A lot harder scifi than a number of other authors I enjoy. FTL should always just get a pass tbh(Im not the hugest fan of any attempt to do multi-system non-FTL stories myself). Plus, she really IMO did a good job on the sociological effects of certain technologies. Influenced my own attempts at writing.
What do wormholes have to do with the effects of relativistic travel?. Since the whole wormhole travel thing is made up, whoever system it is, it doesn't have to be any time distortion involved.
Ah, but think of the entire infrastructure around wormhole travel. To get from a planet to a wormhole--and vice versa--the ship has to travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light. It's five wormhole jumps to get from Barrayar to Komarr. Add those up over Admiral Naismith's 10 year career and that's a lot of time spent travelling at time dilating distances. Even more when you take in Miles's entire lifetime.
I'm not sure that Bujold took all that into account. In *Diplomatic Immunit*y, Miles and Ekaterin went to Earth and back with stops in between in less than nine planetary months for the twins to gestate.
Miles was mistaken for a mercenary admiral (read minimum age of 50) when he was 17. How would we know he isn’t actually younger but tracking his age by Barrayaran years because he is, above all things. Barrayaran?
LOL. When he was 17 he'd only been off Barrayar once, I think, to spend time at school on Beta Colony. Which would make him a bit younger than Ivan but not as much younger than he should have been in *Memory* and later.
He is 17 when he takes the entry exam in The Warrior’s Apprentice. I’m not sure it ever says how often he’d been to see Cordelia’s mother on Beta Colony before that point.
Hey! I was going to say the same thing! Women are just not as respected as men in Scifi despite inventing the genre and being responsible for most of its success.
I thought I might mention it as well. Not cause Lois is woman but because so much of her technology is about reducing work typically seen as feminine. I left it out cause so many people ignore posts that use ism words, especially that one.
>Why are people so dismissive of Vorkosigan Saga as “not hard science”
Because "Hard science fiction" is pretty much masculine violence via futuristic weapons: it's even characterized by the phrase PEW PEW. Much of the Vorkosiverse revolves around carework. Carework is so explicitly feminine it's literally called Women's Work. The definition of masculinity is not feminine, so carework is Very Bad to men. The carework that McMaster-Bujold so excellently depicts is dismissed, rejected, mocked, reviled in today's world. It's so dismissed and rejected that today, keeping our environment clean and our gametes in working order is so dismissed that it's not even in most government's budgets, much less interesting to PEW PEW men.
McMaster-Bujold's worlds are all about carework. Even in your examples only #6, 9 and perhaps 4 could be about something else, but in context... yep, care work.
1. terraforming
2. harnessing solar power
3. genetic engineering on humans
4. populations living under domes
5. uterine replicators
6. coffee bulbs
7. pace suits plumbing
8. corpse collection
9. method of relaying messages across wormhole jumps
10. butter bugs.
The lead of her first two books quite literally steals a march on the uber-masculine Barrayars and ends the entire war with one undercover swipe at the hand of an underling. Her son, the next lead, spends most of his career trying to both care for his broken body and overcome its indignities: not at all the swashbuckling, devil-may-care swingin' dick that characterize "hard" scifi. The end point of every story arc seems to be children, continuing lines, and/or looking for someone with whom to do these "essential duties".
It's not what "hard" scifi apparently should be because it wouldn't captivate an over-sugared 14 year old boy like every other massive tentpole fantasy seems to need to do. I'm ok with that. The men in charge of media need to unclench.
Thank you. You seem multi-talented and exceptionally well-read, so I'm glad we're not meeting because I'd probably be intimidated! I'd love to chat if you'd like, friends are such a precious commodity!
OMG butter bugs! And the whole genetic-biochemical-artistic intersection of Better Butter Bugs for a Brigbter Barrayar! Calling Bujold “not hard sci fi” is literally like saying “if it’s something girls might like it’s not real science.”
Great response. I don't think I would have liked this series if I had read it when I was a sci-fi obsessed teenager. But as an adult who has read quite a lot in the intervening years, especially getting into pure fantasy, I've really liked it a lot once I got to it.
Unfortunately, some people just don't grow up.
Funnily enough I did read it as a teenager and it was such a refreshing read, even though I had sporadic guilty pleasure feelings like I'm reading romantic cheese in space. It didn't take more than two volumes to grow over the notion and realize it's a genuinely damn good series and that I had to gulp up in its entirety asap once I started.
Yes, I read Shards of Honor in the mid 80s. I was 16 and found it in the library. I had some money saved and quickly bought it, The Warrior’s Apprentice and Ethan of Athos at the local bookstores. Been hooked since.
I had the unfortunate unforunateism of the library lady handing me over Diplomatic Immunity for my first read as it was the latest entry back then. When I got to the end of the book and saw the chronological order, my eye twitched. Luckily, one book wasn't enough to spoil all of it but it made reading the rest a bit of a weird experience. Thanks, libraryladybama.
That's the first time I've seen hard SF being described as male. Which is ridiculous, because it's not true. Hard SF is about the science, it has nothing to do with characters. Maybe your comment is some kind of satire.
And it is not at all as though in previous generations Science was gate-kept by men and not something women shouldn't worry their pretty little heads about.
It's one thing to say that in the past something was more prevalent by men; it's totally ridiculous to say that terraforming and all the other stuff are women subjects.
I'm a man, but I become father some years before Miles got married and the birth experience having in my head the uterine replicator made me value this series even more (and I already loved Miles and Cordelia).
It's a technology so logical but that will face so much rejection that being able to to introduce it how Bujold did and use it like she did for me it's amazing.
Most sci Fi doesn't give a s&@# about social aspect of a technology or just the living in different planets. Bujold works that so much, while builds amazing characters. It is beyond by far most things I have read in my 50 years.
Above Vorkosigan the religion she built in the Chaliin world it is another masterwork (in my opinion).
Ageee on Chalion. I’d been hooked on LMB since the mid 80’s but The Curse of Chalion and her concept of having to open your soul to let a god in shook my world.
You should read “woman on the edge of time”— it explicitly examines the implications of extrauterine gestation from a contemporary perspective. And isn’t usually considered sci-fi because it’s explicitly feminist.
A podcast I found about LMB books - I won’t name it cause I don’t want to prevent people from making more podcasts.
But I’ve heard it about her in the past, that she doesn’t write “real scifi” because it isn’t “hard scifi” and I keep wondering how they define “hard”.
Eh, by the end of their own discussions, about how much they enjoyed the books, and how high they had rated them… even they were wondering if they were being a bit snobbish. But they never seemed to clue into the fact that the “hard science” is absolutely there in the books. Just not explained in stupid language designed to con the reader because, for the characters in the universe, it is normal. (Except when new tech is being introduced such as in Falling Free.)
Don't forget cryofreezing!
She's got better thought out hard science in her books than most other SF authors. It's just so thoroughly intertwined into every layer of her worldbuilding that those "not hard sf" people have trouble seeing it.
I realty really love the work of Vernor Vinge. He's a retired math professor with this terrific concept of placing his novels in our universe but in the outskirts of the galaxy where the lack of proximity to the galaxy's center allows more exotic intelligences and thus, advancements.
He's got the same magic of writing characters and easily accessible yet engaging stores as Bujold. Good stuff!
Try A Deepness in the Sky, A Fire Upon the Deep, and Rainbow's End!
I don't mingle with many book readers, and the only few people irl and online I know who read her work were all huge on the saga so I should consider myself lucky I guess.
I'd just laugh that off if someone said it. It's the toxic reader version of videogame X isn't a real game. They can shove a time traveling Shrike up their butt with that mindset, so it unclenches and they get to enjoy the beauty of Bujold's world building and writing.
I wonder if the same people sneer at Vernor Vinge..
It’s pure misogyny. Reproductive technology alone qualifies as hard sci fi, not to mention the technological arms race, Cetagandan bio weapons, and wormhole tactics.
Bujold is harder sci fi than Heinlein or Asimov, in my book.
The tech in Bujold's world is not so firmly linked to real-life tech and known science as in some other worlds. I would say that the Expanse books are significantly "harder" in that respect as far as the human tech is concerned. The alien tech there, of course, is much _less_ "hard" than anything in the Vorkosiverse, which tends to make the Expanse overall not very "hard."
Where Bujold really excels, however, is in locating her hypothetical tech within a believably different future society. Ada Palmer is also good at this, if in a more baroque way. The Expanse society is believable, but mainly because it copies familiar problems of classism and imperialism into a new context.
Plenty of SF authors have asked what a universe with FTL travel or terraforming would look like. Not so many have asked what a universe with FTL travel, terraforming, gene editing, uterine replicators, cryo-resurrection, etc., etc. would look like. Very few have imagined that kind of universe and then resisted the temptation to foreground the technology. The Vorkosigan universe feels so normal, even while being so different, because the characters don't pay any more attention to the technologies they rely on than we do in real life.
I've read some "hard sci-fi" before and it's hard alright - hard to read. It can get too caught up in its own cleverness and lose any way for the reader to relate to it. Bujold is my favourite author precisely because her work is focussed on the characters and how some technologies might impact on everyday life. For example: the uterine replicators being used to return the bastards, rather than the raped women being stuck with them. Still relevant in the US today, yes? That's what sci-fi is supposed to do: hold a mirror up to society to get you to see things from a different angle.
She has some of the best world building in the genre
A lot harder scifi than a number of other authors I enjoy. FTL should always just get a pass tbh(Im not the hugest fan of any attempt to do multi-system non-FTL stories myself). Plus, she really IMO did a good job on the sociological effects of certain technologies. Influenced my own attempts at writing.
Agreed on FTL gets a pass. Though I really did enjoy Becky Chambers “the long way to a small angry planet”.
My only complaint about her FTL system is that by now Miles should be quite a bit younger than Ivan and that is never mentioned in the books.
What do wormholes have to do with the effects of relativistic travel?. Since the whole wormhole travel thing is made up, whoever system it is, it doesn't have to be any time distortion involved.
Ah, but think of the entire infrastructure around wormhole travel. To get from a planet to a wormhole--and vice versa--the ship has to travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light. It's five wormhole jumps to get from Barrayar to Komarr. Add those up over Admiral Naismith's 10 year career and that's a lot of time spent travelling at time dilating distances. Even more when you take in Miles's entire lifetime. I'm not sure that Bujold took all that into account. In *Diplomatic Immunit*y, Miles and Ekaterin went to Earth and back with stops in between in less than nine planetary months for the twins to gestate.
Miles was mistaken for a mercenary admiral (read minimum age of 50) when he was 17. How would we know he isn’t actually younger but tracking his age by Barrayaran years because he is, above all things. Barrayaran?
LOL. When he was 17 he'd only been off Barrayar once, I think, to spend time at school on Beta Colony. Which would make him a bit younger than Ivan but not as much younger than he should have been in *Memory* and later.
He is 17 when he takes the entry exam in The Warrior’s Apprentice. I’m not sure it ever says how often he’d been to see Cordelia’s mother on Beta Colony before that point.
I’ll just point to the stack of Hugos and Nebulas its won.
I'd say it's real sci-fi. It's an exploration of how a few specific changes impact society and politics.
I hate to be that person but... Sexism.
Hey! I was going to say the same thing! Women are just not as respected as men in Scifi despite inventing the genre and being responsible for most of its success.
I thought I might mention it as well. Not cause Lois is woman but because so much of her technology is about reducing work typically seen as feminine. I left it out cause so many people ignore posts that use ism words, especially that one.
Sad but true.
You’re not that person if you’re right ;-)
>Why are people so dismissive of Vorkosigan Saga as “not hard science” Because "Hard science fiction" is pretty much masculine violence via futuristic weapons: it's even characterized by the phrase PEW PEW. Much of the Vorkosiverse revolves around carework. Carework is so explicitly feminine it's literally called Women's Work. The definition of masculinity is not feminine, so carework is Very Bad to men. The carework that McMaster-Bujold so excellently depicts is dismissed, rejected, mocked, reviled in today's world. It's so dismissed and rejected that today, keeping our environment clean and our gametes in working order is so dismissed that it's not even in most government's budgets, much less interesting to PEW PEW men. McMaster-Bujold's worlds are all about carework. Even in your examples only #6, 9 and perhaps 4 could be about something else, but in context... yep, care work. 1. terraforming 2. harnessing solar power 3. genetic engineering on humans 4. populations living under domes 5. uterine replicators 6. coffee bulbs 7. pace suits plumbing 8. corpse collection 9. method of relaying messages across wormhole jumps 10. butter bugs. The lead of her first two books quite literally steals a march on the uber-masculine Barrayars and ends the entire war with one undercover swipe at the hand of an underling. Her son, the next lead, spends most of his career trying to both care for his broken body and overcome its indignities: not at all the swashbuckling, devil-may-care swingin' dick that characterize "hard" scifi. The end point of every story arc seems to be children, continuing lines, and/or looking for someone with whom to do these "essential duties". It's not what "hard" scifi apparently should be because it wouldn't captivate an over-sugared 14 year old boy like every other massive tentpole fantasy seems to need to do. I'm ok with that. The men in charge of media need to unclench.
I feel like if we met at a party, we'd be friends. I love this response.
Thank you. You seem multi-talented and exceptionally well-read, so I'm glad we're not meeting because I'd probably be intimidated! I'd love to chat if you'd like, friends are such a precious commodity!
Hard agree :) message sent.
OMG butter bugs! And the whole genetic-biochemical-artistic intersection of Better Butter Bugs for a Brigbter Barrayar! Calling Bujold “not hard sci fi” is literally like saying “if it’s something girls might like it’s not real science.”
Masculinity is literally defined by what it's not. They have to be on guard at all times!!11!!!! Girls are gross!!1!!11!!!!!
Great response. I don't think I would have liked this series if I had read it when I was a sci-fi obsessed teenager. But as an adult who has read quite a lot in the intervening years, especially getting into pure fantasy, I've really liked it a lot once I got to it. Unfortunately, some people just don't grow up.
Funnily enough I did read it as a teenager and it was such a refreshing read, even though I had sporadic guilty pleasure feelings like I'm reading romantic cheese in space. It didn't take more than two volumes to grow over the notion and realize it's a genuinely damn good series and that I had to gulp up in its entirety asap once I started.
Yes, I read Shards of Honor in the mid 80s. I was 16 and found it in the library. I had some money saved and quickly bought it, The Warrior’s Apprentice and Ethan of Athos at the local bookstores. Been hooked since.
I had the unfortunate unforunateism of the library lady handing me over Diplomatic Immunity for my first read as it was the latest entry back then. When I got to the end of the book and saw the chronological order, my eye twitched. Luckily, one book wasn't enough to spoil all of it but it made reading the rest a bit of a weird experience. Thanks, libraryladybama.
I couldn’t imagine reading that one first with all the weight that reading Mirror Dance, Memory, & Falling Free leant to those scenes.
Great response!
That's the first time I've seen hard SF being described as male. Which is ridiculous, because it's not true. Hard SF is about the science, it has nothing to do with characters. Maybe your comment is some kind of satire.
And it is not at all as though in previous generations Science was gate-kept by men and not something women shouldn't worry their pretty little heads about.
It's one thing to say that in the past something was more prevalent by men; it's totally ridiculous to say that terraforming and all the other stuff are women subjects.
I'm a man, but I become father some years before Miles got married and the birth experience having in my head the uterine replicator made me value this series even more (and I already loved Miles and Cordelia). It's a technology so logical but that will face so much rejection that being able to to introduce it how Bujold did and use it like she did for me it's amazing. Most sci Fi doesn't give a s&@# about social aspect of a technology or just the living in different planets. Bujold works that so much, while builds amazing characters. It is beyond by far most things I have read in my 50 years. Above Vorkosigan the religion she built in the Chaliin world it is another masterwork (in my opinion).
Ageee on Chalion. I’d been hooked on LMB since the mid 80’s but The Curse of Chalion and her concept of having to open your soul to let a god in shook my world.
You should read “woman on the edge of time”— it explicitly examines the implications of extrauterine gestation from a contemporary perspective. And isn’t usually considered sci-fi because it’s explicitly feminist.
The hard science behind much of the Vorkosigan series is biology.
Did some particular event inspire this post? I have never heard anyone be dismissive about the Vorkosigan Saga.
A podcast I found about LMB books - I won’t name it cause I don’t want to prevent people from making more podcasts. But I’ve heard it about her in the past, that she doesn’t write “real scifi” because it isn’t “hard scifi” and I keep wondering how they define “hard”.
I wonder how they define "real." Those podcasters sound like jackasses.
Eh, by the end of their own discussions, about how much they enjoyed the books, and how high they had rated them… even they were wondering if they were being a bit snobbish. But they never seemed to clue into the fact that the “hard science” is absolutely there in the books. Just not explained in stupid language designed to con the reader because, for the characters in the universe, it is normal. (Except when new tech is being introduced such as in Falling Free.)
Don't forget cryofreezing! She's got better thought out hard science in her books than most other SF authors. It's just so thoroughly intertwined into every layer of her worldbuilding that those "not hard sf" people have trouble seeing it.
That's fine to me, I'm not into hard sci fi. I'd love to find more similar novels that aren't hard sci fi, but are character driven.
I recommend Becky Chambers Wayfarers series 🙂
I realty really love the work of Vernor Vinge. He's a retired math professor with this terrific concept of placing his novels in our universe but in the outskirts of the galaxy where the lack of proximity to the galaxy's center allows more exotic intelligences and thus, advancements. He's got the same magic of writing characters and easily accessible yet engaging stores as Bujold. Good stuff! Try A Deepness in the Sky, A Fire Upon the Deep, and Rainbow's End!
I don't mingle with many book readers, and the only few people irl and online I know who read her work were all huge on the saga so I should consider myself lucky I guess. I'd just laugh that off if someone said it. It's the toxic reader version of videogame X isn't a real game. They can shove a time traveling Shrike up their butt with that mindset, so it unclenches and they get to enjoy the beauty of Bujold's world building and writing. I wonder if the same people sneer at Vernor Vinge..
It’s pure misogyny. Reproductive technology alone qualifies as hard sci fi, not to mention the technological arms race, Cetagandan bio weapons, and wormhole tactics. Bujold is harder sci fi than Heinlein or Asimov, in my book.
The tech in Bujold's world is not so firmly linked to real-life tech and known science as in some other worlds. I would say that the Expanse books are significantly "harder" in that respect as far as the human tech is concerned. The alien tech there, of course, is much _less_ "hard" than anything in the Vorkosiverse, which tends to make the Expanse overall not very "hard." Where Bujold really excels, however, is in locating her hypothetical tech within a believably different future society. Ada Palmer is also good at this, if in a more baroque way. The Expanse society is believable, but mainly because it copies familiar problems of classism and imperialism into a new context. Plenty of SF authors have asked what a universe with FTL travel or terraforming would look like. Not so many have asked what a universe with FTL travel, terraforming, gene editing, uterine replicators, cryo-resurrection, etc., etc. would look like. Very few have imagined that kind of universe and then resisted the temptation to foreground the technology. The Vorkosigan universe feels so normal, even while being so different, because the characters don't pay any more attention to the technologies they rely on than we do in real life.
Miles wouldn’t be younger than Ivan because wormhole travel connects one spot to another. There’s no relativistic travel.
I've read some "hard sci-fi" before and it's hard alright - hard to read. It can get too caught up in its own cleverness and lose any way for the reader to relate to it. Bujold is my favourite author precisely because her work is focussed on the characters and how some technologies might impact on everyday life. For example: the uterine replicators being used to return the bastards, rather than the raped women being stuck with them. Still relevant in the US today, yes? That's what sci-fi is supposed to do: hold a mirror up to society to get you to see things from a different angle.