{"id":6522,"date":"2010-11-24T13:08:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T18:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=6522"},"modified":"2015-03-16T18:00:53","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T22:00:53","slug":"geek-speak-interviews-lois-mcmaster-bujold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/11\/24\/geek-speak-interviews-lois-mcmaster-bujold\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>Geek Speak<\/em> interviews Lois McMaster Bujold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t read <em>Cryoburn<\/em>, be warned that there are some spoilers in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.geekspeakmagazine.com\/archive\/issue9\/features\/inspiration_is_everywhere.htm\" target=\"_blank\">interview<\/a> (this excerpt is spoiler-free):<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I would have been content to leave the series on the high note of <em>A Civil Campaign<\/em>, but in the course of the amicable negotiations involved in taking <em>The Curse of Chalion<\/em> elsewhere, I ended up with an option-filling contract with Baen Books, hence <em>Diplomatic Immunity<\/em>. For a time, I wasn\u2019t sure if I would alternate books between the two publishers or not, but I got on rather a roll with the fantasies for Eos. Happily, I was able to come up with a second upbeat organic closure for the series with <em>Diplomatic Immunity<\/em>, after which I turned to <em>Paladin of Souls<\/em>. (For a while, I had the two Chapter Ones on my plate at the same time, which basically resulted in nine months of writer\u2019s block, at which point I decided to just do <em>Diplomatic Immunity<\/em> first. Some fortunate, prolific writers seem to be able, efficiently, to keep several projects going at once; it appears I am not one of them.)<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>The notion of exploring the wider social implications of cryonics, a well-established technology in the series, had been kicking around in my head for at least fifteen years. And the vision of an opening scene where a drug-allergy-addled Miles has a hallucinatory meeting with a street kid, no further story or setting attached, had also been lurking for a long time. (On some level, I think this unanchored scene was a really twisted re-visioning of the opening of Heinlein\u2019s classic <em>Citizen of the Galaxy<\/em>.) I put the two together, and suddenly hit critical mass. Thematic implications followed.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Ethnic diversity has always been out there; all the colony worlds in Miles\u2019s universe (i.e., everyplace but Earth) are much shaped by their founder populations. We\u2019ve only seen a handful, out of a supposed sixty to one hundred settled worlds\/stations\/systems; I just haven\u2019t worked around to all the possibilities. (Readers keep wanting me to go back to Vorbarr Sultana, where all their friends are. It\u2019s as frustrating as trying to take a teenager on vacation.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And for those Vorkosiverse fans hoping for yet another fix after <em>Cryoburn<\/em>, be of good cheer: Lois is working on a new project with the working title <em>Ivan: His Booke<\/em> (no, that&#8217;s not what it&#8217;ll end up being published as).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you haven&#8217;t read Cryoburn, be warned that there are some spoilers in the interview (this excerpt is spoiler-free): I would have been content to leave the series on the high note of A Civil Campaign, but in the course of the amicable negotiations involved in taking The Curse of Chalion elsewhere, I ended up [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28],"tags":[1023,85],"class_list":["post-6522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media","tag-loismcmasterbujold","tag-sf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1Hc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6522"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30686,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6522\/revisions\/30686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}