Adventures In Space Opera
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Picking a favorite author is often like picking your favorite child…most people have a favorite but won’t admit to it. And as time passes and people change, the favorite changes too. So…I can’t say I have an absolute favorite author. When I was a young teen, I discovered Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Unbeliever series. I won’t say much about that except that reading that as a young teen is a VERY different experience from reading it in one’s 30s, after having seen quite a lot of the darker side of human nature. It’s very much a series for adults, precocious teenage readers notwithstanding. When I was an arrogant know-it-all (mostly my teen and college years), Harlan Ellison was my go-to author, mostly for his essays rather than his speculative fiction (he didn’t like the phrase science fiction). But as an adult, I can’t stand him. Then there was Piers Anthony…I read a bunch of his stuff as a teen, but the only book series of his that I actually bought was his Incarnations of Immortality series. I still have it, and I should give it another read. It’s very clever. And let us not forget Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, a perennial favorite (her Crystal Singer and Tower and Hive series are less often re-read).
Ahem. Since I’ve just had to stop myself from wandering around my house, fondly greeting all my old book friends, let me get to the point. Lois McMaster Bujold.
Spoiler alert for the Vorkosigan series
Bujold has written several different series, but only one science fiction series: the Vorkosigan saga. These novels are not really science fiction in the classic sense…rather they are people stories set sufficiently far into the future that cultures have developed that are currently inconceivable and relationships have both evolved to fit (or not) into those cultures and yet still remain completely and recognizably human. The futuristic technology is almost a side note and is only really featured when it impacts cultural developments and relationships. My kind of science!
The series follows an aristocratic family through a couple different generations, starting with Shards of Honor, where Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan meet on opposite sides of not one, but two wars. The series is adult (not that way…there’s no explicit sex in it, so it’s safe enough for mature teen readers) in its themes and emotions and plotlines. To say that the romance between the two protagonists is complicated and star-crossed would be an understatement. But one of Bujold’s great literary gifts is encapsulating very complicated emotional states of being into very pithy and memorable phrases. Toward the end of Shards of Honor, Cordelia’s mother asks her if she loves Aral. Cordelia pauses for thought and then simply says, “When he’s cut, I bleed.” And that is a profound and true summary of the relationship.
The second novel in the series is called Barrayar, recounting Cordelia’s first year on Barrayar as wife to Aral, who is now regent to a child emperor. Cordelia has just discovered that she is pregnant when they are swept up in a civil war, as one of the other Vor aristocrats attempts to make himself emperor. During the course of the book, the pregnant Cordelia is poisoned, and she has her unborn child removed to a uterine replicator, so that he can be treated for the after effects of the poison and the antidote. At the end of the book, the baby Miles is born very undersized and with incredibly fragile bones. Miles Naismith Vorkosigan is the protagonist of most of the rest of the following novels.
I love any of the stories about Cordelia and Aral. When I was younger, I sympathized with Miles and his frustration with the reluctance of his putative superiors and commanding officers to just let him get on with things. Now that I am middle aged, I’m completely (okay, mostly) on the side of the poor saps who were commanded to be in charge of Miles…I’d want to sucker-punch the hyperactive little genius and stuff him in a box out of the way and just get on with things myself in a calm, reasonable, and logical manner. Of course, like these fictional commanders, I understand that bursts of intuition and genius cannot really be commanded, only (mostly) appreciated (and hopefully, survived). These young Miles novels are The Warrior’s Apprentice, The Vor Game, Cetaganda, Brothers In Arms, and Mirror Dance. Mirror Dance in particular is quite dark but still beautifully written. There are also some short stories (The Borders Of Infinity is a collection and then there are some stories published separately or in other collections) that are mostly set during this time period.
“Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.”
But after Mirror Dance comes the next wave of stories which I like to think of as “Miles grows up and becomes a real person.” That possibly is a little unfair to the earlier stories, but at my current place in life, that’s how I feel about it. We have Memory, a book with so many twists and turns and ups and downs that I felt I needed a nap after I finished it. But I have re-read it multiple times over the years. It’s spectacular. Here, Miles has given up his undercover special ops career (okay, he was fired) and has to figure out the next phase of his life. For me, this feels like he really finally starts living as himself. As soon as he figures out who that is. Also, this book contains my favorite Bujold quote of all time: “Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.” Speaking as a pedant…this is a life truth!
This is followed up by Komarr, where Miles travels to Komarr to help investigate sabotage and meets Ekaterin, the woman of his dreams, only to discover that she’s already married to someone else. The sabotage turns out to be the opening salvo in a much larger plot but Miles and Ekaterin together save the day.
Then there is the wildly entertaining A Civil Campaign, where Miles goes courting, only to discover that not only does he have a lot of competition for Ekaterin’s hand in marriage, but his political opponents have accused him of murdering her late husband. He didn’t, of course, but since the events of the previous book are mostly classified, he can’t exactly defend himself in public. He is struggling with the blow to his reputation and honor when his father Aral reminds him: “Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.” In addition to being interesting and entertaining, there are sections of this book that are laugh-out-loud funny.
After this comes Diplomatic Immunity, an unexpected mission to avert massive loss of life and also prevent war between two interstellar empires. Miles and Ekaterin get to work together on this, and some old friends from earlier books show up as well.
Then the last of the books where Miles is the main character: Cryoburn. This book actually brought me to tears more than once. In addition to being deeply emotional, it also is a fascinating study on the effects of medically prolonging life. Miles finds himself lost and alone on a planet where most of the population doesn’t actually die from anything but is instead put into cryogenic storage where they are (supposedly) kept until a cure is found for whatever killed them.
The next book Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance mostly features Miles’ cousin Ivan Vorpatril (commonly referred to in previous books as “Ivan, you idiot!”) Ivan, however, is only an idiot when standing next to his genius cousin. He’s plenty smart on his own, but while this is a different and rather entertaining story, it didn’t grab me the way the other books did. I think I’ve only read this book once.
The final book in the series is Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, which features Cordelia again, after the death of Aral. I liked this story of the mature Cordelia but again, not as much as the other books. I believe I’ve also only read this one once.
“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
And finally, the audiobooks. I do love my audiobooks…The narrator for this series is Grover Gardner, whom I’d never heard of before I started buying these audiobooks. It took me a little while to adjust to his style, which is a bit more understated than I’m used to, but now that I’ve bought most of this series in audiobook form, I can’t imagine anyone else reading them to me. He’s excellent. I find myself listening to Memory, Komarr, A Civil Campaign, and Diplomatic Immunity at least once a year.
If you’ve never read anything by Bujold, give this series a try. You won’t regret it. Oh, and her various fantasy series aren’t bad either. I like the Wide Green World series (which I’d actually thought was called The Sharing Knife series) while my bibliophile friend Bea (who introduced me to Lois McMaster Bujold in the first place) is particularly fond of the Penric & Desdemona series and the World of the Five Gods series.
