5 Great Dad Moments in Science Fiction & Fantasy History

Aral Vorkosigan Saves His Son (The Warrior’s Apprentice, by Lois McMaster Bujold)
Aral Vorkosigan is not a man who easily bends his principles or behaves counter to his beliefs; you can probably count the number of times he’s actually used his power and influence for personal gain on one hand—remarkable considering how much power he wields at various times in his career. At the end of the second book in Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, his son Miles stands accused of raising a private army and is poised to be drummed out of the military and executed, but Aral influences the proceedings so that Miles is charged instead with the equally serious crime of treason. Why is having your son accused of treason a grand Dad Moment? Because Aral knew treason could never be proved—while it was pretty clear that Miles had indeed raised a private army (even if he had a really good reason). It’s a neat way for Aral to demonstrate his loyalty to his son without, technically, violating his own moral code.

Jor-El Sends His Son Into Space (Superman, by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster)
Normally, a father strapping his infant son into a homemade rocket and blasting him into space would be considered not so awesome, but when the planet is about to explode and the rocket was built by a genius scientist, you’re working with a different rubric. Besides, if Jor-El hadn’t made arrangements to save Kal-El, our world wouldn’t have Superman, and without Superman, comic book history assures us, the Earth would have been destroyed several times over. The most awesome part of Jor-El’s story is that when faced with the imminent destruction of his entire planet, he focuses all his efforts on saving his infant son. That’s love folks. Though we can’t be the first to wonder why he couldn’t have built, you know, a slightly larger rocket.

Vader Drops the Mic (Star Wars)
There is no way to discuss fathers or fatherhood (or Cloud Cities) in the modern age without mentioning Darth Vader and the Plot Twist Heard Around the World. The Star Wars universe is obsessed with fatherly legacies, but Darth Vader is at the center of two of the galaxy’s most awesome father moments—first, when he informs Luke Skywalker that he’s is, in fact, his father—a move that could generously be interpreted as an attempt to stop Luke from committing suicide, as the boy surviving a fall from atop that…weathervane thingy in Cloud City hardly seemed likely). And of course, in Return of the Jedi, Vader sacrifices himself to kill the Emperor and spare Luke’s life and sanity. Vader definitely wins the award for Most Evolved Dad in SFF, having journeyed from from orphan pod racer, to prodigy Jedi, to evil number two, to glow-y Force Ghost.

Ned Stark Has a Very Bad Day (Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin)
Ned Stark strength pervades the entirety of A Song of Ice and Fire (so far) despite (spoilers!) the fact that he’s been dead throughout most of it. Ned is an example of a just man, a man who strove to teach his family what it means to be responsible—to your vassals, your lord, and to the people you rule—but in his ultimate Moment of Doom, he’s also an example of a man who is very, very bad at playing politics. Despite everything that has gone wrong for the Lord of Winterfell, Ned is just as surprised as the reader when his expected sentence of exile is revoked, and the scene quickly transitions into Ned’s very own terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. It’s not inspiring, but it’s definitely one of the most memorable Dad Moments in SFF.

A Good Man Goes to War (Caliban’s War, by James S.A. Corey)
The story of Praxidike Meng’s search for his kidnapped daughter isn’t the main plotline of Caliban’s War (the second in Corey’s Expanse series), but it’s the plot thread that ultimately ties the rest of the story together. More importantly, when isolated from everything else, it’s an awe-inspiring story of a father who is so affected by the loss of his daughter, he not only dedicates his every ounce of energy to finding her, he forgets to eat. While it’s clear that Prax lacks the hero skill set and needs a tremendous amount of help to set things right, it’s equally clear that if he had that skill set, he would tear entire planets apart to find his daughter—and most of the events in this awesome book wouldn’t have happened without Prax acting as a catalyst of awesome to everyone around him.
This Father’s Day, when you think of your own Dad, try to imagine what he’d be capable of if he had a raygun, or The Force, or a two-handed broadsword made of Valyrian Steel.