old interview resurfaces
A sharp-eyed fan turned up this old, but good, interview we did about a decade ago, which I had thought lost in the mists of time...
https://web.archive.org/web/200407160...
Yay!
Ta, L.
https://web.archive.org/web/200407160...
Yay!
Ta, L.
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That is interesting. I never associated anything in your books with My Lai. Should I assume the Solstice Massacre on Komarr qualifies?For me that is different because the fictional version is entirely of wealthy and politically influential people.
My Lai was my first (but, alas, not my last) encounter with the idea that Our Guys could be the Bad Guys. The parallels are not in the details.The Komarr perps were certainly not elites; just grunts, entertaining who-knows-what internal confusions.
I don't see any difference in repugnance between murdering someone who, at the moment, is well-to-do, and murdering someone who, at the moment, is not. The notion that elites are somehow more deserving of such treatment leads, in real life, to such bizarreness as any Cambodians who wore glasses being shot in a ditch. By other Cambodians who were, one gathers, at the time fully persuaded of the rightness of their actions. History both recent and distant is crammed with more depressing examples.
People are strange. The fact that peoples so widely separated in time and place are strange in the same ways suggests to me that there's something deeper at work here than mere passing culture or politics. If we could ever accurately identify the disease, a cure might be found, but as it stands mass violence of its various ilks more resembles old-fashioned bloodletting, applied indiscriminately to every ill, because it looks like something is being done.
Ta, L.
Lois wrote: "I don't see any difference in repugnance between murdering someone who, at the moment, is well-to-do, and murdering someone who, at the moment, is not. "I was thinking in terms of cutting of "the head" of an organization, like assassinating a general. This being fiction the author can write whatever result she wants. But killing a village of peasants should not have much effect on the opposing power structure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princes_...
But the way you wrote the Komarr massacre there were no people to fill the vacuum who would serve the interests of Barrayar so it just comes across as totally stupid.
I was cynical from way back. I thought of Mr. Spock as Tonto to Kirk's Lone Ranger.
Karl wrote: "I was cynical from way back. I thought of Mr. Spock as Tonto to Kirk's Lone Ranger."Ah. Possibly not because you were a cynic, but because you were a guy.
Spock was my geek-girl heartthrob. Kirk was a speed bump.
Ta, L.
Karl wrote: "the way you wrote the Komarr massacre there were no people to fill the vacuum who would serve the interests of Barrayar so it just comes across as totally stupid."I think the Solstice Massacre was supposed to come across as stupid. As a way to demonstrate how bloodthirsty Old Barrayar could be, and how Aral is trying to create a better New Barrayar, it's a very well-designed and well-written part of the storyline.
Lois wrote: "Karl wrote: "I was cynical from way back. I thought of Mr. Spock as Tonto to Kirk's Lone Ranger."Spock was my geek-girl heartthrob. Kirk was a speed bump.
Ta, L. "
Do I have your permission to spread that all over the Internet? The fanatical Kirk fans will start stalking you. LOL
Anything publicly posted on the internet is, pretty much by definition, not private.The quotes that do, hm, bemuse me are all the ones from characters in my books which have shed the details of their attribution and are assigned to me, as if I had stated them in some personal essay. Things said by a particular character, with their own agenda and world-view, in a particular context, do not necessarily represent the opinions of the management, after all.
Ta, L.
Well, you're in good company there. I doubt Shakespeare believed or agreed with all the things his characters said, but he still gets the blame/credit.
Lois wrote: "Things said by a particular character, with their own agenda and world-view, in a particular context, do not necessarily represent the opinions of the management, after all."But some things are just plane true.
...the laws of physics are implacable lie detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool metal.
Lois wrote: "...The quotes that do, hm, bemuse me are all the ones from characters in my books which have shed the details of t..."I always wonder how to quote those. There are some doozies that are wonderfully quotable, and the characters, as much as we love them, aren't real people.
For example: "Why else do all the stories *end* when the Count's daughter gets married? Hasn't that ever struck you as a bit sinister? I mean, have you ever read a folk tale where the Princess's mother gets to do anything but die young? I've never been able to figure out if that's supposed to be a warning, or an instruction." -Bujold
Ulrike wrote: "Lois wrote: "...The quotes that do, hm, bemuse me are all the ones from characters in my books which have shed the details of t..."I always wonder how to quote those. There are some doozies that ..."
Well, the ideal would be:
"Why else do all the stories *end* when the Count's daughter gets married? Hasn't that ever struck you as a bit sinister? I mean, have you ever read a folk tale where the Princess's mother gets to do anything but die young? I've never been able to figure out if that's supposed to be a warning, or an instruction." -- Kareen Koudelka, in the novel A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
Which, frequently, would make the attribution longer than the quote, but there ya go.
Ta, L.
Lois wrote: "-- Kareen Koudelka, in the novel A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster BujoldWhich, frequently, would make the attribution longer than the quote, but there ya go."
But it is so much fun to speculate about the psychology of the author and how much it reflects their thoughts possibly over their lifetimes even it is not their immediate opinion.
I found the conversation between Cordelia and Vagaan very interesting when they first met in Barrayar.
It must all come out of the author's mind in the end except sometimes when they are being deliberately silly or "evil" for the sake of the story. Maybe you are really like Baron Ryoval. We should peek in your basement.
Karl wrote: "Lois wrote: "-- Kareen Koudelka, in the novel A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster BujoldWhich, frequently, would make the attribution longer than the quote, but there ya go."
But it is so much fun..."
Yes, and that's the other downside; people could just as easily (and validly, or invalidly) quote the dialogue of my characters who are villains or twits. I wouldn't want those to be attributed to me, either.
I (and most other writers) really are everybody in our books. Unless a character is utter cardboard out of the prop box, the writer needs to have some idea of what is going through their minds or we can't write dialogue for them at all. Even spear carriers and shreddies have opinions, expressed verbally or nonverbally, even when concealed behind a wooden expression. (Which is anything but inexpressive -- it conveys a lot, in fact.)
("Wooden" as a facial expression, as well as "blandly" as a descriptive adverb for the delivery of dialogue, gave my French translators fits, by the way. I'm still not sure why.)
Ta, L. Thinking, once again, that writing novels is really a dissociative disorder.
Lois wrote: "Thinking, once again, that writing novels is really a dissociative disorder."On that note... did you know that on psychological tests (Rorschach et cetera) murder mystery writers and serial killers have near-identical results?
Just food for thought.
Fortunate for the world I had a high verbal SAT, I guess... :-)But I think I'll stick with "dissociate disorder turned into an art form". Hey, at least the voices in my head have their own Wikipedia entries.
Ta, L.
Lois wrote: "Hey, at least the voices in my head have their own Wikipedia entries."ROFLMAO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Vo...
Take that Sigmund Freud! LOL
"Hey, at least the voices in my head have their own Wikipedia entries." -Lois McMaster BujoldOh, yeah. That's so much better than quoting your BOOKS. ;-)
https://twitter.com/UliDiG/status/456...
Ulrike wrote: ""Hey, at least the voices in my head have their own Wikipedia entries." -Lois McMaster BujoldOh, yeah. That's so much better than quoting your BOOKS. ;-)
https://twitter.com/UliDiG/status/456836..."
Why doesn't Goodreads let you like comments? I want to like this comment.
(a little better formatting than archive.org)