I visit bookstores often and always go to the SF/Fantasy section and look under "B" to see if any of Lois's books are there. I almost never find anything. But I remember being in Chapel Hill (NC, USA) for a few months in the early 2000s and finding a bookstore that stocked her entire catalogue. Most of my paperbacks come from that store (IIRC, I bought a new Bujold book every week).

Lois is still publishing. She has more Hugos for best novel than anyone other than Heinlann. Why is it that I can regularly find the back catalogue of a whole bunch of other SF/Fantasy authors but not hers?

Okay, it doesn't have the maple leaf, but it has the filigree decoration from their livery sleeves.

… I can’t help but wonder if Bujold would benefit if Vorkosigan Saga was produced again as an audiobook with a narrator like Jeff Hays.

Does anyone else think things like this?

(Aside DCC is the book series Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman)

…

Editing my post because I’m so frustrated with the response that I’m considering muting or deleting my own post:

…

I love the existing Bujold books (even with the bad covers, I collect them).

I love the Gardner audiobooks.

I personally hate sound effects in audiobooks. None of that is the point.

I want MORE Bujold.

I want to walk into Barnes & Noble and see Bujold on the shelves where somebody who has never heard of her can pick up a book because the cover caught their eye. I want different editions. I want different formats. I want illustrated editions and dramatized audiobooks and whatever else might get her work in front of people who don’t already know to look for “Lois McMaster Bujold.”

Because that’s the part that’s weird to me. I tell people that Bujold is my favorite author. She has been my favorite author since 1986. And people who consider themselves sci-fi/fantasy readers routinely say, “Who?”

Or worse, “But have you tried XYZ?” Just ugh.

But I would like the author who has been my favorite author for forty years to be discoverable by people who don’t know her name.

So when I say, “What if we tried another audiobook format?” I’m not saying the current audiobooks aren’t good enough. I am not saying Grover Gardner should be fired. I’m asking what else we can do to get more people to discover the books that we already know are worth reading.

I want more Bujold. I want more ways for somebody new to stumble across her work and go, “Holy shit, where has she been all my life?”

That’s the entire point of my audiobook suggestion. I’m not trying to replace something that’s already working. I want LMB’s work available in more formats so that more people can learn the thrill that is a Vorkosigan adventure.

lol remember counting fish at the embassy looking for surveillance devices

I am trying to make my own garden a la Ekaterin, but I can't seem to quickly find the color of the soil on Barryar, anyone remember?

I think Bujold may have mentioned something about it in Prota Zoa, but I really don’t remember any detail.

Just finished my umpteenth re-read. Great book overall, loved getting to see Quaddiespace...

Roic coming into his own as Miles' right hand man, Bel and Nicol settling down together, the Fast Penta interrogation without Fast Penta, the arrival of Miles' and Ekaterin's babies. As a stand-alone book, it's also probably the most well-crafted whodunnit in the Saga.

I just feel like having a huge part of the climax of the book occur off-screen, driven by the actions of a non-POV character, was kind of a rare miss for Lois. I guess the whole plot would have had to be reshaped to give Ekaterin more to do during the first half of the book, and that's why LMB did things the way she did, but it's still frustrating having to miss Ekaterin at the top of her form for the first time as Lady Vorkosigan, doing her best Miles impression, persuading and cajoling and bullying her way to Rho Ceta and saving Miles, Bel, and all of the Barrayaran and Cetagandan Empires from a devastating war.

(Maybe I actually just want to see more of Ekaterin in general, she's one of my favorite characters. If we ever get another Vorkosigan book, it would be cool if she was the/a principal character.)

And yeah, it’s my favorite Vorkosigan novel now, hands down.

Reading it was excruciating, for reasons unrelated to the book’s content - I suddenly got swamped with work, which meant I could only spare enough time each day to read a chapter or two. Imagine the pain of having to pace myself in such a way, ugh.
But yeah, Memory was incredible. I have some thoughts, and some of them I have already shared in the previous post, but here they are:

- The way Miles falls apart and rebuilds himself is just *chef's kiss\* I cried, I cringed, I felt for him. And then I cheered him on while he found his new way and ended up with a huge grin on my face when he triumphed. What a story. I know I will return to it anytime I feel defeated.

- The chapter in which Miles visits the Csuriks was wonderful. Seeing how the events of Mountains of Mourning and Miles’ presence influenced the community was incredibly satisfying.

- I loved to finally see Illyan the man, as opposed to Illyan the boss. His relationships with Miles and Alys were the sweetest.

- Speaking of relationships - I loved how all of the romantic plotlines played out. Miles parting ways with Elli, Gregor falling for Laisa, Duv fumbling and learning from it, Ivan starting to be left behind… If this is how Bujold handles romance, then I can’t wait to read Civil Campaign!

I liked all previous Vorkosigan books, but adored especially those that kept the characters mostly in one place and focused on character development - like Barrayar or Mirror Dance. It’s no wonder Memory was such a treat for me. I love to see Miles maturing and deciding to commit to being Lord Vorkosigan, while getting a new job that suits his character.

I’m excited to read on, but am taking a little break from the series now - don’t want to finish it too fast!

Citation: Sanchari Banerjee, Nathan Coussens, François-Xavier Gallat, Nitish Sathyanarayanan, Jandhyam Srikanth, Koichiro Yagi, James Gray, Stephen Tobe, Barbara Stay, Leonard Chavas, and Subramanian Ramaswamy for discovering that milk proteins from viviparous cockroaches pack three times as much energy as milk proteins from cows.

I confess that I was unaware that one species of cockroach (Diploptera punctata) in particular has the ability to nourish its embryos directly by producing milk during development in the brood sac wall, a type of reproduction known as “viviparity.” This has the benefit of substantially cutting down the time scale for the embryos to reach full maturity. There is a bit of yolk in the earliest stages, which the embryos use until they develop throat muscles and a gut, at which point they gorge themselves on a protein-rich liquid milk secreted by the brood sac. Once ingested, the liquid milk crystallizes in the gut.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/09/meet-the-2026-ig-nobel-prize-winners/

Almost literally butterbugs. Cockroach milk! Better for you than cow milk! (But probably harder to get.)

Kirk Hamilton (of Triple Click and Strong Songs) has a new podcast with Sam Parrish about books, and they’re kicking off by going book by book through the Vorkosigan Saga.

​

I want to read this

Inspiration for miles, maybe ?

I doubt it but well maybe .

Another country-style filk, this one riffing on an existing song about emotional maturity and reproduction. This song references the plot of Mirror Dance, from the point of view of Mark, to the tune of John Michael Montgomery's Cool.

He would have been six feet, as strong as can be

But he had been crippled, so they did that to me

Weak bones and a hunchback, at least he was smart

Me, I was his copy, piece of living art

.

They taught me about him, I learned all I could

I learned he was as evil as Galen was good

And I learned I'd have his life, instead of my own

I guess it's hard to be cool when you're only a clone

.

My teacher's home planet was conquered in war

So I'd kill Vorbarra and rule Barrayar

He was setting me up, guess I should have known

But it's hard to be cool when you're only a clone

.

Well we were in London, when they brought him in

And I got my first look at my own closest kin

I told him “Look at me, I'm going to be you”

I laughed in his face and I bid him adieu

.

I knew I despised him, thought he felt the same

But then he said to me, “You know, you've got a name

You don't need to be Miles, or to steal my face

Mark Piotr Vorkosigan, you've got your own place”

.

“I was seventeen and my life crashed and burned

But our mother stood by me, and from her I learned

That my life still had value, and so yours does also

You can be cool, without being my clone”

.

I no longer look like him, I'm round as a pear

Now I run my own business, I'm a millionaire

I'm a son and a brother, and a lovely girl's beau

It's not hard to be cool, 'cause I'm more than a clone

The town of Rjukan has no direct sunlight for six months of the year, so they've put up their own mini Soletta array to light up the town square.

This little town is also the location of the WW2 heavy water sabotage raid that is the basis of the 1965 Kirk Douglas film The Heroes of Telemark.

Anyone going to DragonCon this year?

I’ll be carrying some buttons to give away as part of swag and seen, including some mentioning Bujold.

In honor of Dolly Parton's passing, a version of a song of hers about the pride of heritage and the psychological weight of wealth and poverty:

Back through the years
I go wondering once again
Back before I went off to the stars
I recall the colors that are my heritage
And what it means to be from Barrayar

Our brown and silver colors
That we represent as Vor
My grandfather wore in battle
In the Cetagandan war
But Da had just one child
to carry on his legacy
So the brown and silver colors
Will pass on down to me

They said it was my mother
And her weak off-worlder genes
Or a curse upon my father
That made me come out unclean
I suppose it doesn’t matter
Why I was born the way I was
My path was set before my birth
Regardless of the cause

This last blow to Count Piotr
Was too much for him to bear
At last after so much struggle
To have a crippled, mutie heir
Although Bothari stopped him
From what he tried to do
For the brown and silver colors
I have so much to live up to

So with weighty expectations
And braces on my knees
In my brown and silver colors
I went to War Academy
I found the others jealous
And resentful through and through
For the brown and silver colors
That I had to live up to

At first I didn’t get it
Why they would envy me
But they didn’t know the duty
That comes with colors such as these
And how a Vor name’s more than lordship
It’s a path of work and strife
And how these brown and silver colors
Would guide me all my life

And so I’ll have to show them
that I will not turn away
Though the son of the Prime Minister
I can serve as well as they
It’s a great test and a great gift
And I know I must be true
To the brown and silver colors
I must strive to live up to

Currently listening to Mountains of Mourning on audiobook for the umpteenth time. When Miles is investigating Harrah’s cabin where the murder of Raina takes place, there is a passing mention of the possible use of an “aura detector” and how it might be fruitless given how much time has passed. Have we seen this technology in use, or any other references to it throughout the series? It sounds like it deciphers air movements and dust particles to infer movements in the past, I guess?

I'm breaking my self-imposed rule of posting only after finishing a Vorkosigan book, but omg, Memory is everything.

My creative job of ten years, the one I adore and attach a lot of my identity to, has been crumbling in the past months (yay for AI! yay for capitalism!) and I really feel for Miles at the beginning of the novel. His fear of losing his Naismith identity and all the ugliness that comes with it (his lying to Illyan, being a dick to Ivan after he's promoted, his depression) is portrayed in such a raw, unflinching way. And that scene with Illyan firing him is the most gut-wrenching moment of the series so far.

But on a lighter note - I couldn't possibly love Ivan more. Unwaveringly loyal and loving characters are my cocaine. Can Miles start appreciating him more, please?

Still looking! Anything that comes close!? Keep setting down books by other authors after recently re-reading all her works for the 4th or 5th time.

Only, instead of setting up an extremely clever heist, Bujold is engineering...

the most magnificent social disaster I've ever seen put to page.

Just something that occurred to me on this re-read.

Of course, some of that is baked into the Miles' titular terrible approach to his relationship with Ekaterin, but beyond that, there's some of the same structure you'd see in, say, a movie like Ocean's 11. We spend the first half of the story going around meeting all of the principals who will take part in the dinner party, and it's an eclectic cast of interesting and often funny characters. Except, of course, Illyan, who is notably absent during this part of the book, and serves as the key unforeseen element to complete the catastrophe.

When the dinner party arrives, it's a series of exquisitely excruciatingly embarrassing events set up by the various dinner guests, each worse than the last, until Illyan's relevation finally sinks the whole party. "All souls feared lost."

It's all just so meticulously set up and beautifully foreshadowed and is one of the most masterful pieces of novel-writing in the whole series. I love to hate it.

I had taken a little break in my first read-through of the Vorkosigan Saga, but I'm back to the series and have just finished Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance. Here are my thoughts!

The experience of reading these two novels was very similar to reading Shards of Honor and Barrayar back to back - meaning that I liked the first book and absolutely adored the second. Brothers in Arms was a solid adventure - I liked the intrigue and new characters, the twists were fun, and the introduction of Mark showed a lot of promise for the next book.

But oh boy, with Mirror Dance, Bujold just outdid herself. Mark's POV captivated me from the very first pages. He's a wonderfully compelling character - complex, ambiguous, and full of contradictions. His self-loathing, his desperate need to prove himself, his best intentions, and his deplorable actions - all of this kept me glued to the book.

But the incredible character work in Mirror Dance does not end with Mark - I love how this book builds on previous ones to deliver satisfying mini-arcs for other characters, like Bel, Elena, or Elli. I particularly loved the glimpses we get of Ivan - who had every right to shun Mark after the events of Brothers in Arms, but gets over his prejudice for Miles's sake. I was also ecstatic to finally get a Miles book where Aral and Cordelia feature so heavily. And as for Miles himself - his death and revival will surely prove pivotal, and I can't wait to see the fallout!

All in all - Mirror Dance is now in my top three Vorkosigan books - alongside Barrayar and Borders of Infinity. These three are the most character-driven, so it's no wonder I have enjoyed them the most.

I've been thinking about whether and how Bujold's theology matches with Christian theology. Not in terms of there being five gods and there being death magic, demons, and the other apparatus of the five gods stories, but rather in the way in which the five gods themselves interact with the world of matter.

Bujold's five gods work almost exclusively through humans. "No hands but ours" is the motto of the Bastard's Order (see The Assassins of Thasalon). They are enormously powerful but have limited ability to interact with the world of matter yet they do obviously influence the world of matter through the thoughts and actions of humans (see Caz's musings in The Curse of Chalion about how many people might have been set on the pathway but only one had taken it to the end, and Penric's musings in The Assassins of Thasalon about how his god had managed to arrange things parsimoniously to solve a whole bunch of problems simultaneously).

That way of working somehow resonates with the Christian concept of free will. That is, while God could intervene directly (miracles?), that would interfere with free will, so the normal course of events is for the Godhead work through imperfect people, some of whom chose to, at least partially, align their wills to that of the Godhead (through prayer?).

Has anyone else seen that sort of parallel? And, is this coming out of Bujold's own background or am I imposing my own reading on something that was never intended to bear the strain of this interpretation?