The Vorkosigan Companion (20 page)

My own career has largely been devoted to titanium metal. I suppose that was the source for the choice of titanium for the mirror in the book. Titanium is just a metal with a fancy name, but it has of late come to signify something important enough that even credit cards scramble to usurp the name.

One maxim of our dad was the idea that whatever you would do, you should do it better than anyone else. He illustrated this at his Ohio State University office by displaying for many years, taped to the wire-reinforced door, a cartoon of a guy with an enormous ball of string and a caption "Whatever you do, do it to the best of your ability." Lois has gone on to fulfill that axiom in her writing.

We were taught, apparently by example, to take responsibility for our own actions and to behave in what I perceive to be a reasonably moral way. Sort of a proletarian form of noblesse oblige. Lois reflects this in
Falling Free
in the whole exposure of the innocent quaddies to the less innocent characteristics of man, illustrated particularly by the example of one radiograph that was presented over and over again as proof of the quality of many welds, and Leo's appalled reaction to this. I could see precisely the same reaction from our dad—and maybe it was a real case based on some work he did on the Alaska Pipeline.

Dad always claimed that his father sat him down one day in early life and asked him what he wanted to be. He responded, "An electrical engineer," thinking that he could drive the big electric locomotives that were just coming to the rails near Pittsburgh. His father's menial jobs provided little chance of affording a higher education. He won scholarships first to Carnegie, then Case, and finally Caltech based on incredibly good grades (those genes and that drive never got passed to any of us). He did study electrical engineering and the nature and effects of lightning, which I suppose was the source for his interest in arcs and welding. During the war and after at Battelle Institute, I know he worked with some early inspection of drill pipe in west Texas and torpedo drive systems in the Chesapeake Bay. We remember the stories of errant torpedoes that either toppled the observation barge, sending everyone on board in with the jellyfish, or went to the beach, causing a rapid retreat of the sunbathers in its path.

Dad was an inventor with a very wide range of interest. He held nineteen patents covering a wide range of disciplines. Some of these ideas have become very important in the lives of the modern world. He holds the basic patent on xeroradiography, the application of the Xerox (halide) patents to X-ray rather than visible light like today's copy machines. This has evolved into the medical imaging equipment used to detect breast cancer. He also holds the basic patents on the first television X-ray system, a device that he made possible by the introduction of a low-density beryllium window in place of glass that would block the weak X-ray signals, and precursor to the X-ray machines used in real-time medical imaging and luggage inspection at airports. Every time you go to a dentist using the new direct film-to-digital system, you are touched by his work.

For a time throughout the 1950s, Dad was the "TV Weatherman" to most of Central Ohio. This was truly during the infancy of television. Ours at the time was a six-inch black-and-white Hallicrafters with a row of channel-selector buttons across the bottom. Dad had taken a weather course at Caltech from Irving Krick—one of the key people in the decision to go into Normandy on June 6, 1944—so he came to the program with more real background than the weather readers of today. Like most else he did, he used the five-minute show to teach everyone in Ohio about weather. The shows always started with the same somewhat startled "Well, hi there."

For those who studied Welding Engineering at Ohio State University in the early 1960s, the names of at least some of the
Falling Free
characters are familiar.

Leo's family name may have come from Professor Karl Graf, who became chairman of the Welding Engineering Department a few years after McCauley left.

The real-life name source for "Leo" may have been the first black student in Welding Engineering, Leo Wilcox, who was a few years ahead of me. We all met him in the mid-1950s at the annual Welding Engineering Department picnics.

"Claire" may have been inspired by Clarence Jackson, a family friend as well as a professor in the Welding Engineering Department. Clarence specialized in submerged arc welding and had learned the trade the hard way. Getting him on the staff proved to be a real exercise for the silver-tongued McCauley, since the university looked down its collective nose at anyone who had not actually graduated from college, and to have such a person as a professor, even in the mostly forgotten Welding Engineering Department, was a real leap of faith for the school.

Another professor was Bill Green. I don't think he got mention by name, but maybe Silver was just a better and certainly sexier sounding substitute name.

Doctor Minchenko may have been based on Hildegard Min  chenko, who was a researcher of Russian origin who worked on a sonic power project that Dad had developed and obtained funding for. For the few of us at the school at the time, this project was remembered because the frequency chosen for the 10-hp high-energy transducers was 10 kHz, right in the middle of the range of human hearing. Many a class discussion was given by yelling over the incessant screaming of the horns operating just outside the lecture room door.

Lois and I spent the first half of the summer of 1965 hitchhiking in Europe—then a relatively safe activity, and one which had a built-in filter to be sure you encountered interesting people along the way, but still a stretch for our parents to accept. I had never thought that she would find the experience any different than I. I was after small towns and rural scenery, figuring that I would see the cities later in life from a more comfortable point of view.

There were a few memorable occasions. After our first overseas flight, we arrived in London very tired. We left Heathrow heading for Stratford, because that was something we had all heard of in England. Our first night was spent in a park in a town west of London. We remember the bobby who helped us into the city park and to a park bench for a bed, and then promised to look in on us from time to time overnight.

We went to a Shakespeare play in Stratford the next day. I fell asleep, but Lois was enthralled by it all, seeing Shakespeare as it was meant to be for the first time. Staying in youth hostels was a wonderful experience. They ranged from rude sheds to ancient castles. One near Inverness had statuary in all the halls and was more like a museum.

In Ostende, we joined a group of young men for an overnight in a loft over a pub. I was impressed that Lois was able to remove her bra right in front of the crowd, but completely under her shirt. I never have figured out how that was done.

You met young people from all over the world doing the same thing. It was automatic that they were interesting, particularly the ones from Australia and New Zealand, places that seemed so far away to us. What a sad thing it is that people have become so untrustworthy as to make this remarkable diplomatic activity a danger and that it never grew the same way in the U.S. One wonders how much different the world would be if more people had had this cross-cultural exposure in their youth.

The rides were something interesting as well. The most comfortable was a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud driven by a Member of Parliament. He pointed out the straight sections of road built by the German prisoners of war in World War II and the telephone poles along both sides to discourage their use as landing fields. And then there was the back of a truckload of American onions on the ride over the "Devil's Elbow" in Scotland—we were given a few samples and added them to our stew for supper, and it probably took a week to air the hostel out afterward. We were picked up by a just-wedded couple in Belgium in a Citroen—the one with the corrugated steel sides that wobbles along the road. I think they just wanted to tell someone.

Some of the scenery probably has helped Lois in her descriptions. I'm sure the lake in
Spirit Ring
is modeled after Lake Como. Baocia's bony soil looks like some of Scotland, although colored by her later visits to Spain under plusher circumstances. The castles described may have been in part from this trip.

Lois joined my older brother—an accomplished sailplane pilot who occasionally finds time for work or other life activities—and me long before we had any sense of where babies came from. I think she had the usual experience of the youngest of siblings and I suppose we can blame ourselves that she was something of an introvert in her early years. Somehow that turned out okay as it led her to the Trekkie counterculture that, combined with a large collection of science fiction novels in Dad's library, may have had a small part in sending her down the path she has taken.

Lois used to drag home the most motley-looking collection of characters—I think they were fellow Trekkies, or at minimum early incarnations of hippies, the counterculture norm of behavior for those who wanted to be different, but they all looked the same to me. Some of these folks have gone on in the science fiction field. Lillian Stewart Carl was a frequent visitor to our house, and is a successful fantasy writer and remains a close friend of Lois to this day. Her dad was also a professor at the university, in Agricultural Engineering. Ron Miller has gone on to a career of illustrating science fiction novels. In the early days he did beautiful renditions of Martian, Lunar, and other far-world landscapes that looked like the stuff Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley dreamed of.

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

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. It is the author's place to facilitate that engagement and Lois does. She may make us work to appreciate her allusions, but she is never deliberately obscure.

To those familiar with her works it is evident that
SoH
is an early one; the background to her Universe is still comparatively sketchy. But she already has all her skills of insight, compassion, characterization, a sly and subtle wit which comes back and bites you three sentences down the page (never read an LMB story while eating or drinking), and an ability (which she ascribes to "an unreconstructed inner thirteen-year-old") to create plots which excite by leading the reader's expectations one way and then delivering an entirely unexpected dénouement. In
Barrayar
Cordelia reflects that as a stranger to the planet of Barrayar one must "Check your assumptions—in fact, check your assumptions at the door." (
Barrayar
Chapter 5) Lois's readers should do so, too. (
Barrayar
[1991] is the direct sequel to
SoH
, and the second half of the story arc [Lois's term for an entity comprising two or more separate novels] which she has described as "The Price of Becoming a Parent.")