The Vorkosigan Companion - Lillian Stewart Carl [52]
Along the lines of reproductive technology mentioned earlier, there have been advances in the freezing of sperm, eggs, and embryos for later fertilization/gestation. A group of well-respected scientists have even signed an open letter (www.imminst.org/ cryonics_letter/) that supports cryonics as "a legitimate science-based endeavor that seeks to preserve human beings, especially the human brain, by the best technology available." They emphasize that this is a credible hope for future technological developments rather than a current possibility. Thus, cryonics could be a very real possibility for the future, and some have estimated it happening within the next thirty to fifty years.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosiverse is an imaginary universe, yet its advanced biological technology still allows us to picture it as a future that we could see following from where we are today. The solid biological principles it is based on have stood the test of time for over twenty years. In my view, they are likely to be relevant and possible for at least twenty more.
Actually, as all four of the main technologies covered in detail here are currently progressing along the lines of Bujold's projections, the technologies may become everyday realities in exactly the way Bujold has described. The realization of many "futuristic" biological technologies may be closer than previously thought.
I hope that excellent science fiction authors like Lois McMaster Bujold will continue to write about and explore the ethics of such technologies so that readers and society as a whole will think about how to handle them when they arrive.
"What's the Worst Thing
I Can Do to This Character?":
Technology of the Vorkosiverse
Ed Burkhead
Lois loves her characters. As she says, when you are writing character-based books, each character tries to take over the story. Oh, but the things she does to her characters . . .
Some of Lois's best character tortures are biological, but she supports and tortures her characters awfully well with other technologies, too.
Interstellar flight in the series is through jump ships, using mapped, fixed wormholes from star to star. Finding wormholes is dangerous survey work and wormholes may not take you to somewhere useful. Usually, there are several wormhole jumps and solar system traverses to move from one useful system to the next along a route. Interstellar travel can take days and even months depending on the distance, connections, and speed of the ship.
The opening of Shards of Honor is based on discovery of a route enabling the Barrayaran invasion and conquest of Escobar. Barrayar has found and mapped and is stocking supplies on a planet midway along the invasion route. Independently finding that planet from another entry, Cordelia Naismith's Betan Astronomical Survey ship begins surveying the planet for its potential, since science and research are the dominant products of Beta Colony. From Barrayar's point of view, allowing the Betans to report back could compromise the route and the invasion.
Many of the military technologies are established in the first dozen pages as Cordelia finds her survey camp torched and "nothing short of a plasma arc could have melted the fabric of their tents." Within minutes, she finds Lieutenant Rosemont dead, shot by a nerve disruptor. Moments after that, at a rustle in the grass, Cordelia snaps her stun gun to the aim.
We've been introduced to three of the main weapons used throughout the series. And the very civilized Cordelia Naismith, captain of a peaceful, exploratory Betan Astronomical Survey ship and pretty strongly anti-military-stupidity, is involved in the opening shots of a war.
Not all the technologies are military, certainly. Cordelia is wearing her short-range