Gan, the protagonist of “Bloodchild,” is the adolescent son of his mother, Lien, and an unnamed, deceased father. Gan and his family live on a Terran (human) preserve on an alien planet that humans have fled to after a disaster on Earth. Because the story is told from his point of view on what he calls his last night of childhood, the reader is privy to Gan’s coming to maturity both physically and emotionally as his relationship with the Tlic, the planet’s alien natives, changes, when he witnesses a Tlic birth gone wrong.

Gan has known from birth that he was being groomed to be his family’s human host, or N’Tlic, for an important female Tlic official named T’Gatoi. Because of this, Gan has received special treatment throughout the years, including more of the restorative unfertilized Tlic eggs, as well as being spared from hunting, farming and other forms of manual hard work. As a result, he is described as physically delicate, with soft hands, as well as extremely trusting of the Tlic and, in particular, T’Gatoi, with whom he has an especially close relationship, as evidenced by his defending her to his older brother, Qin, as well as his physical contact with her.