Miles, Mutants and Microbes - Lois McMaster Bujold [0]
Lois McMaster Bujold
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Preface copyright © 2007 by Lois McMaster Bujold. Falling Free copyright © 1988 by Lois McMaster Bujold; "Labyrinth" copyright © 1989 by Lois McMaster Bujold; Diplomatic Immunity copyright © 2002 by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Vorkosigan® is a registered trademark of Lois McMaster Bujold.
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: 1-4165-2141-0
ISBN 13: 978-1-4165-2141-9
Cover art by Alan Pollack
First printing, August 2007
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bujold, Lois McMaster.
Miles, mutants & microbes / Lois McMaster Bujold.
p. cm.
"A Baen Books original"—T.p. verso.
ISBN 1-4165-2141-0 (hc)
1. Vorkosigan, Miles (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Science fiction, American. I. Title. II. Title: Miles, mutants and microbes.
PS3552.U397M56 2007
813'.54—dc22
2007018794
Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)
Printed in the United States of America
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 (forthcoming)
Preface
My author's preface for this collection is both a history, and an apologia—a word which means not an expression of regret for a fault, but a speech in defense. (What I'll be defending is my selection criteria for assembling this grouping of tales, and it will mainly be of interest to old Bujold readers.)
New readers need have no fear: dive right in! The stories here will explain themselves as they go. In this volume you will find two novels and a novella from what, due to my reluctance to coin a suitably imposing-sounding series name, its fans have eventually dubbed "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). All the tales under this cover belong in the same "future history," if at widely divergent times.
What links them, mostly, are the quaddies, a race of humans bioengineered to live in zero-gravity that you will meet in the kick-off novel for this omnibus, Falling Free. This book falls early both in the timeline of its universe and in my career; it was the fourth novel I ever wrote and also the fourth published, and won both my first appearance in the venerable Analog Magazine and my first Nebula award. Taking place some two hundred years before the main body of stories, in it Barrayar (and the Vorkosigans) have not yet been discovered by the universe at large. The second tale, the novella "Labyrinth," introduces both a new quaddie character, and Miles Vorkosigan in his "Admiral Naismith" hat. (He has more than one persona, sprawling over several books, but I think you'll get enough about him in the novella to go on with; it was written to stand alone and indeed also appeared as a self-contained story in Analog.) The third tale, Diplomatic Immunity, as of this writing the most recent of my Vorkosiverse novels, brings elements of the first two tales around to meet again, in much more depth and detail.
At this point, the new reader is most welcome to stop reading this introduction and go read the real stories, which will be much more fun. You can circle back later for