God-like MCs

[the DragonBard]

I was thinking, what are some of the most powerful MCs in SF/Fantasy novels? And I don't mean just politically powerful or such, but personally powerful. People who are pretty much literally gods.

There's the eight novels in Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immorality series for example. Though most of them, their powers are pretty specialized.

There's also Kelly McCullough's Raven series, where the MC temporarily becomes the supreme god in a pantheon before giving it up.

Not to mention there's David Edding's Elenian/Tamulian series, where Sparhawk becomes a powerful god before giving up his power.

Any other ideas?

 

[sworded]

Two of Eddings other works have some rather powerful MCs that don't always go all out: The Belgariad/Malloreon books where the main character has the Orb of Aldur, ie the semi sentient remote for the universe, although he dosen't use it often because then the other side gets to respond in kind, and The Dreamers series where the main characters are gods.

 

[the DragonBard]

Two of Eddings other works have some rather powerful MCs that don't always go all out: The Belgariad/Malloreon books where the main character has the Orb of Aldur, ie the semi sentient remote for the universe, although he dosen't use it often because then the other side gets to respond in kind, and The Dreamers series where the main characters are gods.

I was thinking more personal power, not the power of weapons they have.

Plus, the Elder Gods is difficult to say as half the volume was focused on the others to say if the dreamers 'were' the MCs.

 

[daniel_gudman]

<a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_series' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Arisians, Eddorians, and the Lensmen</a>.

Clarke's <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_%28Arthur_C._Clarke_Short_Story%29' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Crusader</a>

Not that strong, but I liked the story arc of his transhuman progression:
<a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Revelation_Space_characters#.22Captain.22_John_Brannigan' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>John Armstrong Brannigan</a>

Anyway, I don't really read much fantasy, and scifi doesn't really do much in the way of "personal power" unless you're doing psychics, in which case it's science fantasy, or cyborgs, in which case the line between "the character" and "their equipment" gets really blurry.

 

[the DragonBard]

<a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_series' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Arisians, Eddorians, and the Lensmen</a>.

Clarke's <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusade_%28Arthur_C._Clarke_Short_Story%29' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Crusader</a>

Not that strong, but I liked the story arc of his transhuman progression:
<a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Revelation_Space_characters#.22Captain.22_John_Brannigan' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>John Armstrong Brannigan</a>

Anyway, I don't really read much fantasy, and scifi doesn't really do much in the way of "personal power" unless you're doing psychics, in which case it's science fantasy, or cyborgs, in which case the line between "the character" and "their equipment" gets really blurry.

True.
Though there are always the mutants and like.

Though the Lensmen, never noticed their powers as being 'that' high up. Than again the Children of the Lens are supposed to become like the immortal of Mentor's race.

 

[bmsattler]

Would 'Dune' count?

 

[the DragonBard]

Would 'Dune' count?

Could they manifest powers physically on a large scale, without use of political power?

 

[bmsattler]

From what I understand, eventually the MC becomes some kind of mad emperor that's not human. Possibly merged with one of the sand worms? I haven't read the whole series myself, but the person I talked to long long ago described him as being very powerful but driven mad and in a generally unenviable situation.

 

[daniel_gudman]

Individual Navigators could psychically teleport entire starships across the galaxy (while high on Spice... so does that count as "unassisted?")

Alia could like read ALL THE MINDS or something? IDK. I read it when I was like 11.

 

[lord geryon]

In Dune, Paul and his son, Leto II, have the ability of prescience. They can see the future.

However, there is a price. What you foresee becomes real, you can't change the future. Both of them are aware of what they call the Golden Path, which will lead to basically utopia, but Paul doesn't have the courage to see it through and seeks another way, basically because he fell in love with Chani. He fails.

Leto does embark on the Golden Path, and since he needs to oversee humanity's development for a couple millenia, he fuses with sand trout(the larval form of a sand worm) to make himself super human and nearly immortal.

Btw, Paul's sister Alia became what the Bene Gesserit had long since termed Abomination... she had been brain-jacked by a genetic memory of one of her ancestors - Baron Harkonnen. That's why she went more or less crazy.

 

[Sunhawk]

Lessee....

* The Adepts in Piers Anthony's "Apprentice Adept" series are fairly powerful magicians.
* Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy - you've got the mistborn themselves, then the big bad guy had the alternative magic system as well for some really big hacks (like immortality), and then at the end one of the characters becomes God, dies fighting the other God, and another one of the characters becomes a fusion of both Gods.
* Jack Chalker's got a few mains that become godlike (or, in the case of Nathan Brazil, claim to be God... or something). The Quintara Marathon, Changewinds, etc.
* Orson Scott Card's got a couple - Treason (two-shot) has the main learning to control his personal timestream, coax the planet into doing what he wants, regeneration, etc etc. And then there's the Alvin Maker series.
* Dave Duncan's Pandemia series has a character who gains five Words, which make him into what is effectively a god for a time (before he destroys a couple of them). Another two become a 'true' god. His Great Game trilogy has the main character more or less become Jesus, with belief his fuel.
* Julian May's books have a couple characters become bodiless gods and effectively create the situation in the entire series through time travel (the Lylmik).
* Lumley's Necroscope's protagonist becomes more or less godlike through his ability to learn from the dead, if I recall correctly.

 

[daniel_gudman]

ultra-literal example: <a href='http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Multivac</a>.

This story is special to me because, at one point, I had most of it memorized; I was cast as the narrator in a stage adaption in college.

 

[GenocideHeart]

Just wanted to say there ARE Magic: the Gathering novels... name a Planeswalker, any Planeswalker, that stars in one of them (most prominently Urza), and you've got a strong contender.

 

[Estrecca]

The main characters of the Death Gate Cycle are rather powerful, though more along the lines of "vastly powerful sorcerer" than "godlike", although they have something of an in-universe rep as being akin to gods thanks to some serious metaphysical heavy lifting done in the series backstory.

 

[the DragonBard]

Individual Navigators could psychically teleport entire starships across the galaxy (while high on Spice... so does that count as "unassisted?")

I thought they used the spice to guide the ship, not actually teleport them.

Also Piers Anthony's Adepts and individual Deathgate Cycle mages? Not powerful enough.

 

[Lord Raine]

Pretty much any of the MtG novels that focuses on a Planeswalker, at least before the latest update where they nerfed the Walkers to hell and made everything piss and fail.

The 'old' (and by old I mean anything before the latest update, also known as 'real') Planeswalkers were immortal shapeshifting supermages that spontaneously occurred in normal people for no readily apparent reason. They could tap the fundamental forces of magic itself directly, gaining effectively infinite power that is only curtailed by how much of reality they control (and are thus tapping for power) at once, and the ability to travel freely between all dimensions. And they're immortal. And they can look like anything.

To give you an idea of how powerful these bastards were, the Planeswalkers were the in-universe explanations for what the people who played the card game MtG were. The players freaking existed in the MtG universe. They were the Planeswalkers, and the card games were supposedly epic-scale conflicts between opposing Planeswalkers who conjured up armies of disparate entities from across the multiverse to do battle in their name, for whatever personal or trivial reason the Planeswalkers were doing it that day. Sometimes, it was to stop a great evil, or prevent universal collapse. Sometimes, it happened because the Planeswalkers were bored. Gods exist in MtG, but they're mostly an irrelevant footnote, because the Planeswalkers were much more directly involved, arguably much more powerful, and far more relevant to the direction and fate of the MtG universe in general.

Then the new update changed Planeswalkers from "the players" to "hero units in the game," and as you can readily expect, going from "the thing playing the game" to "one of the pieces in the game being played" is a humongous nerf, both in terms of cosmological position and in terms of personal power.


[EDIT]

Goddamn your ninja, Genocide. Fine. Most of the EU novels that deal with the Skywalker kids have them being ungodly powerful. Whatshisface basically became Buddha for about three minutes, but then gave it up for unspecified emotional reasons (read: he's a giant pussy).

 

[burnerx7]

While it's true that Planeswalker have become light versions of themselves...

There's still a Planeswalker with all it's power, current villain of the game Nicol Bolas (he has showed in novels so it counts)

My favorite quote: "I've survived more apocalypses than you've had chest colds"

 

[Lord Raine]

The fact that the Walkers changed at all is bull. It was strongly implied, though not outright stated, that Planeswalkers were a necessary function of the entire multiverse. They happen when stars and planets align in inscrutable positions, and if they weren't to happen, those planets and stars involved would go through a process similar to popcorn in a microwave on high for fifteen minutes.

The Spellplague, or whatever it was called, should not have changed the power or nature of the Planeswalkers, anymore than the Black Death reversed gravity. They are cosmic entities that perform a theoretically necessary function of venting excess power to prevent all worlds everywhere from spontaneously combusting.

 

[GenocideHeart]

It was not the Spellplague that changed Walkers, it was the Mending, during which a large amount of Planeswalker sparks were used to mend the giant timespace rifts that the war with Phyrexia left behind, which were threatening to annihilate the multiverse.

Most of those rifts, for the record, were Teferi's fault. Yes, it's totally not going to have any consequences when you phase an entire tectonic plaque out and suspend it in time for 500 years. Not at all, Teferi.

With that said, yeah, Bolas is still around and is close to his pre-Mending power. The Planeswalker card of him in Conflux is NERFED Bolas, not full power Bolas, and it's still one of the most absurdly devastating 'walkers around.

 

[Lord Raa]

Jesus Christ, from The Bible

/Trolling.

 

[Sunhawk]

The main characters of the Death Gate Cycle are rather powerful, though more along the lines of "vastly powerful sorcerer" than "godlike", although they have something of an in-universe rep as being akin to gods thanks to some serious metaphysical heavy lifting done in the series backstory.

There's the Dragons and Serpents, who are born of the Wave (if I recall correctly).

 

[Shiakou]

Jesus Christ, from The Bible

/Trolling.

Jesus is an mc but not THE MC. He's around for, what, a third of the series?