NOTES ON NOBODY’S CHILDREN

WARNING: This page contains substantial SPOILERS for Nobody’s Children.


NOTES ON THE FAMILY

The family of Bernice Surprise Summerfield is one of the best documented in science fiction. This is thanks in no small part to Lawrence Miles, whose 1999 novel Dead Romance recounted the history of the Summerfield line across some 22 generations in the space of eleven pages, from the birth of Jonah Summerfield Sr in 1930 to Benny’s then-present day of 2596.

At that point Benny had already been blessed with an absent-then-rediscovered father, Isaac; a deadbeat ex-husband, Jason; another, never-seen ex-husband from a rather dubious marriage of convenience; a putative descendant by the name (perhaps) of Benny Kane; and a son named Keith Brannigan Summerfield-Kane who had (and indeed still has) yet to be born.

Now, thirteen years later in her own rather quirky timeline, she has a half-alien son named Peter; a live-in deadbeat ex-husband; another never-seen ex-husband from another dubious marriage of convenience; and a support network extending to her father’s hideaway on 1980s Earth. In Kate’s novella she becomes a godmother to several thousand Mim children.

Any attempt to chart the family tree of the Summerfields and Kanes would end up including several dozen names at the very least. And that’s not counting clones, or posthuman descendants, or a shadowy figure named Judy Summerfield who no-one in the family ever seems to talk about.

Most of those characters don’t appear in Nobody’s Children, but Isaac, Jason and Peter do (as does Peter’s father Adrian, albeit briefly). Like Return of the Living Dad, where Isaac first appeared, this triptych of novellas is about family, and about Bernice’s in particular.

It’s about children, and the lengths parents will go to for them. It’s about the assumptions we inherit from our ancestors, and those we pass on to our descendants. And it’s about building a family from the materials we have to hand, laying the foundations for future generations in the ramshackle genes and unstable beliefs we find lying about in our lives.


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Nobody’s Children cover © Lee Sullivan 2007.
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