Beth Swahn
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
I am reading the Sharing Knife Series and I love it, but I have to wonder why you made the age difference so great between the couple. It seems like a very thought out choice, but I have to admit I just don’t get it! Can you explain?
Lois McMaster Bujold
Two reasons, well, three, one extrinsic and two intrinsic. Extrinsically, the age gap gives a proxy visceral response to some readers parallel to the in-story visceral response of characters to the bloodline gap. Modern readers, well, any that are likely to pick up my books, would presumably scorn a negative response to the latter; quite a few of them recoil from the former. Alas, absolutely no one other than myself has ever made this mirroring cultural compare-and-contrast connection, one of the many sub-components of the long journey-of-understanding the books try to give to both characters and readers.
Intrinsically, this is what the characters were when they walked into my head. I don't argue with that gift.
But more specifically, Dag and Fawn stitch together what were at the time the two emotional ends of my own generational life experiences. I was 55 when I started writing the tetralogy, as post-adult as I'd ever been, and I most certainly remembered being a late-teen girl-woman, desperate to start my adult life. (Which makes Dag, not Fawn, my Mary Sue, but a lot of people don't seem to realize that strong identification with characters, for media creators and consumers, crosses genders. Which is a whole 'nother essay.)
So, yeah, very thought out.
Ta, L.
Two reasons, well, three, one extrinsic and two intrinsic. Extrinsically, the age gap gives a proxy visceral response to some readers parallel to the in-story visceral response of characters to the bloodline gap. Modern readers, well, any that are likely to pick up my books, would presumably scorn a negative response to the latter; quite a few of them recoil from the former. Alas, absolutely no one other than myself has ever made this mirroring cultural compare-and-contrast connection, one of the many sub-components of the long journey-of-understanding the books try to give to both characters and readers.
Intrinsically, this is what the characters were when they walked into my head. I don't argue with that gift.
But more specifically, Dag and Fawn stitch together what were at the time the two emotional ends of my own generational life experiences. I was 55 when I started writing the tetralogy, as post-adult as I'd ever been, and I most certainly remembered being a late-teen girl-woman, desperate to start my adult life. (Which makes Dag, not Fawn, my Mary Sue, but a lot of people don't seem to realize that strong identification with characters, for media creators and consumers, crosses genders. Which is a whole 'nother essay.)
So, yeah, very thought out.
Ta, L.
More Answered Questions
Bill O'Connor
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
In the world of the five gods, how different are the afterlife experiences of the various gods? That is to say, if a person is taken up by the Brother, do they experience a truly different afterlife from someone taken up by the Daughter? And, as a corollary, do each of the gods have a separate "heaven" or is there one afterlife that may be affected by the perceptions of the god whose gate you came through?
Steve
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
*New Scientist* has just put out its writers' list of favorites science fiction novels, and "The Vorkosigan Saga is on the list. A nice blue ribbon for you? The attention is well-deserved, and may attract some new readers. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2433037-our-writers-pick-their-favourite-science-fiction-books-of-all-time/
Nicholas Blas
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
This is less a question and more an observation. In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, when ImpSec is sinking, Illyan comments that the people running out of the building probably grew up in earthquake country. Having grown up in earthquake country, the people who would be running out of a shaking building are everyone else. EQ country people won't even notice quakes that make non-EQ country people run out.?
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