The Vorkosigan Companion - Lillian Stewart Carl [70]
I don't think Lois liked having babies. I think she may have been okay with the first part, but the production stage and then the years of launch activities may have taken a toll. At least that is what I assume was the source for the "uterine replicator" that plays a minor role in Falling Free but is more significant in the Vorkosigan series. However, if nothing else, the child-rearing experience allowed her to write the scene of feeding Andy with great realism.
Lois was a perpetual student and we often wondered if she would ever do something—anything. I don't think she ever did finish a degree, but that doesn't seem to have fazed her much. She lived in relative poverty for years.
She paid her dues for years before Shards of Honor was published and even after until her Vorkosigan series began to draw a following. On the other hand, if she had not had this experience of poverty and the time it provided, she might never have written the first several novels that were completed before she sold the first.
I have read all her novels and have become a fan. They make pretty good gifts for overseas trips. Lois got twenty copies of Falling Free in Japanese from Japan, which she then signed, and which I carted back to Japan in my luggage to support visits to a number of fabricating shops and metal suppliers. It's sometimes handy to have a famous author in the family.
The cover of my paperback copy of Falling Free finally fell off as I reread it for the fourth time to help with this writing. However, I personally like her fantasy series best, The Spirit Ring, The Curse of Chalion, and last year's Paladin of Souls. Based on reading the first chapter, I look forward to The Hallowed Hunt, which should be out later this year. I have read Chalion seven times now and am rereading Paladin and keep enjoying them more each time as an added bit of subplot becomes a little more clear to me. Her recognition is deserved.
—
James A. McMaster
Huletts Landing, New York
2004
Foreword to Shards of Honor
James Bryant
Shards of Honor, written in 1983 and published three years later, is Lois McMaster Bujold's first novel. It is also the first story of her Vorkosigan series, a collection of fifteen books set in the same Universe, most of them involving Miles Vorkosigan or his parents. She has also written a number of short stories, one historical fantasy novel set in an alternate Italy, and two fantasy series, the "Five Gods" Universe, with three of a planned five novels published, and the "Sharing Knife" Universe, of which the full set of four novels has been written, but as of mid-2007, only two have been published. Her work has garnered three Nebula Awards and five Hugos, three of them for Best Novel—more in that category than any other author except Robert A. Heinlein.
Despite these achievements it is surprising how little known she is outside the world of SF. When the birth of Dolly (the cloned sheep) was announced, the media consulted the Great and the Good on the issues of human cloning—but no one consulted Lois, who had considered the human problems of such cloning in half a dozen books, and had reached more humane and useful conclusions than most of those who were quoted. To mention but one the result of the cloning process is a baby who must be reared and nurtured for at least a decade, more probably two, before becoming a productive member of society. The costs, economic and human, of this rearing are rarely considered by those prophesying cloned armies of slaves or soldiers. ("They call it women's work." [Ethan of Athos Chapter 5])
She is a superb writer, with a wicked facility for emphasizing points by clever choice of phrase. She has said that a book as a work of art is not the printed text but the engagement between the ideas of the author and the perceptions of the reader.