Sci-Fi & Fantasy Girlz discussion

Don't forget the spoiler tags!

I have to admit, I hadn't heard of a single one of the books on the poll this month, so I was rooting for Mind Fuck out of sheer titular temerity. Oh, well.

I also have to admit, I'd never heard of this series or even the author before. I looked at the poll the other day and since it looked like this one was in the lead, I went out and picked it up, so I've actually started already. A few first impressions:

1. Man, there's a great big, bugger-all bunch of these! Looks like 15 "regular" books in the series with some sort of special edition Book #5.1-5.3 thingie, Borders of Infinity in there for good measure. I'm not sure what that decimaled version is about/for. Apparently, it's three novella length pieces that tie into the series one way or t'other. There appear to be more than one of those 'tweeners in this series, so I'm not sure how they've been counted up.

2. Shards of Honor is, apparently, book #1 in publication order, but the "third" book chronologically. I put "third" in quotes there because it's third after Dreamweaver's Dilemma, which is book #9.1 in publication order, but called book #0.5 chronologically, and calling Book #0.5 the first "book" when it's enumerated with a decimal seems like an odd way to count. Book #4 in publication order, Falling Free, is book #1 chronologically... meaning it's second.

I know that seems confusing, but I don't really think it should bug anyone overmuch. It's not like publishers didn't release editions of C.S. Lewis' Narnia books in chronological order in recent years, for instance, and I don't think it should trouble any sci-fi fan worth the price of a theater ticket to watch Star Wars, Episode 1....

The chronological and publication order are both listed under the series in her GR bio page, so either sequence is pretty easily pulled up.

Personally, I generally prefer to read books in publication order. A writer's craft sometimes shifts and develops over time, so the voice and skill with which an individual book is put together can make for a jarring shift when the books are retroactively reshuffled into the linear chronology.

Aside from the inconsistency in writing/style there's sometimes a plot spoiler issue. Probably the worst example of that would be the Star Wars ep5 line: "*I* am your father." That doesn't have nearly the same impact if you suffer through those movies in chronological order. If you watch ep1-3 before 4-6 then the same line will forever be echoed by the dulcet tones of Jar Jar Binks' voice announcing, "And meesa yousa Uncle Binksie, Lukesa Wooksa!"

Certainly in your average series, that doesn't usually happen with the same childhood destroying potential of George Lucas capitalizing on his marketing product then selling off the franchise to Disney. It depends on the series to a certain extent, of course. Reading the Dead Sea Scrolls in publication order, for instance, would probably put the Book of Revelations around the middle, and that would be weird. Thank God for Saint Jerome, we might say....

3. This is a Romance novel. It's a sci-fi romance novel, mind you, and I have to say right up front that from the first 1/4 or so that I've got into it, the bona fides of the book as a sci-fi book are pretty well established and track so far as pretty credible. That is, I remember reading Naked in Death by J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts/Eleanor Marie Robertson and finding the sci-fi credibility of that nominally sci-fi police procedural romance novel to be more than a little shaky. I'm sure at some point in her illustrious career Mz. Robb/erts/on must have read a share of sci-fi books, but from my reading of that book she didn't have a great handle on the concepts of the genre. Or computers. Or police procedures. Or guns. Or laser guns. That one read to me like a SF book that aged badly from the moment it was written, if not even before it was written....

This one tracks so far as much more legitimately sci-fi. Interstellar travel is explained by wormholes, they have sci-fi weapons, there are little tidbits of technology scattered throughout that more or less jibe and seem consistent. Such things in sci-fi can be wildly unlikely or simply impossible, but as long as they are internally consistent within the alternate reality that is a sci-fi product (Or any product, really. The Great Gatsby is an alternate reality novel.) then the writer has satisfied his/er obligations to the genre.

In this case, certain events and plot points might be improbable or unmotivated or poorly executed, but that's not an author stumbling over the genre itself, a much more fundamental issue.

Gary wrote: "I have to admit, I hadn't heard of a single one of the books on the poll this month, so I was rooting for Mind Fuck out of sheer titular temerity. Oh, well.

I also have to admit, I'd never heard o..."

The Vorkosigan series is my favorite series of all time.

Shards of Honor is a weaker addition mostly because I think it was one of the first novels she ever wrote, but it pairs very nicely with Barrayar (one of my favorites).

I heard about this series I think a couple of years ago because it was mentioned in a chat room but I had never heard about the series or the author before.

Then I saw it was kind of a big deal after seeing that this book had 20k+ ratings and that Tor.com has a re-reading The Vorkosigan Saga feature on their site
https://www.tor.com/series/rereading-...

I added it to my list at the time, so I'm excited to be reading this with the group.

I think she should hire someone to update her website, or "home page" like it says on the site. It looks like something straight out from 1995 internet
http://www.dendarii.com/

Actually Shards of Honor is one of my favorite of this series of books, although it is not as well written as the others. I happen to like the characters of Cornelia and Miles Dad( I read this novel a while ago, I can’t remember the name). Also, as a “ mature” woman, I like the these characters who are well along into adult hood.

This is a great series, space opera and romance and SF. Cordelia Vorkosigan is one of the most wonderful heroines in the genre.

I finished this up the other day. I'm going to reveal some details here, so I'll go ahead and put spoiler tags around all of these thoughts:

(view spoiler)[1. I like that the protagonist is older than the 20-something that is the norm for a lot of books, and that her age/experience both meaningfully influence her actions, and how she is perceived by other characters.

2. Unlike a lot of other books that are Romance-y, Sci-Fi, I really think this book earned its Sci-Fi cred. It's not a ground-breaking piece of Sci-Fi work, mind you, but the author clearly understands the ideas of the genre. I have quibbles, but I'd give her a 9 of 10 for that.

3. I'm more than a little thrown by the presentation of psychology and PTSD in this book. I have two major (and several minor) issues with how this was handled:

A. Cordelia is more troubled, and has more mental damage, due to her treatment by the psychology team meant to work with veterans/POWs on their way home than by, say, the actual injuries, captivity, violence, threats of violence, looming sexual violence, etc. that she actually experienced. The way it's presented, it isn't her experiences that gave her a stutter and more than a little nervous/manic behavior, but the constant, wheedling presence of therapists, who are maybe well-meaning, but always wrong, always misguided, always leap to supposedly "wild" conclusions (more on that in a minute) and at core fundamentally harmful. (We get just a bit of how other other vets in the story are treated, and maybe they do well there, but from the POV we get, that's the case.)

B. The "Manchurian Candidate" issue is presented as another example of misguided psychologists. Yet, this is a Sci-Fi book. They really do have mind-wiping technology/techniques. We see them. Cordelia sees them. It's really not the wacky and misguided conclusion to reach that it is presented as being. In fact, there could easily have been a Neo/The Matrix moment at any point after about the first act, and it would have fit perfectly well with the story as presented. Honestly, I really was more than half expecting that to happen. There could be some sort of reprogramming going on. It's not far-fetched in the context of the story at all, and her being more traumatized by days with therapists rather than months of actual traumas seemed quite forced to me. In fact, it started to read like some sort of weird, post-L. Ron Hubbard book ghost written by some poor, misguided Hollywood screenwriter scientologist trying to write his way out of one of those re-education camps....

Of course, her goal there was to get Cordelia both recognized as a hero on her homeworld AND off planet, back into the arms of her Vorky McDreamboat to satisfy the requirements of the Romance novel since that requires that the protagonist and love interest end the book in some state of marital or near-marital bliss... but the double-whammy really stood out to me, and I wish she'd left most of that psychology-bashing alone and just gone with some more nefarious politician stuff—which was right there to be used, and could have set up more dramatic plot points for later works. After all, what makes a more profound villain, the secondary characters like the therapists, or the politicians who lead her home world?

4. I'm not sure I understand the attraction between these two. I admit, this is often the case for me when I read novels that have a Romance theme. After the Meet-Cute (which is in this case something of a horror show what with the use of nerve weapons) the instant sexual chemistry doesn't seem to be based on anything other than the insistence that there is instant sexual chemistry. I didn't really get it this time either. Aral's proposal came at least as much of a surprise to me as it did to Cordelia, because I didn't see it motivated by either characters' behavior. From Cordelia's POV we do get her attraction to him growing in dribs and drabs, but his attraction to her seems to come out of nowhere. Again, that might be a function of the genre that I just don't personally like or get: the mysterious and unbounded love of an otherwise dangerous man for a sassy little brown mouse of a lady-girl who secretly wants to be swept off her feet, but is too much the strong and independent woman to ever let a man become the focus of her life and identity... *snaps fingers* yet winds up there anyway.

Unless it's all some sort of Stockholm Syndrome thing going on. In which case, see Issue #3A-B.

5. I really liked the political interactions and how that pushed and pulled them apart. The plotting has a really interesting structure. The characters having to work around the politics and struggle with their respective "national" (planetal?) conflicts. That gave the whole story a higher level context that is often missing in any Sci-Fi novel.

6. I'm not so sure the Barrayar were very well fleshed out in this installment. At least, I found their culture and identity somewhat confused and contradictory. I assume that's something that gets fleshed out a lot in the other novels. To me, however, they tracked like somewhat lackluster Klingons, but not as competent.

7. Probably most dramatically, I found some of the sexual assault content to be a bit much, not in that it exists in the novel, but that Cordelia seems quite blase about it, even when she is the potential victim. Yes, she's trying to deal with the situation, but I found her flippancy more than a little unlikely and, honestly, unlikable. It rang much like a Heinleinesque view of how women should deal with sexual violence, and I don't find it particularly reasonable that anyone would behave as that character does in that situation. That aspect of the novel reminded me very much of Friday by Heinlein and his take on how women (or, at least, artificial humans...) should be able to just deal with it. Here's my review of that novel for a fuller discussion of the issue:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Of course, Cordelia does manage to work her way out of the situation/be rescued before it gets as ugly as it could have gotten, which differs quite a bit from Heinlein. However, the concept of being sassy as a way to get the upper hand over a psychotically sadistic rapist murderer seems to me to be more than a little misguided, especially when combined with the later issues regarding how mental health care is handled. (hide spoiler)]

I finished the book this morning and really enjoyed it. I thought the pacing was fine, but I was king of anxious for the whole thing to come to a conclusion on the last three chapters, I think those three could’ve easily been one or two chapters.

I’m not including many spoilers in my comments, but I’ll be talking about the book as a whole.

The insta-love bothered me as well. I don’t mind the romance but I think it happened too soon. The way the author shows us they’re “falling in love” was a bit cringey for me, but this book was published in 1986, so maybe it wasn’t as cheesy back then.

Something else I had trouble with was with the passage of time.
(view spoiler)[
After Cordelia goes back to her people, she’s now a Captain in chapter seven, but we don’t know how much time has passed. That whole chapter was a bit confusing for me about what was happening, it was kind of a sudden change and it took me a bit to figure out what was going on.
(hide spoiler)]

I enjoyed the story overall and wouldn’t mind reading at least the next one in the series. I really liked Aral as a character, even a bit more than Cordelia.

Gary wrote: "To me, however, they tracked like somewhat lackluster Klingons, but not as competent."

Now that you mention Klingons, I read this book started out as Star Trek fanfiction!

Bujold started this piece as Star Trek fanfiction. The Barryarans were Klingon—some of Aral’s dialogue in this section of the book has a distinctly Klingon terseness. Beta Colony represents the Federation; The Betan Survey crew clearly meant to go where no man had gone before, but accidentally stumbled onto a place where the Barryarans have definitely been before. It’s like the neutral zone. Although she is commanding an exploratory mission, Cordelia is not an analog for Kirk. Neither she nor anyone on her crew is a military strategist. Their ship is designed to run away from a fight, not to win it. Aral’s commentary on the Betan Survey crew’s limitations as soldiers is scathing and somewhat insensitive, under the circumstances.

https://www.tor.com/2016/04/25/reread...

I've heard that too.

Amazing what happens to original inspiration.

Yoly wrote: "Now that you mention Klingons, I read this book started out as Star Trek fanfiction!"

Ah, I guess that adds up then. Earlier portions of the book track a lot more like a Federation/Klingon sort of thing, and they seemed less and less like those ST standards later in the book. Plus, each is a kind of one or two planet/system instead of a whole chunk of the galaxy. The Federation of Planet (not Planets) and the Klingon Emporium, we might say. The closer we get to either version in her novel, however, the further they get from anything Trek. I bet they get even more different and distinct in later installments.

Aren't they all STAR TREK fan-fics, to some degree, even STAR WARS?

Amber wrote: "Aren't they all STAR TREK fan-fics, to some degree, even STAR WARS?"

😱

Hey! I thought that was a legitimate question!

You are aware that there are literally decades of SF that can not possibly be Star Trek fanfic because it came after them?

I don't know. We might as well say that any given SF work is a HG Wells fanfic, or a Jules Verne fanfic. At a certain point, I'd argue that SF/Fantasy are all subgenres of legendary storytelling, and therefore, fall under a broad category of tales told by the campfire and/or even religious myths. Even though I'm certainly not the guy who originated the idea, I get crap from time to time for pointing out that Jesus Christ isn't much of a hero compared to any number of his contemporary characters if one is inclined to read religious writings objectively, as fiction, and in context of the other writings of the time. (Some folks are inclined to read the Bible as a historical document, and that's all well and good too, I guess, though I honestly think it's more fiction than history. One could also read Gone with the Wind as a history, if one is so inclined, and learn comparable amounts about the events of the period, and get just as skewed a perspective on it.)

Star Trek and Star Wars are pretty big fish in that contemporary pond, but I don't think they are particularly genre-creating or entirely original references. That is, an awful lot of either of those two products are derivative of a range of SF/F of their respective periods, and the creators appear to have been quite well versed in those ideas. One could argue with and use an awful lot of evidence/support from Lucas and various film buffs that Star Wars is a fanfic of Kurosawa, for instance. Star Trek was apparently pitched as "Wagon Train in space..." and Kirk based in no small way on Horatio Hornblower.

Which points out that genre is, itself, something of an arbitrary way to view stories, and can be pretty inaccurate. "Science Fiction" is an oxymoronic term when defined by the most common definitions of those words. That's the case for a lot of things, of course. Comic books aren't often comic, and they aren't books. Graphic novels are not necessarily graphic nor are they novels. Even "novel" as a term means "new" because that's what the form was considered when the term was coined... but I don't think it was really new in a particularly meaningful sense when it came into vogue, and certainly isn't now.

Personally, I see a lot of the basis of modern storytelling in Gilgamesh and would call that the earliest known SF/F product, so we're all reading/writing Sumerian Mythology fanfic.... I've also said that all one really needs to know about art can be found on the walls of caves painted 40,000 years ago. And I'm not kidding about that. Yes, there's vast cultural and historical bodies of work that have accumulated in the over millennia since, but the fundamentals and concepts of art ranging from abstraction to zoetropic storytelling are right there daubed on living stone by people who probably didn't get the respect they deserved from their contemporaries either....

So, I guess where ever one wants to place the sign posts.

As something of an aside to this aside, and not terribly coincidentally (because Star Wars so engrained in the zeitgeist), I just happened to be watching the Youtube channel Comic Tropes, and he points out some of the imagery inspiration for Star Wars in the French comic book Valerian and Laureline here. Several of those images are very similar, and he makes a pretty compelling argument for that inspiration, which I find interesting because he also explicitly makes the comparison of that comic book to Doctor Who but also makes a point of saying he's not read anybody from either product referencing the other as inspiration. Of course, he could just be unaware of it, but the side by side images of the comic and the SW art is compelling as evidence of inspiration if not outright swiping.... My point being, nothing really comes from nothing.

Actually, I thought Mary's point was valid too, though I was referring to all SF that came out after both STAR WARS and STAR TREK.

OK, I had to post this...in honor of your reference to Gilgamesh, Gary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JrOk...

Amber wrote: "OK, I had to post this...in honor of your reference to Gilgamesh,..."

I watched that when you posted it recently. I like that guy. He's flippantly pithy & weirdly erudite at the same time.

I don't remember where I previously posted it, but yeah, he's good at it.

To me, the most interesting note of this review is

The author has said that she pictured Aral as looking like English film actor Oliver Reed, scar and all. Come to think of it, he could have made a very interesting Rochester.

I can see that.