Search Results

This chapter provides a comprehensive and chronological bibliographic survey of scholarship on Lois McMaster Bujold from 1995 onwards. The chapter is structured chronologically to show changes in the scholarship on Bujold’s work and, in addition, includes selected online articles to demonstrate that Bujold’s readers are engaged with the same issues as the academics: genre, gender politics, and feminisms. The chapter shows the broad areas of scholarly consensus that exist: primarily, the agreement that Bujold’s work subverts, reverses, or complicates the genre conventions of space opera, military sf, and medievalist fantasy. The primary area of disagreement is shown to be the question of feminism in her work. The chapter is explicitly feminist in that the scholar writing the essay is a feminist specializing in feminist and gender theories and speculative fiction who applies those intellectual frameworks in this essay. It therefore pays close attention to citation practices, and puts on record the extent to which the first work on Bujold’s science fiction and fantasy was done by women scholars working in disability, feminist, and gender studies as well as the extent to which their work makes up the majority of the current scholarship.

This chapter sketches the life and career of Lois McMaster Bujold. Lois McMaster was born in Columbus, Ohio, on November 2, 1949, the third child and only daughter of Robert Charles McMaster and Laura Gerould McMaster. She began reading science fiction when she was nine years old. Her favorite writers in the field included Poul Anderson and James H. Schmitz. In 1971, she married John Bujold, whom she had met at a science fiction convention two years earlier. Bujold's first professional sale was a short story, “Barter,” which was published in Twilight Zone Magazine in spring 1985. It was later bought, adapted, and mutilated almost beyond recognition for the TV series Tales from the Darkside. She sold her first three books, Shards of Honor, The Warrior's Apprentice, and Ethan of Athos to Baen Books, which were released in paperback, in 1986, at three-month intervals, in June, August, and December.

This chapter focuses on the relationships that two of Lois McMaster Bujold’s fantasy heroes – Cazaril (The Curse of Chalion) and Ingrey (The Hallowed Hunt) – have with divine and supernatural beings in the world of the Five Gods. The chapter opens by focusing on two specific definitions of queerness which underlie a subsequent stylistics analysis of the visions experienced by both heroes. The chapter explores the impact of these visions on the heroes’ able-bodied heterosexual male bodies, leading to the conclusion that Bujold’s Holy Family, especially the Bastard, deconstructs the gender constructions of the patriarchal nuclear family structure and its attendant ‘family values’ to create queer spaces. The chapter ends with a brief consideration of the potential for even greater subversion found in Bujold’s recent ‘Penric and Desdemona’ novellas.

This chapter discusses the science fiction of Lois McMaster Bujold. Bujold has written about fourteen science fiction books and a number of short stories: approximately six thousand pages of text. Almost all of her science fiction stories have been set in the universe sometimes known by her fans as the Vorkosiverse after its central character, Miles Vorkosigan. Although her writing as a whole has expanded beyond that universe, her science-fictional universe has remained unusually restricted. One explanation for her decision to restrict herself in this way is that Bujold is interested above all in character. While some science fiction writers are interested in developing different “what-if” scenarios and focusing on how that “what-if” changes a society, Bujold has shown herself to be concerned primarily in how her characters and the society they live in develop over time. She has built up a large and devoted fan base not because they want to see her develop numerous new universes and explore all the boundaries of her genre, but because they share the author's own fascination with her characters and want to see how they change and grow.

This chapter takes as its starting point the dedication at the front of Lois McMaster Bujold’s novel A Civil Campaign: ‘For Jane, Charlotte, Georgette and Dorothy—long may they rule’, arguing that the dedication places the novel in conversation with the authors whom Bujold invokes. This allows the chapter to explore this intertextuality through thematic convergences shared between Jane Austen’s Fanny Price of Mansfield Park and Bujold’s Ekaterin Vorsoisson. These themes include: the ambivalent occupation of and transitions between exterior and interior spaces they occupy; on and offstage performances; the significance of gifts of jewelry; the imposition of familial bonds; and the intertwined experience of health and honor. Despite their often ambivalent reception, the chapter argues, Fanny and Ekaterin are integral components of their respective works; central characters in their standalone and series novels.

This chapter looks at Lois McMaster Bujold’s use of medievalism, specifically at how Bujold uses feudalism in her Vorkosigan science fiction novel The Warrior’s Apprentice as a bridge between past and future. In constructing Barrayaran politics, Bujold simplifies feudalism by only showing us the basic chain from emperor to Vor nobility to armsman. She also presents an Imperium that, over the course of a century, has broken the power of the Vor nobility (as happened in late medieval and early modern France) and is moving towards a more parliamentary form of government (as happened in late medieval and early modern England). The chapter thus shows how Bujold’s feudalism is simplified from medieval European feudalism and, in terms of its history, is beginning to move beyond the medieval period. Nevertheless, as the chapter concludes, on Barrayar the bonds of mutual obligation created by feudalism remain crucial, as does the centrality of military protection and service.

This chapter examines the role of the Bastard, one of the gods in Lois McMaster Bujold’s ‘Worlds of the Five Gods’ series, and his contribution to her depiction of an inclusive Queer Theology. Drawing on the queer theology of Marcella Althaus-Reid, the chapter considers the distinctive set-up of the five-fold Quintarian pantheon that Bujold establishes, and how it creates and subverts dualistic ideas. The chapter provides close readings of interactions with the Bastard, particularly in Paladin of Souls and the ‘Penric and Desdemona’ series, where the Bastard is the patron god, and analyzes how the idea of the Queer God becomes essential to an inclusive dialogue within religious identity and society. The chapter demonstrates how these novels and novellas afford Bujold the opportunity to reflect upon many of the vital social functions performed by real religions throughout history while challenging those dualistic theological systems that remain prevalent, particularly in Western culture.

Through an examination of the experiences of Castillar Lupe dy Cazaril, protagonist of Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion, this chapter argues that the novel mirrors academic and advocacy agendas on the topics of passing, sexuality, and care, while ultimately relating to emerging perspectives from queer disability studies critiques of normalcy. The chapter engages with The Curse of Chalion as a text that illustrates and contributes to theoretical and activist work on disability in relation to vulnerability and cure, through the multiple meanings of Cazaril’s ‘holy pain’. The chapter shows how, in its overarching concern with embodiment through Cazaril’s physical suffering, fatigue, chronic illness, and rehabilitation, Bujold’s speculative narrative aligns with recent disability studies and disability justice frameworks that hold space for multiple, nuanced perspectives on these issues, inviting examination of the connections between the bodily and social dimensions of disability.

This chapter critically considers Genevieve Cogman’s Vorkosigan sourcebook for Steve Jackson Games’ tabletop Generic Universal Roleplaying System (GURPS). It examines how the sourcebook reframes Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga as an immersive environment through six key processes employed typically in TRPG adaptation: distillation, accentual emphasis, nomenclatural qualification, statistical quantification, ludic systematisation, and fictional gazetteering. The chapter assesses how the adaptation balances the requirements of the GURPS ruleset with the need to facilitate immersion in an authentic version of the saga, and analyses how Cogman preserves and adapts the novels to promote and sustain imaginative, immersive gameplay faithful to the saga’s structural, narrative, and shifting intergeneric qualities. The chapter further shows how the game allows players to immerse themselves in the saga; conceive, develop and enhance character types from the novels; and experience plots and story structures reflecting the unique tenor of Bujold’s work. In its emphases, the game reveals what it assumes to be the most appealing aspects of the books: its characterisation, relationships, locations, and the emotional immersion central to Bujold’s treatment of the science fictional family saga.

This introductory essay provides the context for the present volume, establishing Lois McMaster Bujold as a multiple award-winning writer of science fiction and fantasy worthy of scholarly attention; providing an overview of extant scholarship; and identifying the twin aims of the book, to extend scholarship on Bujold’s fantasy novels, and to account for the wealth of cultural production inspired by Bujold’s corpus (e.g. fan fiction, fan discussion or meta, and the GURPS: Vorkosigan role-playing game in depth). The essay concludes by identifying gaps that might be fruitfully explored in ‘Bujold Studies’: perspectives from Indigenous science fiction studies on The Sharing Knife series; critical engagement with wider scholarship on race in sf; analysis of artworks inspired by Bujold’s writing, both ‘official’ cover art and fan art; and comparative analysis of her reception beyond Anglophone countries, particularly the immense fannish engagement from Eastern Europe.

This chapter provides a close reading of Lois McMaster Bujold’s later fantasy series The Sharing Knife to explore how the project reworks traditional narrative motifs and crosses genres to blur or mutate expectations and storylines. The chapter argues that the series is neither science fiction nor fantasy, but a hybrid based in fantasy whose setting fits early industrial society and the contours of the post-apocalypse. It draws on motifs of Western women’s writing, with a main female character, Fawn, in flight, but with settings (the road and the river) more commonly associated with the picaresque and, in particular, American road trip literature. The non-realist elements and the secondary world situate the novels as speculative fantasy fiction, only to diverge immediately and repeatedly from the modern fantasy norm.

This chapter examines how the heroines, major and minor, of the three novels set in Lois McMaster Bujold’s ‘World of the Five Gods’ challenge and reform traditional narrative depictions of female characters in conformative fantasy fiction. The chapter shows how the novels knowingly play with some of the most frequent and socially approved models of feminine behavior that appear in conformative fantasy: the passive Princess, the Good Nun (and her inverse, the Evil Witch), as well as numerous reworkings of the Mother figure. Examining characters such as Ista dy Chalion, Princess Joen of Jokona and Cattilara dy Lutez (Paladin of Souls), and Learned Hallana (The Hallowed Hunt), the chapter shows how Bujold creates a series of female characters whose political, social, supernatural, and economic agencies move beyond the limitations of traditional depictions to present women whose authority is decoupled from their beauty or reproductive capacity. Moreover, Bujold’s novels are shown not only to present a range of female characters who find self-fulfillment and autonomy without rejection but also to be filled with complex and lively women, the presence and variety of whom is integral to the overarching project of subverting traditional fantasy motifs.

This chapter examines different types of fan fiction based on the science fiction Vorkosigan novels by Lois McMaster Bujold. It explores the ways in which the source texts, or ‘canon’, are used as touchstone and tool not only to tell the stories that fan writers want to tell, but also to interpret specific characters and dynamics in the text, to interrogate the political and personal implications of the worlds of the books, and to explore how original characters can offer deeper insight into the characters and societies. The chapter examines canon-consistent stories, original characters, and slash fiction, to argue that the central focus remains the close reading and analysis of Bujold’s universe and characters, albeit in imaginative and exploratory ways.

This chapter examines the way in which Bujold creates and presents character and personality. It focuses on depth and complexity of Bujold's characterization, with particular discussion of the relationship between Miles and his brother Mark, and between Miles and his cousin Ivan, in the Vorkosigan books. Bujold presents character and personality as created by culture, by nurture, and by experience. Genes, of course, remain at the root; and we are in a universe in which genes can be modified, before and after birth. Bujold creates character in a number of ways, but above all through two means: the choice of focalization and the description of people's interrelationships.

This chapter explores the nature of prophecy, fate, and the ‘destined hero’ in Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls. These motifs, dominant in modern heroic epic fantasy, imply that if a hero lives according to their destiny, they are incapable of acting of their own free will. The chapter explores how the hero and heroine of the two novels, Cazaril and Ista, make choices when faced with prophecy and destiny, and this allows Bujold to combine the paradox of fate and free will in such a way as to create a narrative with open possibilities and interpretations. In both novels, the chapter argues, Cazaril and Ista can only fulfil destiny by asserting their free will.

This chapter focuses on Bujold's fantasy novels. Since the turn of the millennium Bujold has produced seven fantasy novels and just three science fiction novels. Her first fantasy novel was The Spirit Ring (1992), inspired by Agricola's treatise on metallurgy and the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, both written in the mid-sixteenth century. Her next fantasy venture was the Chalion trilogy (2001–2005), modeled on fifteenth-century Europe. Chalion is a disorienting version of Castile, in the generation before a queen of Castille set about the unification of Spain through a marriage alliance. With many fantasy novels, the way the author has developed a unique magical system is often the major point of interest; with Chalion, however, it is Bujold's imaginative theological system that sets it apart from its rivals: Chalion and its neighbors worship five gods who form a family.

This chapter examines the feminist themes explored in Bujold's fictional work. For Bujold, feminism involves far more than writing about women. Bujold herself wondered if, in her writing, disability works as “a personal metaphor for being born female.” But what makes her works stand out in the context of contemporary science fiction and fantasy is not the number of women or their strength of personality; it is the importance of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in her narratives. Bujold is unusual, too, within the world of space opera and indeed in the wider world of science fiction, in creating a number of very plausible and engaging child characters.

This chapter conducts a close reading of Lois McMaster Bujold’s ‘problem’ novel Ethan of Athos, in which an all-male world, Athos, is posited, reliant for reproduction on the ‘uterine replicator’ or artificial womb. Close reading demonstrates how the novel proves more complex than initial readings might suggest in its careful working-through of the ramifications of the uterine replicator for parenting, motherhood, and the duty of care towards the young. The chapter argues how the existence of Athos with the wider Vorkosigan series is significant, part of an ongoing and series-wide project by Bujold to demonstrate the range of possible futures that the uterine replicator might permit. At various points, Ethan of Athos is brought into conversation with Huxley’s Brave New World to contrast Bujold and Huxley’s visions of reproductive futurities. The chapter shows how Bujold’s saga-length project of creating a diverse science-fictional heterotopia involves a thorough working-through of the ramifications of the uterine replicator, of detaching reproduction from a gestational body, in which Ethan of Athos plays a necessary part.