Jim Lovell in the interplanetary era.
And, yes, quite the contrast to the record of Cdr. David Bowman and Discovery – who, to give him credit, goes down fighting and tries to accomplish his mission, even after its sabotage.
Commander (later Admiral) Adama, anyone? Also, half this list could be Trek Captains…. Kirk, Anson Mount’s Pike, Sisko, Janeway…. the list goes on.
Yes
My ideal captain would be one commandeering a ship on a routine route back and forth between some dull places. None of the captains on the list or in the comments seem to be running a ship that is a healthy, safe place for the crew. :-)
@13: I’m not sure I’d want to serve under Odysseus. He made it back, but he was the only one of his crew who did.
Go-Captain John Joy Tree
Cirocco Jones from John Varley’s Titan.
Captain Jellico, from Andre Norton’s “Solar Queen” series.
I’m not sure I’d want to serve under Odysseus. He made it back, but he was the only one of his crew who did.
He is, however, the only captain on this list who did literally sail to Hell and back.
“It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles / And see the great Achilles, whom we knew” says Tennyson’s Ulysses, but Homer’s version is considerably darker. Achilles is not on the Isles of the Blessed, but in the gloomy underworld of Erebus, and Odysseus takes his crew to its mouth and calls up the spirits of the dead. He meets Achilles and says:
“As for you, Achilles, no one was ever yet so fortunate as you have been, nor ever will be, for you were adored by all us Argives as long as you were alive, and now that you are here you are a great prince among the dead. Do not, therefore, take it so much to heart even if you are dead.’
“‘Say not a word,’ he answered, ‘in death’s favour; I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man’s house and be above ground than king of kings among the dead.”
Captain Cordelia Naismith! Keeping the faith for her crew more than 30 years on, as seen in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen.
Lois McMaster Bujold managed the double feat of writing a fourteen-book series of military SF in which we see barely any actual battles, in which the heroine is a starship captain whom we barely ever see actually commanding a starship.
(This is not meant as a criticism. Battle scenes are generally not interesting in themselves, they’re interesting because of what they show about the characters and how they advance the story.)
Captain Nicholas Ewing Seafort
(Seafort Saga by David Feintuch)
I’m not sure about inspirational qualities but I’m sure a journey to hell and back with Captain Han Solo of the Millennium Falcon would be a fun story to tell if you make it out …
Old school: Captain Horatio Hornblower!
There are four or five I’d follow in Peter F. Hamilton’s “The Night’s Dawn Trilogy” and other stories set in that universe.
Second the Honor Harrington mention!
Also, Lord Drinian comes to mind. I wanted to be on the Dawn Treader as a kid and to be honest, there are days when I still want to.
If we’re talking about Vorkosigans here, c’mon, let’s not forget Miles. Sure, he’s technically an Admiral. And sure, you might not intend to follow him anywhere. But by the time he’s been talking a little while you’ll find that somewhat to your surprise, that’s what you did. And it probably worked out better than you had any right to expect.
I hate the political economy of the Honor Harrington universe, but I have to admit that certainly for the first few books, Harrington kicked massive butt as a captain. It all got a bit soapy eventually.
Any of the Old Captains from Spatterjay.
Lois McMaster Bujold managed the double feat of writing a fourteen-book series of military SF in which we see barely any actual battles, in which the heroine is a starship captain whom we barely ever see actually commanding a starship.
She also wrote an excellent romantic comedy disguised as space opera as part of that series. Humanity and depth of character are consistent throughout her writing.
One of the things I love most about Ms. Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga is that it doesn’t romanticize war or battles, and violence has consequences. There’s a scene where a team from Beta colony is recovering the dead from a Beta/Barrayar conflict, and the woman on duty retrieves the body of her daughter, who was killed in battle. She also recovers the body of a Barrayaran officer (a decent fellow whom we met early on) who was killed in the same battle, and treats the victims from both sides with compassion and respect. I found the passage powerful and moving.
I’d follow Captain Naismith anywhere. I’d be a bit more careful following Miles, however, as he really has a habit of getting into trouble.
Honor Harrington, Mike Henke, Aivars Terekhov All good captains in the RMN. ’nuff said.
It’s better to follow Miles than to be in his way. Though I do wish he’d use some of his discretionary spending to buy actual discretion.
ETA: @32 Theisman, Giscard, Tourville, Yu. The Manties don’t have a monopoly on high quality captains.
This list should have started with Honor Harrington, one of the best characters in sci-fi in that position.
I am almost certain that I remember an SF novel in which a captain encountered by the protagonist was referred to as “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (I now know from the Keats poem), but I have no clue as to the title or author.
Perhaps a controversial choice, but Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean has a crew that he led into an ancient Aztec curse, and then out the other side. He’s literally led a crew into an underworld to retrieve Captain Jack Sparrow, and then out again.
Fighter, tactician, strategist, businessman, politician and diplomat, he’s shown he’s capable of adapting in a constantly evolving environment, and he’s capable of inspiring immense loyalty in his crew.
@35 / RGold – going off memory, but could it be Steel by Carrie Vaughn?
Shout out to Marine gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr! Maybe not a Captain, but a hellofa leader!
@37 WillMaybveWise. Thanks for the guess, but that is not the one I am trying to remember.
@13 MattS
No, not Odysseus, unless getting home alive is not something I am interested in!
Kylara Vatta, in the series of books by Elizabeth Moon; she disentangles her crew from an assortment of villains and brings them home safe. For lagniappe, she begins a subsequent series by outdoing Shackleton in leading a crew through arctic conditions after a crash. Also, the text of the original series makes clear early on that she’s a PoC (those covers get it wrong where they show her at all, but the second series covers get it right); I don’t know all of the above citations but the ones I recognize read as white AFAICR.
I’ll put in a plug for Captain Kaff Tagon, mercenary and original commander of Tagon’s Toughs in Schlock Mercenary.
How did I not know this existed? I must go investigate for SCIENCE!
Sten from the series by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch, worked every level from special ops to Fleet captain, not counting his direct captaincy time in the small tac-ships
How about Captain Ishmael Wang from the Golder Age of the Solar Clipper Series by Nathan Lowell.
Always pushing for the best for his crew so that they can move forward and advance. Needs some help to pull his head of his posterior at times but I would be on this crew anytime.
Do Fleet Captains count? Because I would follow ‘Breq Mianaai’ into the void, singing all the way…
Pyanfar Chanur. This has to be one of the greatest space operas of all time.
@5–:’We allus knew you wuz a flopsie’- a very sensible crew, really.
@45 Will def follow the God of Coffee just about anywhere, though when the heck *is* he going to paint his quarters? I mean besides ‘gray gray and more gray’.
The “dread pirate Roberts” immediately took up thinking space!
Deep Space Nine’s Sisko would definitely be top of my list, along with Errol Flynn’s Captain Blood. I also love Hilary Swank as leader of the first Mars mission in the “Away” series.
I’ll follow James T Kirk anywhere, any time. I’d hope to be wearing a blue shirt rather than red, but, hey, whatever.
No followers of James Holden? I think he was sometimes a bit impulsive, but he got the job done.
I thought Jack Aubrey was a damned fine captain in Master and Commander; a shame there will never be a sequel.
Gene Starwind, owner (and thus Captain) of the “Outlaw Star”.
Ensign Ichiro Sato from “First Contact” by Michael Hicks. A true fighter.
Breq | Justice of Toren One Esk Nineteen, in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series. I would follow Breq anywhere, in the Raadch or out of it.
A bit of a reluctant captain, but nonetheless, someone to follow to hell and back: Sara Lance.
And a captain that was made captain by the crew’s vote: D’argo, though it’s arguable how much you can captain a sentient ship with a mind of its own and pilot that’s lterally tied into her neural pathways.
I’d follow Captain Naismith anywhere. I’d be a bit more careful following Miles, however, as he really has a habit of getting into trouble.
Miles very much reminds me of the apocryphal Royal Navy officer’s fitness report that read, in part, “Men will follow this officer anywhere, but only out of curiosity”.
I’ll second Cirocco Jones from John Varley’s Titan, Wizard and Demon.
18, you’re looking for the late but distinguished leader Lieutenant (J.G.) Douglas A. “Doug” Roberts, of the USS Reluctant, and his successor as cargo officer, Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver … who kept the crew sane (along with Doc) as they sailed from Apathy to Tedium, with occasional side trips to Monotony and Ennui.
41, Cdr. William Tsung Norton of the of the survey ship Endeavour is of mixed human ancestry, and has family (including spouses) on both Mars and Earth, in Rendezvous with Rama; fairly progressive for a 1973 Hugo/Nebula recipient, by an author born in 1917.
He’s a notch too high in rank, but Admiral “Black Jack” Geary from Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series is the most admirable and competent commander I’ve ever encountered in fiction, and I am constantly amazed the author could make such a character believable. And even after something like 15 books, I still look forward to each new installment.
Laurence Fishburne as Captain Miller of the rescue ship Palomino, in the vastly underrated film “Event Horizon”.
And I can’t watch “Jurassic Park” with Sam Neill saving the kids without hearing him say: “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see…”
Fishburne is great as Capt. Miller. He’s pretty much great in every project he does, but in “Event Horizon” he’s stuck wrong footed by the scientist (Neill) and the situation. And the now living ship Neill created. Did I mention the corpsiciles?
Props to Sean Pertwee as well.
And the designers- if I came across an abandoned starship that looked like the Event Horizon? Nope. Arm the photon torpedoes, Mr. Chekov, we’ve got a huge nope on screen.
Sorry- I think the rescue ship was called “Lewis and Clark”. Been a few years since I watched. Still creeped by Dr. Weir (Neill).
I’ll nominate Daamon sepu Kaamhaara, from Rachel Neumeier’s recent space opera No Foreign Sky.
@31
I’d argue for two: I’m guessing you mean A Civil Campaign, but I’d also describe Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance that way.
@38
Gunny Kerr is effectively captain of the Peacekeeper crew later on.
John Grimes who plied the Rim Worlds is head and shoulders above the ones mentioned above. A Bertram Chandler, his author, was career mariner and even a ship’s captain himself. Grimes was based on the real deal.
@60 The Palomino was the name of the spaceship in the Disney film The Black Hole. Since the story ended with images of angels and demons perhaps that may explain connecting it with Event Horizon.
SF- adjacent, Captain Jack Aubrey, particularly when he commands his beloved Surprise.
51, Jack Aubrey was in a series of 21 books — how many sequels would you like?
However, I agree — damn fine captain and leader
Thanks #64 JHarris, been a long time since I saw “Black Hole”, wouldn’t have thought of that. Somehow Palomino just got stuck in my head. Pretty sure the rescue/salvage ship in “Event Horizon” was the Lewis and Clark, just too lazy to look it up. Spose I have to watch both again now. And what was the name of the main ship in “The Black Hole”? Arrgh.
#63), see #12, above.
Three more additions to the list: Capt. Krausa, of the merchant vessel Sisu, and Col. Brisby, of the Guard cruiser Hydra, both qualify – in different ways, of course – and Col. Baslim, of course, but his record as such is largely second-hand. ;)
Elizabeth@66: I do have many (all?) of Patrick O’Brian’s books, and am very slowly working my way through them! I was just lamenting that the film was so very good that it’s a shame there won’t be another as they had originally planned.
Ryan Corman@67: Spose I have to watch both again now
Ye gods, no, really, you don’t. Life is far too short; why subject yourself to that?
EDIT: I mean, I just gave in and watched Event Horizon for the first time last night and, you know what? It’s not underrated.
@69 NomadUK- I already watched “Black Hole” again, gotta say I still don’t get it- it starts as a poorly filmed ’50s style space opera, but breaks down on so many levels… then becomes some sort of weak religious propaganda. Waste of a couple of good actors, and the special effects are, ah, really “special”. The Slim Pickens beat up R2D2 rip just ruins the robot scenes for me. Sigh. I’m not sorry I confirmed my original impression. “Event Horizon”, I find entertaining because I love the acting chops of Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, and Sean Pertwee (remember him opposite Derek Jacobi in the “Cadfael” series, or in the killer werewolf v military film “Dog Soldiers”?). And imo if you’re going to do a “haunted house in space” movie, why not throw in that the experimental synthetic black hole star drive took the “house” to Hell instead of Alpha Centauri- and all the crew lost it and the “house” becomes sentient and evil? Certainly not a great film, even with the actors involved, but again, imo, beautifully filmed and really has some creepy moments. I’m going to stand by my opinion that it’s underrated, even though I acknowledge that you’re absolutely correct about “Black Hole”, and probably have better taste in cinema than I. And the special effects in “EH” were at least competent, something that can’t be said about “BH”. And I enjoyed the interplay between Capt. Miller and Dr. Weir, right up to the scene where Miller asks “What happened to your eyes” and Weir replies “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.”- where an antagonistic relationship turns into all out war. Oh, and the scene where Pertwee finds the demo charge in the locker right at the end of the countdown, and simply closes his eyes and tips his head down? That’s exactly how I would react in the face of certain immediate annihilation.
I especially liked the design of the Event Horizon. It just looks like something that should be fired upon and destroyed, rather than investigated. Your experimental starship up and disappears for seven years, then just shows up with everyone dead? Nope. Just nope. There’s photon torpedoes and turbo lasers and all sorts of missiles to solve that problem. “Ah, yeah, control, couldn’t save or salvage, target… I mean ship broke up and was sucked down into Neptune as we approached, returning to base”.
But thanks for the comment, and btw I sail, and love Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey series, bought it as a set years back, still read them when I want a rippin’ good sea story. Think the films were well done, even if Russell Crowe isn’t short and somewhat chubby. Have a great week, will watch for your comments in the future! R