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
Gwendolyn Patton
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
I noted a similarity between Barrayar and the Alta colony in Michael McCollum's Antares series -- a colony cut off from the rest of human space when a stellar event shifted their wormhole jump connection. He had evidence of alien invasion when the wormhole reopened, where you had Cetagandans after the Time of Isolation. Had you ever read that series?
Catherine Nemeth
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
If two malices meet, they will fight until one completely “consumes” the other. What about unhatched malices? Will it get drained by a mobile malice that encounters it? Or get passively drained if it’s in an area getting blighted? Or are they not really alive until they hatch and start consuming ground? Wondering if the Great Blight would be considered cleared once it recovers however many thousands of years later.
Martha
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
So with the deal between Kobo and Walmart (see, for example, http://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-will-start-selling-rakuten-kobo-ereaders-and-ebooks-2018-1), any plans on adding Kobo to your list of ebook sites? (I don't actually have a dog in this fight, since I don't currently own any sort of e-reader -- I just use whatever apps are provided by Amazon/B&N/Apple -- but the news item caught my eye.)
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