The Vorkosigan Saga Discussion Thread (Progressive Spoilers)

[Frodo]

@Miller

I’d prefer a TV series. Maybe they can lure Peter Dinklage away from Game of Thrones.

It would be awesome, but Dinklage is 45, no way he could play a young Miles.

[Miller]

But even as a young man, Miles always looked much older than his real age.

[Frodo]

@Miller

But even as a young man, Miles always looked much older than his real age.

Yes but not THAT much, 10 years ago maybe, now it’s too late.

We need a certain Escobaran Scientist, an uterine replicator and 10 minutes with Peter Dinklage…

[Slow_Moving_Vehicle]

@vontsira

Not wanting to be a wet blanket; but I’ve seen it strongly suggested in the past few years, that the author has stated that as regards the “Vorkosiverse”, she feels pretty much “written-out” – *Captain Vorpatrils’s Alliance * likely the last in the series. I hope I’m wrong here !

Well, the end of Cryoburn rather feels like a stopping point, especially as Miles won’t have nearly the freedom to roam around the Nexus while tied down by his duties as Count Vorkosigan. Although that didn’t stop Aral from going to Sergyar as Viceroy. But Bujold has hinted that Miles’ birth defects, along with his various wounds - especially the Cetagandan poison that damaged his circulatory system - will give him a short lifespan. Though that brings up the possibility of Vorkosigan’s District being governed by a regency of Ekaterin and Mark, and wouldn’t that be an interesting partnership?

[Fretful_Porpentine]

OK, so I just finished Cryoburn. Major spoilers to follow:

Yeah, it does feel very much like an endpoint for Miles’s story at least. This isn’t to say that there aren’t a lot of stories that could potentially be written about Count Miles, regardless of whether he’s able to go off and have adventures or not (honestly, I think some of the strongest books in the series are set right there on Barrayar, and I, personally, would LOVE a book about Council-of-Counts politics), but on some level, it wouldn’t be the same character. (The bit that really got me, at the very end of Cryoburn, was the part where Ivan thinks Miles is about to throw away his scripted speech, and then he doesn’t. That struck me as the real “wow, everything really has changed” moment.)

That said, I’m kinda hoping for more “spinoff” books like Ethan of Athos and Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. Especially (significant spoiler for CVA):

HOW much fun would it be to get Byerly Vorrutyer’s adventures as Our Man In Jackson’s Whole? (OK, that’s probably a totally idiosyncratic reaction, because I have a ridiculous and irrational crush on Byerly, but a book from his point of view would be hilarious.)

[Miller]

I would absolutely read that book, Fretful.

[danhanegan]

@Fretful_Porpentine

I’m kinda hoping for more “spinoff” books like Ethan of Athos and Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance.

Personally I want to see more Athos. Ethan of Athos set up this huge biological revolution, I want to see the results. And EoA has always been one of my favorite Vorkosiverse books, despite not having a Vorkosigan in it.

[Little_Nemo]

I like FP’s idea. And here’s another one: A mystery set on Cetaganda featuring Dag Benin. We’ve only seen Cetaganda from an outsider’s perspective. It would be interesting to see it from a Cetagandan’s viewpoint.

[Spice_Weasel]

Cetaganda: Of course the worst thing a saboteur could do to Ivan was drug him so he couldn’t get it up. Now he’s really popular with the ladies. HA!

That moment was a :rolleyes: followed by the realization that actually, it was perfectly tailored to psychologically mess with that specific individual.

[Airk]

@Fretful_Porpentine

Heh, it didn’t even occur to me that it was a distressingly improbable coincidence until people started discussing it on this thread.

This is me, right here. In fact, in the earlier oblique reference, I thought it was talking about a different meeting in a different cell block. @_@

Anyway, I haven’t met a Bujold novel yet that I didn’t enjoy, but some are definitely stronger than others. I actually really, REALLY LIKED Shards of Honor/Barrayar (I read them together in Cordelia’s Honor) and I STILL like Cordelia and maybe even Aral better than Miles, even if Miles IS highly entertaining. I haven’t read ALL the Miles books yet though.

I really have no complaints about these books at all.

[Spice_Weasel]

@Airk

I actually really, REALLY LIKED Shards of Honor/Barrayar (I read them together in Cordelia’s Honor) and I STILL like Cordelia and maybe even Aral better than Miles, even if Miles IS highly entertaining.

Miles is great and all, but I have feelings for Aral. Half the enjoyment of the books is seeing where he makes an appearance.

[Airk]

@Spice_Weasel

Miles is great and all, but I have feelings for Aral. Half the enjoyment of the books is seeing where he makes an appearance.

That’s me, only it’s Cordelia.

[vontsira]

@Fretful_Porpentine

OK, so I just finished Cryoburn. Especially (significant spoiler for CVA):

HOW much fun would it be to get Byerly Vorrutyer’s adventures as Our Man In Jackson’s Whole? (OK, that’s probably a totally idiosyncratic reaction, because I have a ridiculous and irrational crush on Byerly, but a book from his point of view would be hilarious.)

@Miller

I would absolutely read that book, Fretful.

@Little_Nemo

I like FP’s idea.

FP’s suggestion at top here (I’m not savvy about spoiler-mechanisms – “whatever”, will be easy, I feel, to refer to): add me to the tally of those who love the idea. Would seem to me to have an inevitable kinship with a series by another author, which I love, and have waxed probably-boring about at various times on SDMB: George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman. These novels by Fraser are “first-person-narrator”, which it seems Bujold does not do; nonetheless, I feel there’d be a big similarity – a viewpoint character, highly cynical and amoral, and up to his neck in all kinds of dirty doings, supposedly at least in the interests of his nation: and said character being intelligent and perceptive and eager to unsparingly “tell it like it is”. Potentially wonderful stuff !

[Spice_Weasel]

@Airk

That’s me, only it’s Cordelia.

I’ve never had a crush on a literary character before. It’s weird.

[Spice_Weasel]

Oooh, ooh. Question.

Has it ever been established when the Aral/Vorrutyer shenanigans were in relationship to what happened on Komarr? I’m just trying to get a sense of the timeline.

[Little_Nemo]

@vontsira

The language matter: I rather suspect that this is something which Bujold consciously chooses not to get bogged-down in, to the likely detriment of themes which interest her more. She doesn’t so much “handwave away” the language barriers which there would, realistically, be in her universe; as, just ignores the issue, and by fiat, has everyone speaking much the same kind of English. A sort of precedent for that in Tolkien – though he gives a semi-explanation, re the “Common / Westron” speech being a kind of Esperanto, which different nations and kindreds use when dealing with each other.

Language / nationality stuff gets a bit of a mention by LMcMB, in reference specifically to Barrayar; though as “scene-building”, rather than directly impinging on action / conversation. It’s woven into the novels, that Barrayar’s original settlers from Earth were a mixture of Russian / French / English / Greek – with the Russian and Russian-culture “flavour” predominating; and a tendency toward correlating Greek-speaking, with poor-and-ignorant. The picture is got that the respective groups continue to speak their own languages among themselves; but all recorded conversation, between different groups or otherwise, is in standard English.

I recall a mention in one book that some outsider was trying to read some Barrayaran inscription and was confused by the Barrayaran alphabet, which is apparently a mixture of the Roman, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabets. Presumably, it looks something like this.

[Little_Nemo]

@Spice_Weasel

Oooh, ooh. Question.

Has it ever been established when the Aral/Vorrutyer shenanigans were in relationship to what happened on Komarr? I’m just trying to get a sense of the timeline.

Some people have worked out a timeline of when events happened relative to each other.

The only fixed date in the series is from The Borders of Infinity when Miles says the date is “November 2, '97, Earth Common Era.”

If we arbitrarily assume the series is set approximately one thousand years in the future, that sets that date as 2997 AD. This means Aral Vorkosigan was born in 2928 and Miles was born in 2972. The invasion of Komarr and the Solstice Massacre would have occurred in 2966.

[vontsira]

@Little_Nemo

I recall a mention in one book that some outsider was trying to read some Barrayaran inscription and was confused by the Barrayaran alphabet, which is apparently a mixture of the Roman, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabets. Presumably, it looks something like this.

Food for thought – as your link shows, not a great deal in the sphere of three-way common ground. One wonders what Saints Cyril and Methodius might think of this whole thing…?

I’m inclined to ponder on what means of script-and-writing the Cetagandans use. I get the “feel” – maybe LMcMB would strongly disagree – that there’s a degree of counterpart-ship between the Cetas, and the Japanese: this applying to both positive and negative qualities. I thus tend to envisage the Cetas as using something in the picotograph / ideograph line: at any rate for internal-cultural stuff – re all technical and military matters, I’m sure they’d be in line with whatever did the job most efficiently vis-a-vis the Nexus as a whole.

[Spice_Weasel]

@Little_Nemo

Some people have worked out a timeline of when events happened relative to each other.

The only fixed date in the series is from The Borders of Infinity when Miles says the date is “November 2, '97, Earth Common Era.”

If we arbitrarily assume the series is set approximately one thousand years in the future, that sets that date as 2997 AD. This means Aral Vorkosigan was born in 2928 and Miles was born in 2972. The invasion of Komarr and the Solstice Massacre would have occurred in 2966.

That was actually really helpful for understanding the whole Civil War drama.

So according to this timeline, Aral was about 20 when he married his first wife, 22 when he killed those men in the duel, and with Ges Vorrutyer for most of his 20s. But it wasn’t until over a decade later, after he broke things off with Vorrutyer, that Komarr happened.

Interesting.

[MEBuckner]

@Little_Nemo

I recall a mention in one book that some outsider was trying to read some Barrayaran inscription and was confused by the Barrayaran alphabet, which is apparently a mixture of the Roman, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabets. Presumably, it looks something like this.

Cordelia in Chapter 7 of Barrayar:

She was holed up in the library one rainy afternoon, curled on an old high-backed sofa, reading, for the third time, a page in an old volume from the Count’s shelves. The book was a relic of the printer’s art from the Time of Isolation. The English in which it was written was printed in a mutant variation of the cyrillic alphabet, all forty-six characters of it, once used for all tongues on Barrayar. Her mind seemed unusually mushy and unresponsive to it today.

Note that the Cyrillic alphabets already run high–the Russian version has 33 characters–and when you get into non-Slavic languages being expressed in Cyrillic script, the number of letters can go even higher (the Kurdish version of Cyrillic has 40 characters).