Also here via ozarque. What about Kage Baker? Mendoza and Nancy are very close friends until they get separated physically and temporally by work, and then various other spoilerish things happen. Also, in "The Anvil of the World", Mrs. Smith is definitely a mentor-figure to Burnbright.
I agree with the comments above--many SF writers are alone-type people. I have no problem with that, as it obviously stimulates good writing. However, it does make it obvious to the reader if they're writing about a kind of human interaction they're not intimately familiar with. Like Dicken's characterisation of women. Just awful--he makes Heinlein's women look fully-fleshed out.
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I agree with the comments above--many SF writers are alone-type people. I have no problem with that, as it obviously stimulates good writing. However, it does make it obvious to the reader if they're writing about a kind of human interaction they're not intimately familiar with. Like Dicken's characterisation of women. Just awful--he makes Heinlein's women look fully-fleshed out.