“Don’t panic.” (1)
My favorite part of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is when it’s discovered that the question to the answer of life, the universe, and everything is found in a giant computer called Earth, which of course, gets destroyed right before the computer can spit out the question. The irony of that whole scenario was hilarious to me. HHGG is hands down one of the quirkiest sci-fi books I’ve ever read, and if you haven’t read it yet, not gonna lie, I feel a little sorry for you.
As I make my way through the core characters of Otherside: The Serenity, I find myself thinking a lot about who I was when I started this book, and who I am now. The book deals with a strange combination of beliefs, or thoughts, revolving around life, death, and the afterlife…and in the same way that it’s a journey for Alanis and her friends, it was a journey for me.
I won’t go into my faith journey here simply because I think that would be enough for a blog post all by itself, and I want to talk about another character today, but I will say this — it’s been strange. Which is, I think, an adequate way to describe my next character, Benjamin Pates (Benny).
I have a real soft spot for Benny. I don’t really know why, I just do. Maybe it’s because he’s weird, and I’m kind of weird, so I identify with the weirdness.
Benny is my ethereal character. He has a tendency to say things that make others go, “Okaaay…that’s an…interesting thing to say.”
He’s quirky, and he’s secure in the fact that he’s quirky. He doesn’t really worry or seem to care that other people may find him odd. Which again, I relate to because as a teen I spent a good portion of my time getting strange looks from people for saying weird stuff or doing odd things. He’s also quite mellow, and carefree. Very zen-like.
His parents, who we don’t formally meet in this book, run a hippie shop in downtown Sable, and also maintain the lighthouse, which is attached to their house.
The other thing that I think makes Benny an interesting and engaging character is that he’s blind, and has been blind since birth. So, writing Benny, and especially when it’s from his point of view, is always such a refreshing challenge as a sighted person because I have to imagine the world without my sight, and how one would experience it. When I describe how he moves through a room, for instance, I don’t use any descriptive words that a sighted person would use, because I want the readers to experience the way Benny walks through the world.
In the band, he plays the keyboard, and he loves to read. His introductory scene features him describing a book for a friend, who asks him to read it to her later because it’s in braille (you might notice there’s a slight nod to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy/Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency here).
One of my biggest pet peeves when there’s a character who has some kind of disability is when they’re either (a) written completely helpless and hindered by their disability, or (b) the opposite, that they are perfect people who never make mistakes. I never want to portray Benny in either of these ways; he’s just a quirky kid, who like the rest of the group, loves his friends, and loves music. Because Benny is not a main-focus character, there are areas of his personality I’m looking forward to expanding on in the sequel that I didn’t get to in this book. I mentioned how much I love flawed characters in both my posts on Alanis and Aimee, and this is an area I’m really looking forward to exploring more with Benny.
I hope that in this book I captured Benny in such a way that you enjoy his wanderings, musings, and general oddities.
Next week, I’ll discuss the final character of Alanis’ core group of friends — Alaska Tension. Until that time, don’t panic, and don’t forget to bring your towel.
Otherside: The Serenity is currently available on Amazon. You can get the book in both Kindle and Paperback versions. If you have read the book, and would like to review it, you can do so on Amazon, and Goodreads.
(1) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglass Adams, 1979
H.J VandeRiet 