Anne Province
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
This is a thank you for the epilogue in volume four of the Sharing Knife series, Horizon. I’d read them before, but just blew through them again this weekend with such enjoyment. Given our current political climate, malices, ground work, and beguilement have a very different meaning this read around. Did you have any political/authoritarian fears as you wrote these books?
Lois McMaster Bujold
Glad you're still enjoying these works, 20 years (goodness!) on from their creation.
Tolkien has a remark, in his Foreward to The Fellowship of the Ring, that has always stuck with me. To quote the paragraph in full:
"Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and have always done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."
In The Sharing Knife I was, as usual, exploring what I construe to be the universals of human nature; if folks find applicability in them in later times, well, maybe I got something right. (Possibly even history.)
That said, I did have unregulated capitalism of the toxic extractive kind in mind when I created the malices and their blight. (Well-regulated capitalism, run by relatively ethical persons and made subordinate to the needs of the whole fabric of society, being another matter, no more intrinsically toxic than any other human association for the purposes of accomplishing tasks larger than individuals can manage.) But the way the mindless malices make destruction automated is certainly a modern construal, and commentary.
Ta, L.
Glad you're still enjoying these works, 20 years (goodness!) on from their creation.
Tolkien has a remark, in his Foreward to The Fellowship of the Ring, that has always stuck with me. To quote the paragraph in full:
"Other arrangements could be devised according to the tastes or views of those who like allegory or topical reference. But I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and have always done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."
In The Sharing Knife I was, as usual, exploring what I construe to be the universals of human nature; if folks find applicability in them in later times, well, maybe I got something right. (Possibly even history.)
That said, I did have unregulated capitalism of the toxic extractive kind in mind when I created the malices and their blight. (Well-regulated capitalism, run by relatively ethical persons and made subordinate to the needs of the whole fabric of society, being another matter, no more intrinsically toxic than any other human association for the purposes of accomplishing tasks larger than individuals can manage.) But the way the mindless malices make destruction automated is certainly a modern construal, and commentary.
Ta, L.
More Answered Questions
Dione Basseri
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
My book club will be reading "Cordelia's Honor" in a few months! I'm very excited. It's a potluck book club, so is there anything themed to the books that you think would be good for me to serve? The best I've come up with so far is getting different fruit butters, for the butter bugs. What foods embody the series, for you?
Jay
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
How do you approach writing book reviews? I often have a lot to say about a book while I'm reading and reacting to it, but trouble finding the heart of how I felt about it in a short review. I enjoy reading your Goodreads reviews and those of Patrick Rothfuss a lot, and respect your taste. Any advice for those of us who read a lot, but could stand to recommend more?
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