Veronica Scott
Copyright © 2021 Roswell Daily Record
By Veronica Scott
Special to the Daily Record
June is the month for weddings and many sci-fi romance (SFR) stories lead to weddings — not all, some end with claiming a mate, pair bonding, becoming partners, cohabiting in the spaceship/space station/alien world, etc. Typically, the happy couple is contending with many more complications than the ins and outs of planning a wedding. I asked my friends at the Facebook SFR Brigade group to suggest some stories with weddings from their own pages.
Warning: There may be spoilers for the novels or series ahead in part 2 of the column.
Aurora Springer is a SFR author who does amazing world-building and her books came to my mind when I decided on this topic. “Grand Master’s Mate,” Grand Masters’ Galaxy Book 3 has two weddings — with different couples. The author explains, “‘Grand Master’s Mate’ is the culmination of a trilogy where empath Violet Hunter achieves her full powers and weds her Grand Master Athanor Griffin. The book opens with an abortive wedding and ends with the marriage of Violet and Athanor Griffin. Along the way, the powerful couple befriended a variety of aliens and destroyed their enemies.” Only in sci-fi romance does a bride have items like that on her to-do list.
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Stephanie West shared details from two of her of her books’ weddings. “‘In Nameless Fate,’ Fated Mate Book 1, it’s almost like a shotgun wedding; the hero has just fought his nemesis — an alien werewolf — for the heroine, and for the alpha nemesis to save face the main characters have to get hitched. The MCs are at the center of the pack in a grand hall reminiscent of a Moroccan bazaar and there they pledge their love, as two married elder Lupercalia bind their wrists to each other. The H (hero) then ‘claims’ the h (heroine) publicly sealing the deal.
In my tale “Warrior’s Pain,” Cadi Warrior’s 4, there’s a mating too, where the gruff Cyprian — the traditional alien military man — mates Riley, a goth scofflaw artistic human, and unbeknownst to her includes human music and dancing. It finishes with him singing as he dances with her. She’s tough and always thought the song was sappy, then ends up in tears in his arms.”
In Marie Dry’s “Alien Redeemed,” Zyrgin Warriors Book 7, the bride has to travel to an alien planet to marry the emperor — no pressure!
Astrid Sharpe said the wedding in “The Hunter’s Heart,” Book 1 in her Love After Earth series, involves “giant flowers and crystals – very hippie!”
Linda Graf’s hero and heroine in “A Talent for Trouble” marry under tense conditions. “… Since my crew of folks are outlaws they were on guard during the ceremony.”
Greta van der Rol ends her Iron Admiral series with a wedding in the book “Deception.” The author said, “Just about the last scene in the Iron Admiral books is Allysha’s marriage to Admiral Saahren. It’s unusual for lots of reasons, not least because the ceremony is conducted by the alien Ptorix. It was as close as anyone could get to a Ptorix-human marriage. As Allysha mused to herself, she’d been divorced for — what? — two minutes before her marriage.”
Also mentioned was “Hope’s Folly,” Dock Five Book 3, by Linnea Sinclair. The book blurb states in part, “A man who feels he can’t love. A woman who believes she’s unlovable. And an enemy who will stop at nothing to crush them both.” And the wedding, as explained by the reader who shared it as a favorite, “Philip and Rya get married in the middle of a pretty dire situation, with what everyone trying to kill them, inside and outside their spaceship. Intense!”
Weddings along the way in Lois McMaster Bujold’s classic military sci-fi series Vorkosigan Saga were mentioned by several people, mostly in the vein of how the ceremonies resolved the romantic and professional character arcs for various favorites, including Miles Vorkosigan.
In my Badari Warrior series, the genetically engineered soldiers of the far future were created using alien predator DNA to some extent, so they have mates, not wives and there’s privately done claiming, after which their goddess marks both mates with a golden circle tattoo. In one book, however, “Landon,” there’s also a human wedding ceremony, arranged in a rush due to the bride’s ill health. The Badari and their human allies were kidnapped by the alien scientists, escaped and are on the run, but among their number is a man who was captain of his own ship. The bride is terribly anxious for the ceremony to be legal in the Sectors as well as on the Badari planet so the former captain marries them. It seems there’s a loophole in the Sectors’ laws that allows him to do so if the humans have formed a colony, which in a way they have. No one’s going to argue.
Time to toss the rice or let loose the alien butterflies — our discussion of sci-fi romance weddings is done for this summer. Happy reading!
USA Today bestselling author Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a library at its heart. Her father loved science-fiction, her mother loved ancient history and Scott thought there needed to be more romance in everything. When she ran out of books to read, she started writing her own stories. Seven-time winner of the SFR Galaxy Award, as well as a National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award, Scott is also the proud recipient of a NASA Exceptional Service Medal relating to her former day job, not her romances. One of her favorite achievements is that she read the part of “Star Trek Crew Member” in the official audiobook production of Harlan Ellison’s, “The City On the Edge of Forever.” For more information, visit her blog at veronicascott.wordpress.com or find her on social media such as Twitter, @vscottheauthor, or Facebook, @VeronicaScottAuthor.
