Individual And Collective Continuing Villains In The Works Of Five Authors

See the blog search result for Villains. (Scroll down.)

(i) Ian Fleming.
(ii) Poul Anderson.
(iii) SM Stirling.
(iv) Stieg Larsson.
(v) John Sanders.

(i) Ian Fleming
Fleming presents a new individual villain in each installment and also excels at collective villains. (See More Villains, What To Look Out For and Clandestine Lunarians And Others.) Apart from SMERSH and SPECTRE, several criminal organizations are mentioned or appear more than once, e.g., the Mafia is represented in:

Goldfinger's Hoods' Congress;
Blofeld's SPECTRE;
The Man With The Golden Gun's Group.

(ii) Poul Anderson
Main individual villains:

Aycharaych in the Dominic Flandry series;
Merau Varagan in the Time Patrol series.

Main collective villains:

the Merseians in the Dominic Flandry series;
Neldorians and Exaltationists in the Time Patrol series (but there is a threat even greater than them).

(iii) SM Stirling
Stirling imagines purer evil than anyone else.

An individual villain: the demon-worshiping cannibal, Count Ignatieff.
An evil slave-owning nation: the Draka.
An evil species: the Shadowspawn, the originals of demons and vampires.

(iv) Stieg Larsson
Individual villain: Zala.
Collective villain: the Section, covering up for Zala.

(v) John Sanders
An individual villain: Guido Fawkes, son of Guy Fawkes.
Collective villain: the Sealed Knot.

Since Poul Anderson wrote both historical fiction and science fictional secret service fiction, I recommend Anderson fan's to read John Sanders' long out of print historical secret service series if they can find it. You will certainly appreciate how Sanders boosts the Sealed Knot as a collective villain:

"'...that Cavalier terrorist organization with which I think you are familiar.'
"Pym's smile froze. 'Mr. S.K.,' he breathed. 'I might have guessed the Sealed Knot would be involved in this.'"
-John Sanders, The Hat Of Authority (London, 1966), 2, p. 23.

"'Every assassination attempt upon the Protector, every malicious rumour, every gathering together of traitors, malcontents and rogues of every sort, can be traced directly to the organization of the Sealed Knot. To date, thank God in His mercy, we have foiled them all.'"
-ibid.

The man conversing with Pym is his superior, John Thurloe. According to Thurloe's Wikipedia article, his intelligence service "...broke the Sealed Knot." There is now a historical reenactment society of that name.

Thurloe was a real person. Also Fleming's Head of SMERSH, G., answered to Serov, a real person.

And that is plenty about villains for the time being.

Endless Villains

As long as action-adventure fiction endures, endless new villains must be created but who writes the best villains? Moriarty is a classic although he was created only to kill Holmes and die with him but failed in the first part. Ian Fleming had to create a new villain for each novel and co-created Blofeld very late in the series. (These examples are relevant here because Poul Anderson was a Holmesian and Flandry is kind of an sf Bond.) I identify two successors of Blofeld here.

Poul Anderson did not write only the kind of fiction that requires a villain in every novel. However, when appropriate, he created perfect villains, in particular Aycharaych and Merau Varagan.

SM Stirling excels at villains. William Walker has made John Martins, who reminds me of Ralph Barnes, work for him. Martins reflects:

"'Oh, man, that guy is, like, an orc...'" (Island In The Sea Of Time, p. 392) -

- and:

"This is, like, totally Mordor here. That dude's head is in a truly fucked-up place." (p. 394)

Escaped slaves brought back by hounds are flogged or crucified. As I remarked about the Draka theoretician here, I would like to put such a character in a society where she is free to flourish and prosper as an individual but not at anyone else's expense.

More Villains

Searching the blog for "villains," I find an extraordinary number of posts analyzing villains created by Poul Anderson and related authors. I do not want to repeat that analysis. However, it might be of interest to note that I have found an author who, I think, presents the most interesting succession of villains. In Ian Fleming's novels:

Bond discredits Le Chiffre, who is then assassinated by SMERSH;

Beria directs SMERSH;

G succeeds Beria;

Bond kills Mr. Big, Donovan Grant and Goldfinger and captures Rosa Klebb, all of SMERSH;

Bond meanwhile also fights the Russian-backed Nazi, Hugo Drax, and the Spangled Mob - the latter later joins Goldfinger's Hoods' Congress;

while recuperating from the SMERSH attempt to assassinate him, Bond eliminates the independent operator, Dr. No;

 
when Khruschev disbands the discredited SMERSH, some of its members join SPECTRE;

Bond defeats Largo and Uhlmann of SPECTRE and destroys the organization twice;

Bond kills the founder and director of SPECTRE, Blofeld;

because of the aftermath of his fight with Blofeld, Bond must kill Scaramanga to regain his position in the Secret Service;

the Mafia is represented in the Hoods' Congress, SPECTRE and Scaramanga's Group;

SPECTRE poaches men from the French equivalent of the Mafia, the Union Corse, which then helps Bond against SPECTRE.

And I did not expect that list to grow so long.

Reforming Villains

I like it when fictional villains reform, which they do not do very often, especially not when they are needed as recurring villains. Poul Anderson's Merau Varagan is unrepentant in defeat. Anderson's Aycharaych turns out to have a worthy motivation but remains unapologetic about his merciless means.

SM Stirling creates many vile villains but does show his readers the Armingers at least reforming although Norman's moral reform does not begin until he is in the hereafter. Better late than never.

Who else in fiction?

GK Chesterton's Flambeau;
Lionel (not Lex) Luthor in the Smallville TV series.

Not many.

Villains

Can we divide fiction into the kind that has villains and the kind that does not? Needless to say, Poul Anderson wrote both kinds. In Anderson's Dominic Flandry series, Tachwyr the Dark is Flandry's opposite number but it is Aycharaych, weaving an interstellar web of deception and subversion, that is the main villain.

In Anderson's Time Patrol series, there are installments that have a time criminal villain whereas others instead feature problems generated by Patrol members themselves. The arch-villain that does emerge, Merau Varagan, is not just a time travelling Aycharaych. Their motivations are entirely different.

SM Stirling devises an endless succession of villains. In the Emberverse series, the Lord Protector and his wife are joined by the malicious Tiphaine. Stieg Larsson also excels in the creation of villains. Before we encounter Lisbeth's gangster father, Zala, we must first meet both her rapist guardian and a sadistic serial killer. Larsson's point is that there are Men Who Hate Women, his original title. Stirling's point also seems to be that there are a lot of really bad people out there.

Another Villain

If you search the blog for "Villains," then you might be amazed at how much comes up. In fact, see here.

Of course, we start with Poul Anderson's villains:

the succession of time criminals in the Time Patrol series (see here);
the differing motivations of Merau Varagan and Aycharaych;
characters like Edward Garver, the bureaucrat, and Benoni Strang, the revolutionary - Anderson shows us what it is like to be them.

Then we compare Anderson's villains with those of other authors:

Count Ignatieff;
William Walker;
Norman Arminger;
Blofeld;
Zala;
Max.

I mention all this because Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol definitely makes a distinguished new addition to this list: Mal'akh, who considers himself a masterpiece.

Fictional Villains

Between reading projects for this blog, I am rereading something else, Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. Admiring the way that Larsson introduces his main villain, I am reminded of other fictional villains including, of course, Poul Anderson's. However, by searching the blog, I find that I have posted extensively on this subject before! See here. Yet another "villains" post would seem to be unnecessary.

In Larsson's trilogy, a couple researching prostitution occasionally encounter the name "Zala" but are unable to learn anything about this individual. The name inspires fear and is used as a threat. Larsson's title character, spying on the researchers, shivers when she reads the name "Zala." It means something to her. She even knows that it is an abbreviation for "Zalachenko" but does not enlighten the readers. Larsson is skilfully introducing a major villain.

Because Zala operates in contemporary Sweden and is neither an alien nor a time traveler, he complements Anderson's Aycharaych and Merau Varagan extremely well. Readers of crime fiction might not be persuaded to sample science fiction but I am confident that sf readers who check out Larsson will not be disappointed.

Villains Beyond Villains

SM Stirling's several villains beat everyone else's for the sheer purity of their evil whereas Ian Fleming excels at the elaborateness of his villainous organizations and sometimes the upper echelons of such an organization are real people. We will consider examples from Fleming, John Sanders and Poul Anderson.

When James Bond fights Le Chiffre, the latter is assassinated by SMERSH which, at that time, is run by Beria. After Bond has defeated Mr Big of SMERSH, he is confronted by SMERSH's Chief Executioner, Donovan Grant, then by its Head of Operations, Rosa Klebb, but we, the readers, also see the Head of Planning, Kronsteen, and the overall Head, G, who receives a phone call from his superior, Serov. Thus, in SMERSH, there have been two historical figures. As a last gasp of SMERSH, Bond later defeats their treasurer, Goldfinger, whose name is famous although he is fictional. Later, Bond defeats Largo and Uhlmann of SPECTRE before confronting Blofeld twice. See also my ideas for Blofeld's Successors. (For the sake of simplicity, I have enumerated neither the other Russian intelligence chiefs with whom G confers nor the various criminal organizations represented in SPECTRE.)

In John Sanders' historical novels, the villainous organization, the Sealed Knot (a real organization) answers direct to the exiled Stuart (a real person) and that brings us to the reverse situation in Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, where Prince Rupert's antagonist, Sir Malachi Shelgrave, answers to:

"...a Roundhead officer, to judge from his bearing and russet coat: a strong-built person whose homely features grew mustache, chin-tuft, and warts." (xxi, p. 193)

The warts alone tell us that this is "'...General Cromwell...,'" (p. 194) who also appears in Alan Moore's Jerusalem.

The Psychology Of a Villain II

James Bond's villains are all one-volume men, except Blofeld. I suppose that, when we enumerate and compare fictional villains, we contemplate the kind of characters that come on-stage to perform overtly evil acts whereas:

Sauron remains off-stage;

Tachwyr the Dark is Flandry's Merseian opposite number but does not himself do anything that we might really call "evil";

CS Lewis' Wither and Frost are thoroughly corrupt individuals, systematically destroying their own humanity in order knowingly to serve demons, but they are not generally known about;

Lewis' White Witch is a more familiar villainous figure.

SM Stirling surpasses Poul Anderson, I think, both in his elaboration of the alternative histories idea and in his creation of unequivocally evil villains. When Benoni Strang is dying, we feel some sympathy for him whereas we cannot possibly sympathize either with Ignatieff, a ritualistic cannibal who confidently expects that, after death, he will go to Hell as one of the torturers, or with Walker, a moral imbecile for whom there is no difference between external reality and virtual reality.

Can someone like Walker be made to understand the suffering that he has caused to others? If he did come to understand it, would he be incapacitated by guilt? If he claimed to have been morally reformed, then it would remain impossible to trust him in any position of power or responsibility. But usually such characters are simply killed - or are defeated but live to return in a sequel.

Heroes, Villains And People II

In Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind, Daniel Holm of Avalon faces off against Admiral Cajal of the Terran Empire whereas, in Anderson's Ensign Flandry, Dominic Flandry of the Terran Empire faces off against the Merseian, Brechdan Ironrede, Protector of the Roidhun's Grand Council. However, we take the side of Holm against Cajal and of Flandry against Brechdan. Thus, we are first against, then for, the Empire.

Cajal is an honorable enemy attempting no more than the rectification of a border dispute whereas Brechdan is a fictional "villain" plotting the subjugation or extermination of mankind. Flandry's other indisputable "villain," the Chereionite Aycharaych, cynically manipulates populations and individuals for what would have been a worthy end, the preservation of his racial heritage, if his means had been less devious, destructive and demonic.

Thus, Anderson excels both at "heroes and villains" narratives and at rounded novels presenting both sides of a conflict. However, Ian Fleming, Stieg Larsson, SM Stirling and Dornford Yates routinely present vastly viler villains. In Yates' Gale Warning, at the end of Chapter X (of XV), two of our heroes finally behold for the first time, through binoculars, across a valley, their long sought quarry:

"Barabbas...robber-chief...a great, big bull of a man, all dressed in white."
-Dornford Yates, Gale Warning (London, 1939), CHAPTER X, p. 210.

The drive and force that make this "Barabbas" a lawless puppet-master are visible across the valley. Maybe we should be relieved that Anderson did not turn his considerable creative talents to describing individuals as evil as Fleming's Rosa Klebb, Larsson's Zala, Stirling's Ignatieff or Yates' several equivalents?

(For some information about Yates' two main "heroes," see Mansel And Chandos.)

Addendum, later the same evening, then the following morning: See also The Structure Of A Series: Dornford Yates and The Structure Of A Series: Dornford Yates II. (Yates matches Anderson for series complexity.)

Villains And Their Villainy

Poul Anderson always gave a fair hearing to characters that he disagreed with even his villains although maybe there was nothing good to be said about the reckless egoism of the Exaltationists, who lacked even mutual loyalty.

SM Stirling's villains are a purer breed, variously cannibals, diabolists, slavers and sadists. Stirling makes an important distinction. In Shadowspawn Volumes I and II, the heroine enjoys consensual sadomasochistic role-play whereas the villainness enjoys inflicting nonconsensual agony: a big and important difference. Some of the villainness' actions verge on the unreadable.

It is to Stirling's credit that he makes this distinction very clear. The heroine's sexual preferences do not make her depraved whereas the villainness is as depraved as you can imagine. I accept that such people exist although there is a limit to how much I want to read about them.

Overlapping Ideas Inside A Notional Venn Diagram

In Mysterious Villains, I linked to search results for The Prisoner on the Personal and Literary Reflections blog. Then, after rereading the opening sections of the post, "Bond, UNCLE and The Prisoner," I googled David McDaniel and learned that his unpublished UNCLE novel, The Final Affair, is on-line. See here.

This generated reflection on three issues addressed by Anderson and others. Such issues occupy the AB section of a Venn diagram. For present purposes, A = Anderson whereas B = Bond and others.

Three Common Issues

understated Holmesian references;
fictional collective villains;
the question, "Who is the ultimate enemy?"

Major Collective Villains In Twentieth Century Fiction
SMERSH in the early James Bond novels;
SPECTRE in the later James Bond novels;
SPECTRE in the early, and one later, James Bond films;
Thrush in The Man From UNCLE TV series;
Thrush in David McDaniel's UNCLE novels where the Technological Hierarchy was founded by former lieutenants of the criminal genius, the Professor, and is now coordinated by three Ultimate Computers;
the Village in The Prisoner TV series.

The two SPECTREs are different whereas the two presentations of Thrush are meant to be compatible. This gives us five classic villainous organizations. Poul Anderson's equivalent organization is "the gang," with its undersea HQ. See also What We Expect.

Four Questions
Who was the Professor? McDaniel does not tell us...
Who is Number One? In the cinematic SPECTRE, Blofeld. In the Village, the Prisoner.
Where is Thrush Central? McDaniel tells us that it is triple and mobile.
Who is the ultimate enemy? The Prisoner realizes that it is himself. Anderson's UN-Man realizes that it is "man himself."

Action-adventure fiction meets philosophy.

Series Villains

We have discussed series villains before. An iconic image in twentieth century cinema is the cat-stroking James Bond villain whose face is not seen and whose name is not uttered until Bond comes face to face with him in the fifth film. We commend CS Lewis and SM Stirling for creating truly evil and literally diabolical villains.

Either a series villain returns like a recurring decimal or, more interestingly, the author progressively reveals more about him until at last we are given his "origin story." Aspects of the second process can be seen in Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry and Time Patrol series and in Ian Fleming's James Bond series.

Flandry
(i) Aycharaych, a Chereionite and universal telepath, is the spearhead of Merseian Intelligence.
(ii) A prequel reveals that the Chereionites were the Ancients whose interstellar civilization ended ages ago.
(iii) Flandry, learning that Aycharaych is the last Chereionite and has served Merseia only to preserve the Chereionite heritage, bombards Chereion, probably killing Aycharaych.
(iv) A long term plan of Aycharaych's comes to fruition and nearly succeeds. Tachwyr wonders whether Aycharaych will return.
(v) Pete Pinto suggested to Anderson that Aycharaych should return but in an Aycharaych novel, not in a Flandry novel. However, Anderson went on to write a different series and also more seriously speculative fiction.

V For Villain

A future history series is not about particular heroes and villains but about all of mankind, also alien-kind. However, an individual instalment or sub-series may feature a villain if it is that kind of narrative. The second instalment of Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, "Un-Man," displays a long list but the "protean enemy" behind them all is man himself. In The Prisoner TV series, when the title character unmasks the ultimate villain, Number One, he sees his own face. Thus, "Un-Man" and The Prisoner make the same point. At the climax of Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, Evy does not unmask and identify the dead V but dons one of his masks. She is the hero.

One kind of villain wants to conquer the world, thus to unite it under him. However, in "Un-Man," the UN has united the world and the villains aim to re-divide it. Heroes often race against time to save the world and succeed. In Moore's Watchmen, they race against time to prevent the world from being saved and fail. In James Blish's Black Easter, demons win Armageddon. In the sequel, Satan becomes God. Insightful authors reverse stereotypes and examine the consequences. In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, Lucifer Morningstar retires as Lord of Hell, thus generating new problems. In Anderson's Technic History, the Merseian Roidhunate aims to conquer the galaxy but we learn that there would be autonomous realms, not a unified state. Other intelligent races and Merseians from outside the Roidhunate have no such ambition. Thus, a future history is more than a heroes and villains routine. Indeed, Dominic Flandry prevents Hugh McCormac from seizing the Imperial Throne by force but later works for the successful usurper, Hans Molitor. Fiction reflects complex reality.

Smiling Villains

We have had many references to Hamlet. Here is another:

"That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain, she thought."
-SM Stirling, The Desert And The Blade (New York, 2016), Chapter Twenty-Nine, pp. 701-702.

And we find that we have already quote this line. See here. This could lead us back onto the theme of villains. However, I have exhausted what I have to say about such characters for the time being! Stirling's character quotes Hamlet after an interesting reflection on the difficulty of acting one way and thinking another. Those who find this easy are dangerous - smiling villains.

Time Patrol Villains

Although Babylonian recruits to the Time Patrol are given a battle-of-the-gods routine, the series is remarkably restrained as regards good guys versus bad guys story lines. However, when it comes, the war between the Patrol and the Exaltationists is spectacular, although even that is not the climax.

The earliest collection was Guardians Of Time, originally complete with just four stories. In the first story, two new recruits to the Patrol apprehend an individual time criminal but then both the recruits become criminals with different consequences for each of them.

The second and third stories show other kinds of problems encountered by the Patrol. The fourth, originally published second but moved to the end of the volume to provide a climax, shows a successful temporal change by a group who, although they appear in just this one story, receive almost a collective continuing villain status:

"'...Neldorians, two-hundred-fifth millennium...an age of bandits who had 'already' given the Patrol a lot of work."
-Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 221.

"Neldorian," like "Danellian," is a term invented for a particular purpose and does not bear any other meaning.

(Similarly, Moriarty, introduced in what was meant to be an ultimate story, received a retrospective continuing villain status.)

A fifth story, added in later editions, showed another kind of problem encountered by the Patrol.

A second volume, Time Patrolman, comprised just two longer stories. Again, the second of these showed another kind of problem, but the first, "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks", instead of reviving the Neldorians, not only introduced a more flamboyant criminal group, the Exaltationists, but also included among their numbers an individual continuing villain, Merau Varagan. Despite, as yet, appearing in only one story, Varagan manages to be a continuing villain because a reminiscence and flashback show us Everard's first encounter with this leading Exaltationist and Everard arrests him at the end, although others escape. Others escaping could imply a sequel featuring Exaltationists although, at the time, I just took it to mean that the Patrol's work is on-going.

The third volume was the short juvenile, Year Of The Ransom, set, from Everard's point of view, before "Ivory" so that Varagan is still at large and a Conquisador stealing an Exaltationist time cycle becomes an individual time criminal, only the second in the series, after Stane in the opening story. Suddenly, we are surrounded by villains.

The fourth volume, The Shield Of Time, is a long novel but also three interconnected stories. The first is the spectacular showdown with the Exaltationists, including yet another flashback with Varagan, this one set just after his arrest. This time, the main villain is his female clone who inherits the name of a spear-carrying character in ...Ransom. The second and third stories and two later works are back to showing other kinds of problems, although, in the climax of The Shield Of Time, a personal causal nexus, i.e., an individual whose world line interacts with so many others that small changes to his career alter the course of history, has almost the status of a time criminal.

Counting The Shield Of Time as three, the series comprises thirteen installments of which five have literal villains. Everard fights the Exaltationists four times in three stories. A suitable rearrangement of volumes would give them a trilogy.

Superior Villains

(Dig that cover!)

Poul Anderson's most intriguing continuing villains are the time travelling Merau Varagan and the telepathic Aycharaych. Tachwyr the Dark is merely Dominic Flandry's opposite number, not very villainous.

SM Stirling's Count Ignatieff and others surpass Anderson's villains for sheer evil.

Ian Fleming surpasses Anderson and Stirling by presenting almost one new larger than life villain for each new novel. Even when Blofeld returns, he has a new alias and a new exotic headquarters - in Paris, on an Alp, in a Japanese Castle of Death - each time.

My advice:

read or reread all three authors;

read the Time Patrol series, the Technic History and the James Bond series in chronological order;

start Stirling with The Peshawar Lancers or Conquistador.

It is after 9:00 PM and I now resolve not to post again until tomorrow AM. I will go out and maybe visit the Gregson Centre.

Recurrent Villains

(A classic "hero and villain stalking each other" illustration. Look at Flandry's face.)

As a rule, recurring villains are never killed, because they are recurring characters, and never reformed, because they must return as villains. There are exceptions.

In Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry series, when Aycharaych's motivation to work for Merseia, therefore against Terra, had been removed, he might have reformed but unfortunately he never returned. Also, he would have had to overcome his aesthetic pleasure in the manipulation of intelligent beings and the fomentation of strife.

IIRC, SM Stirling's Rudi Mackenzie spared his antagonist, Graber. Will anything come of this? Might Father Ignatius be able to exorcise whatever it is that possesses leading Cutters? I have a poor track record for anticipating authors but I wonder whether anything might come of this line of enquiry. In another timeline, I imagine that Stirling's Count Ignatieff was irredeemable.

Routine Villains

Authors like Ian Fleming and Poul Anderson regularly describe fictional villains. Some become continuing characters whereas others are introduced and killed in a single short story. They must sound evil but not interchangeable. I have picked two examples for contrast.

Von Hammerstein:

short;
square;
almost naked;
about five feet four;
boxer's shoulders and hips;
stomach going to fat;
black hair all over his body;
hairless head and face;
a glittering whitish yellow skull with a dent at the back;
a square, hard, thrusting Prussian officer's face;
close-set, piggish eyes;
a large, unpleasant mouth.

(Bond villains have distinctive appearances.)

Duke Alfred of Varrak:

big;
running to paunchiness;
still muscular;
gray beard;
blocky face;
devoid of humour but alive with pride;
graciously spoken.

Von Hammerstein takes an arrow in the back and Chives fears that he took the liberty of disintegrating the Duke.

Heroes And Villains

Poul Anderson did not write a lot of heroes and villains fiction, did he? Dominic Flandry has Aycharaych and Manse Everard has Merau Varagan. Is that Varagan in the center of the image? In The Corridors Of Time, Brann of the Rangers is initially presented as a bad guy and even answers exactly the same physical description as Varagan except for eye color. See here. However, Anderson shows us good sides of Brann - as he usually does with his heroes' adversaries.

Fictional villains do not often see the error of their ways. Father Brown converts Flambeau but this is unique - I think. Aycharaych, if he survived, would no longer have had any reason to continue working for the Merseians but that is not the same thing. We never see him regretting all the suffering he has caused.

Jerry Pournelle's and SM Stirling's Geoffrey Niles does start to see the error of his ways:

"It had seemed so romantic, help the poor against the Spartan aristocracy, overthrow the tyrants, but the Spartan kings weren't tyrants. Not at all.

"He thought of what Skilly had ordered. Kill all the prisoners. His troops would have obeyed, but of course he hadn't transmitted that order.

"I was on the wrong side. This isn't Lawrence of Arabia. No romance here. This isn't anything I want to be part of."
-Jerry Pournelle and SM Stirling, The Prince (New York, 2002), p. 847.

It is good to see a character who has got things wrong starting to get them right. Does anything like this happen in Anderson's many works?

Lastly, the Smallville TV series presents two very interesting character transformations:

Clark Kent's dishonesty gradually transforms Lex Luthor from his friend into his adversary;
meanwhile, Lex's father, Lionel, somehow changes from a really bad guy into a really good guy, prepared to keep Clark's secret and even to sacrifice himself for Martha Kent.

I really wish that Poul Anderson had applied his skills as a hard sf writer to a Superman novel.