Bujold

Today I'm writing about one of my favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold. She's written a great many books, most of which are incredible. Any year that she releases a book or novella and it doesn't win a Hugo or a Nebula, it's something of an upset. While none of her books make my top five, or even my top ten (probably), a LOT of them make my top thirty; her writing is consistently good. Even better, she's (finally) writing the novel we've wanted since Civil Campaign starring Ivan; if nothing else, it's going to be great since her last two novels had antagonists who weren't really in Vorkosigan's weight class; Ivan doesn't quite have the same skills and position.

Her writing has some interesting characteristics. She writes her male characters better than her female characters, a reversal from what you would typically expect. In her science fiction universe, she smartly avoids the FTL technology pitfalls of the Warp Drive or similar engines in favor of a stationary wormhole network, making certain that geography still has meaning in the far future :). And if you happen to care about this kind of thing, she had GLBT characters decades before Rowling retroactively decided that Dumbledore was gay.

Her science fiction isn't really about the technology, though, except for her fascination with the reproductive technologies offered by the "uterine replicator." It's a nice change, though, from a focus on the starships and guns of the future to a relatively ordinary medical advancement (compared to immortality meds or cyberware). In some of her earlier books, she was actually developing a larger plot about telepaths, but it seemed to have been dropped by now.

Instead, her fiction is about creating some very fascinating character and using the unusual setting to create great stories for them. The primary character of her science fiction novels, Miles Vorkosigan, grows throughout the series, from the somewhat awkward scifi "coming of age" story to the more mature stories as he grows through life. And, amazing, the novels don't end when he finally settles down, marries, and has kids.

Maturity is a word that's often misused, I think. Too often, we end up using it to describe the dark and the violent. The scenes of "R" rated movies might not be appropriate for children, but I wouldn't ever call what happens therein to be particularly "adult." :) (I think there was a Calvin and Hobbes about that). Actual maturity, I think involves juxtaposing the light and the dark, the good and the bad of life. 100% Grimdark is about as mature as a teenager painting his room all black.

Now, Bujold often seems to enjoy using setups and ideas from romance novels into her works, which I'm not exactly a fan of. Shards of Honor is basically a straight scifi romance novel; that and Warrior's Apprentice are her worst books, at least in the Vorkosigan series. She has a certain optimism and faith in overall humanity that some might find annoying. And some of her characters can be, at times, almost unbearably whiny.

But she's still one of the best 'genre' writers today. If you're interested in starting the Vorkosigan series, I'd probably recommend starting with The Vor Game instead of Warrior's Apprentice though, then double back to read WA if you liked TVG.