Lois McMaster Bujold: On Vorkosiverse (sort of forwarded from LMB mailing list) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 1542: Hi Corey -- I believe Ser is a title. Just what kind of title, I haven't worked out yet. Ta, L. Corey Estoll wrote: > We've met Ser Galen, and now we've met Ser Venier. The question is > this: Is Ser a name, or a title? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3249: Just to avert the confusion... Vorkosigan Surleau translates, roughly, to "Vorkosigan on the water", and refers to the location of the Count's castle and town at the head (or foot, I'm not sure) of the Long Lake. "Vorkosigan sousleau" would be "Vorkosigan under the water": Vortala was making pun-fun of Aral's sailing abilities, probably occasioned by his pushing his boat past its limits and capsizing it on a fairly regular basis. The term "souse", meaning a drunkard, has nothing to do with it, although I can see why people might think it did. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2545: In addition to the usual Count Vorlastname - Lord Vorlastname - Lord Vorfirstname sequencing for a Count and his immediate heirs, there are a slew of Lord Vorlastnames running around who hold their titles by virtue of being clan heads or for other, idiosyncratic historical reasons. Padma's father (and hence Padma and Ivan) may well have acquired this honor by virtue of marriage to Prince Xav's younger half-Betan princess daughter, or for some prior historical reason. There is a senior Vorpatril line, and a Count Vorpatril -- I feel, in retrospect, that the Vorpatril liveried retainers we saw at the beginning of _The Warrior's Apprentice_ must have been a courtesy loan from the Count to Alys. There are bunches and bunches of other Vorpatrils in line ahead of Ivan for that Countship; it is in the highest degree unlikely that he'll inherit it at any time, let alone soon. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3598: > In a message dated 9/28/00 6:16:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time, > gorilla@elaine.furryape.com writes: > > > The only jobs we've seen women do on Barrayar > > are traditional 'women's jobs, both in our culture, and in Barrayaran > > culture. > > > and Donna's lawyer has a traditional Barrayaran women's job? > > Jo Anne Somewhere in my unwritten back-story is the notion that property/civil law is the provenance of woman legal funtionaries, decsended from the TOI need of the Babas to negiotiate property settlements, wills, etc., as part of their marriage-brokerage jobs. Criminal law being handled by male legal functionaries. It's not an idea I've developed yet, or needed to, but it's been lurking for a while. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2101: Someone asked what Miles knows about his father's bisexuality. This item is still in Schroedinger's plot box (which sits on the shelf next to the one the minor characters pop out of.) At a minimum, Miles has heard it as a political slander, and dismissed it. There was a certain age when he might have been freaked by learning the truth, but he's well past that now, so such revelations are unlikely to become a major future plot point. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2508: I noted in passing some nice discussion on Cordelia. Something I've never found a place to mention in text yet is that when Gregor sent Miles's parents off to Sergyar as Viceroy and Vicereine, it was a *dual* *joint* *co-equal* appointment; Cordelia is Vicereine in her own right, not through Aral. Each has equal authority to do whatever the job requires; and I'm sure there's plenty of work for both of 'em. I may have a chance to have some fun with this in a later book, sometime. Not soon. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2093: Someone recently was wondering just what Ethan Urquhart looked like. Well, he looks like whatever the reader pictures, of course, but *I* always pictured him as looking rather like the very young Gregory Peck, i.e., to die for. And, drat it, *gay*. The original Baen cover actually looked much as I envisioned the character, except for the inexplicable Jetsons garb. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 705: From: PWrede6492@aol.com I asked Lois about some of the geneology questions. Her reply follows, cut-and-pasted from her e-mail in her very own words. I think some of this stuff hasn't made it into the books yet. She's down to one chapter on The New Thing, and is still hoping to drop in on the list for a week or two once the book is finished. Start thinking about your questions... Lois says: When Miles speaks of his relationship with Mad Yuri through "two lines of descent", it's a collateral relationship through Piotr's Vorrutyer mother that is the second. Please tell them, again, Ezar is NOT the brother of Yuri and Xav. He's from another Vorbarra line altogether. I also think Yuri and Xav must have had different mothers. Yuri's mom was the Vorrutyer, and possibly Piotr's mom's sister or other close feamle relative; Xav's was Lady Vorsomethingelse. It's also through this Vorrutyer grandmother that Aral is something-cousin to Ges. It occurs to me that, since Yuri had a much younger full sister whom Ezar married after the war (and who ended her long life in psychiatric confinement) another reason Xav might not have gone for the Imperium (besides the two obvious ones, that his son was dead and that he was sick of the game) was that he was born out of wedlock, and only legitimated later, when Dorca re-married after his first wife's death. Hm, that would work.... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2845: Less certainly, Dorca probably did have at least two wives, one (who likely did have Vorrutyer blood) the mother of Yuri and his sister (who married Ezar during Mad Yuri's War, had Serg as a very late child, and was probably locked away mad or at least very annoyed for many years like Juana el Loco -- she, not Yuri, is what makes Yuri Gregor's "great-uncle"). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2541: > Janet Bruesselbach wondered: > > So how, exactly, are By and Donna related, and how are both to Ges? > > Well, let's see. Pierre is identified as By's cousin; I'm going to assume > _first_ cousin. Correct. All 3 Vorrutyers on-stage in ACC are mutual first cousins, children of three brothers. >Richars is definitely By's first cousin; By refers to > Richars' mother as his own aunt. Richars is also identified as "eldest > son of the eldest uncle", Eldest uncle *after* the one who was the Count. Pierre's father was, of course, the eldest brother. > presumably the eldest uncle of Pierre. > Assuming the naming convention held, Pierre le Sanguinaire is > Pierre the younger's grandfather or great-great-grandfather. Pierre > le Sanguinaire seems to be Piotr Vorkosigan's maternal grandfather, > and Pierre the younger died at about age fifty, so he was about forty > years younger than Piotr. So, Pierre le Sanguinaire must be the > great-great-grandfather. Yep. > There's got to be another Pierre in the mix, halfway between. Call him > Pierre II. Pierre II had at least three sons. At least 4. The eldest, who inherited the Countship and eventually fathered our Pierre and Donna; Ges; Richar's father; and Byerly's father. Plus some unstated number of daughters, but the one who married Aral was indeed Ges's sister. Aral's late wife fell in birth order between Ges and his younger sibs. The Vorrutyers do seem to be prolific... > The oldest of those three > was Richars' father; the middle one was Pierre the younger's father; > and the youngest was By's father. Richars' father must have died > before Pierre II, who in turn must have died while Richars was very > young. That swings the inheritance to the middle son, Nope. Not if there's a direct male heir still living, unless Other Arrangements are made. Oh -- just a passing comment -- the daughter of Bloody Pierre who married Piotr's Da was not only BP's eldest daughter, she was his eldest child. I mention this not as a spoiler, but as a piece of info that never found a place in the book. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2655: Couple of comments triggered by remarks elsewhere in Digest 2654: I picture the Time of Isolation as having lasted something between 500 and 700 years, and while Barrayar was re-discovered via the wormhole from Komarr, it was not necessarily re-discovered by Komarrans. (Though it might have been. Schroedinger's History, or, I haven't decided yet.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2789: > ObBuld: I see Beta Colony having a strong FDA and Barrayar with none. > Oh, no. Barrayar would certainly have something, probably rather draconian, to assure no mutagens got into their food and drugs. It's *Jackson's Whole* that has no regulations, and a perfectly free market medical economy. You can vote with your virtual feet and move there, I suppose... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3182: Erica wrote: "... but if you can't have a stupid villain in a comedy, where can you have one?" Kirstin replied, "So a Really Nasty Villain would have been overkill?" Lois remarks: Precisely. Making Richars into a Ges would have been a violation of the comic tone. Also, does anyone remember old Piotr's lament about the new degeneration -- "Even their sins are watered down..." Apropos some earlier discussion of Richars: No, I *don't* think he had Piotr's fiancee murdered -- and then beat an ImpSec investigation. This posits more smarts than he elsewhere displays. I think he was genuinely innocent, albeit also genuinely obnoxious. He *was* responsible for thwarting Count Vorrutyer's two prior attempts at marriage, which was enough to make his not-too-well-balanced cousin paranoid enough about him to glom on to the accusation and not let go. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 747: > >Separate but related question: have any non-intelligent alien species come > >to be of any real importance in Miles' time? As pets, or pests, or > >pestilences; as food animals, or riding beasts, or sources of grain or > >fruit or wood or fiber, or... whatever? > > Well, there was that disgusting Sergyaran worm plague... > > Adam Ek Ah! The worm plague. A great disease, or rather, parasitical infestation, combining all the most notable traits of chiggers and elephantiasis. Pat complains that I never make stuff up I don't use, but I have all sorts of facts about the worm plague at my fingertips. There just hasn't been occasion to put them in the books. These Sergyaran worms are, in their native environment, almost microscopic beasties who make their living in the biosphere by penetrating the skin of their host, burrowing in, living, and reproducing; then the progeny ruptures back out to spread some more by contact -- a fairly simple life-cycle. They are not very toxic to their primary native Seryaran hosts. When they encounter humans and try this, they get as far as penetrating sub-cutaneous tissues, but then the alien (i.e., human) biochemistry makes them go a bit wonky, and instead of reproducing, they hypertrophy. They grow puffily in the human fatty tissue till they either die or are dug out by their revolted and, by that time, often rather hysterical host. The main immediate medical danger from the worm plague is secondary infection, though if someone has gotten rolled in a heavy concentration of them and badly infested, s/he can be seriously debilitated. (The poor misguided worms get debilitated too, eventually, but no one seems to waste much sympathy on them.) Symptoms include reactions from Seryaran bio-toxins, allergic reactions, fevers, and, of course, the grotesque swelling. Rarely, one lodges someplace other than subcutaneously, in the brain or vital organs, and then its hypertrophy becomes more immediately dangerous. Woe to the character who annoys me enough that I decide their just fate is a really bad case of the Sergyaran worm plague. As Cordelia mentions at the end of MEMORY, however, there is now a simple hypospray vermicide which, injected into the human host, will kill 'em off in situ. Prior to that development the only way to get rid of Sergyaran worms was to cut them out one by one, a very tedious medical procedure even worse than removing porcupine or cactus spines. As someone said, not a very lethal plague as plagues go, but *quite* disgusting. And you thought you wanted to know... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 1767: David Owen-Cruise wrote: > In article <6p82dj$nca@excalibur.gooroos.com>, gooroos@interlog.com wrote: > [snip] > >I am hoping that anvil falls in :ImpWed:; I am hoping Vorberg gets his > >justice, and that Miles gets a clue about social systems not existing > >for his convience and amusement. > > How do you get justice for having your life saved and your legs blown off? For Graydon's reassurance, Vorberg is alive, recovered, and back on duty with a purple heart and a commendation on his record. I won't say he doesn't get a twinge or two in bad weather, nor that his time on the fifty-meter dash isn't sadly reduced. That, however, is not exactly the issue. Note, by the way, that Miles has got to be the person *least* able to see that Vorberg has anything to complain about on the merely physical level; Miles himself has been in that medical position a dozen times, and continuing to function while in pain is his idea of normal. It was never any big deal. Till the last one... > You're right though, Miles still needs to have a clue-by-four applied about > the consequences of his actions for other people. You'd think that Elli's > face would be reminder enough. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2126: > My question: what inspired your descriptions > of GalacTech? Did you have friends or family > working for an EnormousTechCorp? I know, I know, apologizing in > advance, writers don't always write > from their own personal experience........but yet > it seems so dead on! > I have a brother who worked for a Middle-sizedTechCorp, but he was not the source of that particular bit. (He was helpful about the properties of titanium, and is a great proponent of scrounging.) He did put me in touch with a fellow engineer who sent me chapter and verse on explosive formation, though, and the ice-die procedure. I don't recall that I had a specific source for the "use their own paperwork against 'em" trick that amused your husband; I may actually have made that one up out of my own head. Quite a bit of Leo Graf was based on my father and other engineers in his train who passed through my angle of view, however. (He was a professor of welding and non-destrutive testing engineering at Ohio State, and the editor of _The Nondestructive Testing Handbook_, world reference in its field for twenty years.) Leo's anecdote about the whistle-blowing dude who ended up mysteriously alcoholically dead was loosely based on dim memory of one of my Dad's anecdotes, and Leo's class lecture in, I believe, Chapter 2 is closely modeled on some of the things he said and wrote. On another topic in this digest: well, yes, I was picturing Niiki's milk poured over his cooked groats, like oatmeal. But you're free to picture something else if you prefer, I supppose... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 1355: > After all, LMB modeled Barrayarans on the Klingons from Star Trek. And > Klingons simply conquer other worlds and then execute the high officials. > Sound familar? Not to mention how they get promotions. Snarl... I did not, goddammit, model Barrayar on the bloody Klingons. This looks to be developing into one of those unkillable urban legends; this is about the eighth time it's come around this year. I keep knocking it on the head, and it keeps coming back. Obnoxious militaristic cultures were invented long before Gene Rodenberry was ever born, eg, Meiji Japan, Imperial Russia, 19th Century Germany, etc., etc., etc. At least give me credit for stealing from the *real* sources. And as far as the Solstice Massacre goes, Mei Lai was more on my mind than more distant history. That permanent blot on the honor that can never be expunged, only endured... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 743: > You have said that Cordelia's religious world view involves a sort of > 30th century evolved Presbtyrianism that would make John Knox roll over > in his grave (to paraphrase). I am especially intrigued by the (by 20th > century standards) odd combination of "conservative" (life begins at > conception e.g. saving Miles and Elena while fetuses) and "liberal" > (tolerance of less than strict heterosexuality) view. If it's not being > too nosy to ask, do you share Coredlia's Betan viewpoint on these, and > other religious/political/social issues? It's always dangerous to ascribe characters' views to their author, though I do think "writing your world-view" is fundamentally inescapable, in the very stories one selects to tell and characters one selects to focus upon. There's a lot about Beta Colony I like, but it comes at the price of other restrictions. You pays your money and takes your choice, socially speaking. I do not always share Cordelia's views; for one thing, she's much braver than I am. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 743: > On Sun, 15 June 1997, doug muir wrote: > > You know, that one little throwaway reference to "hard white cheese from > > Sergyar" actually leads to all sorts of interesting speculations. > indeed! > > > at least a moderately well developed dairy industry > > there... enough so that the Sergyarans are exporting cheese into the > > galaxy, not just consuming it themselves or sending it to Barrayar. (Snip many thoughts on cheese -- got milk?) A reminder, in this era a lot of food will be in effect *manufactured*, produced in vat-form by bioengineered methods -- not just vat-grown meat, but everything. Milk from bacteria, for instance? These factories will still need organic feedstocks, of course, but might get by on simple algae... "Farming" as still practiced on backwards Barrayar and other less developed places is very energy-inefficient, since one must produce a whole plant to get just its fruit, etc. Whether vat or "real" food will be more economical to produce in any given situation will make a nice calculation for future economists. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3603: Beta and birth control: Herms breed true with other herms in vivo. They are not normally or safely cross-fertile with monosexuals without medical intervention, but such medical intervention is readily available. The sex of the child so planned must, of course, be chosen in advance from the three possibilities. A calculated number of third-child variances are given out each year by lottery; a certain number of these are reserved as rewards for outstanding citizens/contributors to Beta, chosen variously and probably by more than one group. While one's first permit (or, more accurately two half-permits, unless one chooses to clone oneself) is inalienable, and reverts to the pool if unused upon the death of its holder, lottery-won permits may be sold by their recipients to qualified purchasers, given away, or bequeathed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 1207: Thank you for your interest in my work! I really don't have time to go over this in detail -- I'll leave further critique to the listees, to whom I'll cc this reply -- but I thought I'd correct a couple of obvious things for you. I see Dorca as having taken the throne in adulthood, under military circumstances; I hadn't thought of a regency here. It's not fixed, of course, only what's in the published books is fixed. Note that Dorca's surname could be adoptive, like the Romans. Ezar is NOT a son of Dorca -- he's a distant cousin of some sort, descended from a lot further up the family tree than you go here. Less certainly, Dorca probably did have at least two wives, one (who likely did have Vorrutyer blood) the mother of Yuri and his sister (who married Ezar during Mad Yuri's War, had Serg as a very late child, and was probably locked away mad or at least very annoyed for many years like Juana el Loco -- she, not Yuri, is what makes Yuri Gregor's "great-uncle"). I have no idea if Yuri had any other surviving decendants; none are presently planned by me, but the advantage of not making all this stuff up in advance is that I can change it later according to the needs of the story in progress. Retroactive continuity, gotta love it. I don't see Princess Kareen as being that closely related to Dorca's line, but it's not fixed. Though she might be related to Alys... Piotr's mother, as mentioned elsewhere, was a daughter of then-Count Pierre Vorrutyer; Ges was the son of a later, unnamed Count Vorrutyer. The Vorrutyer family, and their later family tree, is going to turn up again in ImpWed, heh. So you all will get to check up on them. Piotr himself is not strongly in line in any succession theory. I see most of the "six lines of succession" as being descended from people variously above Dorca in the family tree, not below him. Frustrating for you, as I give you no hooks to hang speculation on here; sorry. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 761: > Has anyone remembered that Miles has a biochip from back in WA? If it > was harmed by the "Komaran Virus" it would probably turn his stomach > inside out. He was exposed in Memory and not enough time passed before > the end of the book to be sure that nothing is going to happen. LMB: Note that that biochip, the vagus nerve, and the stomach it was attached to ended up blown out in bloody gobbits on the concrete at Bharaphutra Labs. Miles has a brand new stomach now, and no biochip. I'm not sure yet if his fresh new stomach will eventually develop the same symptoms as the old, but if it does he'll have to deal with it then. In any case, later posters are correct, it was likely a sufficiently different matrix from Illyan's biochip that the Komarran virus would not have affected it even if Miles had still had it installed. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 2275: > Until Lois herself says differently, or I am persuaded otherwise I > personally will continue to believe that the placental transplant > (requiring sex followed by invivo fertilisation and implantation) is > at least equally common as invitro fertilisation on Barrayar and > maybe otherplaces - except by definition Athos and among the Haut. I shouldn't think so. I expect anyone who plans to use a UR for gestation at all goes into it with IV fertilization from the start. Placental transfer is an invasive, dangerous operation (high risk of hemorrhages, for starters, due to the way the placenta interdigitates with its matrix of tissue on the uterine wall), so would be mainly used as an emergency procedure or for "second thoughts". (I expect the latter is the larger of the two categories.) And, in fact, any -- and it would likely be the great majority -- prospective parents who wished to check their conceptus for defects before implantation would also use IVF, whether it was subsequently implanted in a replicator, back in the mother, or in some other host. Bioengineered animal hosts are a logical possibility I haven't explored on-screen yet; they may have been a techno-historical phase replaced by the perfected mechanical replicator. > IIRC Cordelia says it is commonplace on Beta Colony. > Tradition Barrayarans would prefer it because it is closer to the > 'real thing' at least for the heir and maybe the spare. Not if they had a lick of sense and the least grasp of obstetrics, they wouldn't. > > Remember that both require the woman (but not the man) to undergo a > surgical procedure. Egg harvesting is way less invasive than a placental transfer. > Although I admit that for big families via replicator any sensible > woman would choose in-vitro (one operation for multiple children - > multiple eggs harvested at the one time and stored) rather than > in-vivo (a operation for each child). Yep. > > Note: this assumes that in-vitro is not required for sex selection - > but IIRC the sex selection technology is just a tablet. They doubtless have a plethora of methods for sex selection. The boy/girl pill is only one. ------------------------------ DIGEST 0943: To bring it back to fiction: one of the charms of a novel is that we can actually know "what really happened" in those in-real-life so-difficult he-said-she-said cases. And (am I allowed to do ObBujold?) in my universe, there is also fast-penta, which clears as well as convicts. On the other hand, can you imagine the pornographic political propaganda that has been made up over the years about Aral and Cordelia by their assorted enemies? The worst would be the slanders mixed with just enough bits of truth so that people could point to corroborative details, and cry, "See?!" --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3236: Subject: Re: bonding to the wrong ones Date sent: Thu, 6 Apr 2000 15:27:29 -0500 From: "Lois Bujold" [Lois is asked: "Did Cordelia and Aral discuss the] [possibility of Taura becoming Lady Vorgosigan? And if so, what was] [the emotional content of that discussion?] Heh. No, I don't think so. I've never committed myself in print, so I retain the right to shift my ground suddenly and without notice, but my personal view is that Taura and her sibs were not naturally cross-fertile with regular humans. Not that something couldn't be worked out in a lab dish, but that would have to be deliberate, not accidental. I suppose that doesn't *preclude* the concept of Taura as Lady Vorkosigan, particularly for someone as determined as Miles... an interesting variation on the child-brings-home- inappropriate-date phenomenon, to be sure. Just what did those private reports of Illyan's *say*? Feel free to speculate. Ta, L. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3212: >Do butter bugs have teeth? [Lois replies] Date sent: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 15:28:03 -0600 From: "Lois Bujold" Well, mandibles, anyway. They can chew stuff up, if it's the right size, i.e., small or chopped small. They could not munch on sound timbers, say, so the vision of Vorkosigan House suddenly collapsing into a puff of dust someday due to their behind-the-scenes deconstruction work is not to be. *Dry-rotted* or otherwise pre-damaged timbers would be another matter, no doubt. I'm surprised no ento-pedants have jumped on me for that one. Bugs- proper are supposed to have sucking mouth parts. I had my defense all ready, too -- the name was Mark's idea, and he talked Enrique into it for the sale of the advertising slogan. Ah, well. Ta, Lois. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIGEST 3145: > Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 12:37:01 EST > From: TimothyBil@aol.com > Subject: Re: Ivan [snip] > This raises another question. Ivan is Aral's heir twice removed (Miles and > Mark) because of Aral's and Padma's grandmothers being sisters, right? > So, if Ivan becomes Count, it's because of matrilineal descent - the very >thing Aral won't recognize as being legitimate. Someone tell me where I've > gone wrong here, please. He Ladyship has said that Ivan is heir *by will * (from Baen's bar, conference Miles to go) == quote > Date: 21 November 1999 06:39 > > From: "Lois Bujold" > > Any good will includes some contingency planning. Obviously, Aral's (then) will included provision for his Count's Choice of who would inherit his District if, say, he and Miles were to be killed in the same lightflyer accident, e.g., Ivan. > > Aral can't directly choose Miles's heir if Miles outlives him -- only Miles can do that. But I'd not be surprised if those provisions in Miles's will duplicate Aral's on this critical point. It's likely to be something they'd coordinate on, after all. > > > Ta, Lois.