The Vorkosigan Companion Read online

  THE VORKOSIGAN COMPANION

  Lillian Stewart Carl, and

  John Helfers

  This is a reference work about works of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright @ 2008 by Tekno Books, Lillian Stewart Carl, and John Helfers.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 10: 1-4165-5603-6

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4165-5603-9

  Cover art by Darrell K. Sweet

  First printing, December 2008

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  The Vorkosigan companion / edited by Lillian Stewart Carl and John Helfers.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-4165-5603-6

  1. Bujold, Lois McMaster—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Vorkosigan, Miles (Fictitious character)—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 3. Science fiction, American—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Carl, Lillian Stewart. II. Helfers, John.

  PS3552.U397Z95 2009

  813'.54—dc22

  2008032556

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Copyrights

  Preface copyright © 2008 by Lois McMaster Bujold.

  "Putting It Together: Life, the Vorkosiverse, and Everything," copyright © 2008 by Lois McMaster Bujold.

  "A Conversation with Lois McMaster Bujold," copyright © 2008 by Lillian Stewart Carl.

  "Publishing, Writing, and Authoring: Three Different Things," copyright © 2008 by Lois McMaster Bujold.

  "A Conversation with Toni Weisskopf," copyright © 2008 by John Helfers.

  "Romance in the Vorkosiverse," copyright © 2008 by Mary Jo Putney.

  "Biology in the Vorkosiverse and Today," copyright © 2008 by Tora K. Smulders-Srinivasan.

  " 'What's the Worst Thing I Can Do to This Character?': Technology in the Vorkosiverse," copyright © 2008 by Ed Burkhead.

  "Through Darkest Adolescence with Lois McMaster Bujold, or Thank You, but I Already Have a Life," copyright © 2008 by Lillian Stewart Carl.

  "Foreword to Falling Free," copyright © 2004 by James A. McMaster. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Foreword to Shards of Honor," copyright © 2000 by James Bryant. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "More Than the Sum of His Parts: Foreword to The Warrior's Apprentice," copyright © 2002 by Douglas Muir. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Foreword to Ethan of Athos," copyright © 2003, revised version copyright © 2009 by Marna Nightingale. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Come for the Bujold, Stay for the Beer: Science Fiction Writers as Occasions of Fandom," copyright © 2008 by Marna Nightingale.

  "A Pronunciation Guide to the Vorkosigan Saga," copyright © 2008 by Suford Lewis. Revised from "A Pronunciation Guide to Names and Places," copyright © 2001, 2000, 1996 by Suford Lewis.

  "An Old Earther's Guide to the Vorkosigan Universe," copyright © 2008 by Denise Little.

  "The Vorkosigan Saga Novel Summaries," copyright © 2008 by John Helfers.

  "The Vorkosigan Saga Concordance," copyright © 2008 by Kerrie Hughes, John Helfers, and Ed Burkhead.

  "Topology of the Wormhole Nexus," copyright © 2008 by Crystal Carroll and Suford Lewis. Revised from "Galactic Tourist Bureau Map" copyright © 1999 by Crystal Carroll.

  "Timelines: 800 Years in Barrayaran and Galactic Human History; 60 Years in Barrayaran and Galactic Human History," copyright © 2008, 2001, 2000, 1996 by Suford Lewis.

  "Some Barrayaran Genealogy," copyright © 2008, 2001 by Suford Lewis. Revised from "Towards a Genealogy of Lord Miles Vorkosigan and Other Persons of Interest," copyright © 2000, 1996 by Suford Lewis.

  BAEN BOOKS by LOIS McMASTER BUJOLD

  The Vorkosigan Saga:

  Shards of Honor

  Barrayar

  The Warrior's Apprentice

  The Vor Game

  Cetaganda

  Borders of Infinity

  Brothers in Arms

  Mirror Dance

  Memory

  Komarr

  A Civil Campaign

  Diplomatic Immunity

  Falling Free

  Ethan of Athos

  Omnibus Editions:

  Cordelia's Honor

  Young Miles

  Miles, Mystery & Mayhem

  Miles Errant

  Miles, Mutants & Microbes

  Miles in Love

  Preface

  "Gosh, is it midnight already?"

  There are many memorable firsts in a writer's career. First story started—first finished. First submission. First rejection. First sale! First review, good/bad. First public speech about one's writing, urk. First fan letter! First time meeting one's editor face-to-face. First award nomination—first win! Maybe, a first film option. First time on a genre best-seller list—first time on a general best-seller list, though this is a much rarer prize. First career award—what, already? but I'm not finished yet! First book about one's books.

  I'm not just sure where we've arrived, but we're definitely here.

  Head down and pedaling as hard as possible, it's not often that working writers have a chance to look back and see just how far they've traveled. Much of my biography and literary biography are covered in the articles and interview that follow, so I won't linger to recap it all here. But in this year, 2007, and in 2008 upcoming, have fallen a couple of firsts that force me to pause and put it in perspective.

  My first career award came last month from the Ohioana Library Association. Literary awards generally, by nature intrinsically subjective, are mysterious gifts bestowed upon writers; it is something done to us, not something—like finishing a novel—that we do. Career awards seem to be awards for winning awards, a suspicious circularity. (That said, this year's Ohioana memento takes the prize for being the prettiest ever, a gorgeous piece of art glass looking like a transparent blue jellyfish. Lead glass apparently looks extremely strange on airport X-ray machines, however. Someone could write a whole essay on the sometimes-deadly designs of the various awards and the challenges of getting them home.)

  Next year, as I write this (though it will be a done deal by the time this book is published) I have been invited to be Writer Guest of Honor at the 2008 World Science Fiction Convention in Denver, Colorado, which is very much a career award in its own right. I put pencil to paper for my first science fiction novel in 1982; from there to this in a mere twenty-six years. Seems . . . fast.

  Writing stories, using words to sculpt other people's thoughts, would appear to be the most evanescent of arts. Writers make and sell dreams; the vast publishing industry that conveys those dreams between the writer's head and the reader's seems a lumbering vehicle for such a light load. And yet, of all the many tasks I've undertaken in my life—apart from bearing and raising my children—it's my books that have best lasted and carried forward, the main thing I have to show for all my efforts. The lineup of first editions on my office bookshelf seems a procession of captured years, my basement full of books like an array of vintages laid down in a wine cellar.

  A certain branch of linguistics and culture studies has a catchphrase—"time-binding"—to tag those inventions, including writing, that allow humans to carry their culture a
nd achievements forward, through time that otherwise destroys all things each instant. I would quibble a little with the phrase, since it's not actually time that is bound. "We can neither make, nor retain, a single moment of time," as C. S. Lewis remarks somewhere. But for a little while, time's grinding teeth may be eluded. Most of my life's labors were consumed almost as soon as committed—all that housekeeping plowed under, all those meals I cooked gone in a day, all the forgettable daily tasks duly forgotten. But "Words," as another writer said, "can outlast stones." I'm not sure mine will go that far, but they definitely outlast meals.

  I'm a bit bemused by this present volume. Why spend precious time reading about books—or worse, about the author—when you could be reading the actual books? But I presume the main audience here will be those who have read parts or all of the Vorkosigan Saga already, a reflection which allays my writerly anxiety. For you all, I trust that many amusements and some lively discussion follow. So I will get out of the way of the text—as writers should—and bid you all have fun.

  —

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Edina, Minnesota, November 2007

  CREATOR OF THE VORKOSIVERSE

  Putting It Together:

  Life, the Vorkosiverse, and Everything

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Fans have dubbed my science fiction universe "the Vorkosiverse," after its most memorable and central (but far from only) character and his family. Science fiction and fantasy are the only genres I know where a series is defined by what universe it is set in (making mainstream fiction, looked at with the right squint, the world's largest shared-universe series).

  The series is a family saga, as it has grown to center around one family where all the stresses of their changing worlds intersect. The tale begins in Shards of Honor (which I have also described as "a gothic romance in SF drag") where Cordelia Naismith, a survey scientist from the advanced planet of Beta Colony, first meets Aral Vorkosigan, soldier from war-torn Barrayar. Barrayar, settled early by humanity, had been cut off from the rest of the worlds by an astrographic accident, and regressed culturally and technologically in what they call their "Time of Isolation," until rediscovered in Aral's father's time. It has been scrambling to catch up ever since, an effort sabotaged by both external invasion and internal civil conflict. And so I can have my swords 'n' spaceships in a way that makes both historical and economic sense.

  In that early work, when I was still feeling my way into such basics as how to write a novel at all, I used elements ready in my head. One such was the setting for what later came to be named the planet Sergyar, which was based on the landscapes and ecology I'd seen on a biology study tour of East Africa back in my college days. I never became a biologist, but it was nice to think the experience wasn't wasted; one of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one's prior experiences, including—or perhaps especially—the failures.

  But, now that I'd hit my early thirties and had two small children in tow, failure was no longer an option. With a rather large amount of help from my friends, including the present editor of this volume, I clawed my way through the learning experience of writing that first book. These were pre-word-processor days, so it was all produced, first, with pencil and paper, then on a typewriter with carbon copies. The book went through a lot of revisions, including the title—its original working title was Mirrors, both a name and a theme that I revisited later.

  Miles Vorkosigan grew out of the world and situation created in Shards of Honor. He came as real people do—from his parents. I have a catchphrase to describe my plot-generation technique—"What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?" (Others have pointed out that this should have an addendum, "that they can survive and learn from.") Miles was already a gleam in my eye even when I was still writing Shards of Honor. For his parents, Aral and Cordelia, living in a militaristic, patriarchal culture that prizes physical perfection and has a historically driven horror of mutation, having a handicapped son and heir was a major life challenge, a test worthy of a tale.

  Miles has a number of real-life roots—models from history such as T. E. Lawrence and young Winston Churchill, a physical template in a handicapped hospital pharmacist I'd worked with, most of all his bad case of "great man's son syndrome," which owes something to my relationship with my father. But with his first book, The Warrior's Apprentice, he quickly took on a life of his own; his charisma and drive, his virtues and his failings—and he has both—are now all his.

  My initial ideas for The Warrior's Apprentice actually centered on Miles's complex quasi-filial relationship with his bodyguard Sergeant Bothari; Bothari's death was the first scene I envisioned, and the rest of the book was written, more or less, to get to that point and explain it satisfactorily to myself. Other characters and events happened along the way and rather hijacked the tale, as sometimes occurs, often to a book's benefit.

  I had heard of brittle bone disease before inflicting it on my hero Miles, of course. However, I took care to give it another cause, in his case a prenatal exposure to a fictional poison gas called soltoxin; this allowed me to authorially adjust his disease to the needs of my plot. His bones have a slightly suspicious tendency to break only when I need them to. Their realism is more psychological.

  One of the things about being disabled is that you are disabled every damned day, and have to deal with it. Again. So this aspect of Miles's character has necessarily followed him into all his stories. And yet, the theme isn't just Miles; we have Taura, the genetically engineered super-soldier-monster, Elli Quinn of the reconstructed face, Bel Thorne the hermaphrodite, Miles's clone-brother Mark, the list goes on. While it's possible all these people were got up as plot-mirrors for Miles, the quaddies appear independently of him. So disability, and difference, have become ongoing subjects, directly or obliquely.

  I've sometimes wondered if this theme is a personal metaphor. I grew up in a family with a remarkable father, strong older brothers, a close grandfather who'd been widowed in 1916 and never remarried, no sisters, and a mother whose attempts to feminize me I fought from age two onward. I had no extended family nearby to provide alternate models for women's lives, nor did the culture of the Fifties and Sixties offer much relief. In the lexicon of (some) feminist critique, disabled Miles becomes "codedly feminine": he's smaller than those around him, can't win a physical fight, is in a "wrong"-shaped body—has lots of medical problems—and has to beat the bastards using only brains, wit, and charm. The sense of being "wrong" is deeply inculcated in females in our society; I recall a pretty woman of my early acquaintance who wouldn't go out without her makeup on. "I have to put on my face," she explained. Sad, and scary. But regardless of gender, almost everybody harbors some cripplement, emotional if not physical. You can't judge anybody—you never know what backbreaking secret burdens they may be carrying. There is scarcely a more universal appeal to the reader.

  The most important feedback I've received from handicapped (and non-handicapped!) readers is the sense that my fiction is energizing for them. Somehow, watching Miles operate gives them the emotional edge they need to tackle, as I described it above, just one more damned day. I think it's a variant of the Dumbo-and-the-magic-feather effect. When I reflect how much Miles's world is stacked in his favor, and how much their world is not stacked in theirs, the idea of anyone trying to use Miles's life as a blueprint gives me cold chills. Yet it seems to work. Miles models success.

  I also note in passing that the definition of a handicap goes by majority rule. The fact that I cannot flap my arms and fly is not considered a handicap in Minnesota, because nobody else here can, either. On another world, in some avian evolution such as constructed by several wonderful SF stories, this disability would severely limit my social opportunities.

  But, of course, since Miles lives in the future, one must allow that future medical technology will be better and cleverer than our own. In general I see technology as an annihilator of handicaps. I am
increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation. But technology, outside of science fiction, is as awkward as any other bit of reality. It arrives sideways, it never works right at first, the interface problem is always a bitch, and for every problem it solves, several more are created. Still, I adore technology, medical and most other kinds.

  Prior to the time his books open, Miles has already undergone many invasive repairs. I had a curious conversation with a fan once, comparing and contrasting the childhoods of Miles and his clone-brother Mark, one of the contrasts being the degree to which Mark was abused and Miles was not (it's a long story, spread through two novels). "But what about all that medical treatment Miles had to endure?" my bright fan inquired. "Oh," I said. I hadn't thought of it like that, but she had a point. There's a scene somewhere in The Warrior's Apprentice where Miles remembers how his father extracted cooperation from him when no one else could: "You must not frighten your liege-people with this show of uncontrol, Lord Miles," his father earnestly addresses the hysterical child-Miles. A consummate politician, that man.

  Over the course of the next decade of his life, and several books, Miles gradually acquires more and more repairs; by age twenty-eight, almost all of his original bones have been replaced with synthetics. He's still short, but can scarcely be described anymore as handicapped. This invited new challenges.

  Miles's inferiority complex and bad case of Great Man's Son syndrome give him an enormous amount of drive, which is both attractive and gets him into a hell of a lot of trouble, particularly when he drives first and looks later. (He simultaneously has what is popularly called a superiority complex. I figure you can't be that smart and not know it.) As his author, I find his drive an enormously valuable characteristic for kicking my plots into motion, but I'm pretty sure any people who have to live with him in book-world (his cousin Ivan, for instance) find him pretty obnoxious at times. Miles has a dangerous tendency to try to turn the people around him into his annexes, a trait most spectacularly resisted by his clone-brother Mark. It's the main reason feminist scholars trying to construct Miles as codedly feminine get about halfway through the analysis and go, "Um, but . . ."