Lois McMaster Bujold
Some considerable amount of this question can be answered by this:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
which I'd read for general interest the summer, iirc, before I wrote that section of the Ivan book.
It also has, in that weird way writers' brains work, some inspiration in a climactic scene in an old Alec Guinness movie titled The Horse's Mouth. It's not a building that unexpectedly sinks, but the sort of hidden-in-plain-sight setup is reminiscent.
But I did not actually come up with ImpSec HQ's fate until I was almost at that scene in the writing. At the time the Arquas discovered where the old lab now was, I had no more idea than they did how they were to tunnel for access. From reading all those WWII POW-camp memoirs, I knew tunneling was not a trivial task, but then I remembered I was writing science fiction, and was not limited to 20th C. technology.
How the Mycoborer (tm) could go wrong in so many ways was inspired somewhat by my niece Molly's colon cancer awareness/teaching project, The Colossal Colon, which I will leave you to Google. And from that point on, the logical developments pretty much wrote themselves.
So it was a complicated tangle of feedback loops from many sources, not a single tidy logical string.
Ta, L.
Some considerable amount of this question can be answered by this:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
which I'd read for general interest the summer, iirc, before I wrote that section of the Ivan book.
It also has, in that weird way writers' brains work, some inspiration in a climactic scene in an old Alec Guinness movie titled The Horse's Mouth. It's not a building that unexpectedly sinks, but the sort of hidden-in-plain-sight setup is reminiscent.
But I did not actually come up with ImpSec HQ's fate until I was almost at that scene in the writing. At the time the Arquas discovered where the old lab now was, I had no more idea than they did how they were to tunnel for access. From reading all those WWII POW-camp memoirs, I knew tunneling was not a trivial task, but then I remembered I was writing science fiction, and was not limited to 20th C. technology.
How the Mycoborer (tm) could go wrong in so many ways was inspired somewhat by my niece Molly's colon cancer awareness/teaching project, The Colossal Colon, which I will leave you to Google. And from that point on, the logical developments pretty much wrote themselves.
So it was a complicated tangle of feedback loops from many sources, not a single tidy logical string.
Ta, L.
More Answered Questions
Seantheaussie
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
Congratulations on your thoroughly deserved SFWA Damon Knight Grand Mastery? Mastership?
Sandy
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
Planning on a re-read, I realized I apparently don't have an Ebook version of GJatRQ. I tried to find it in apple books but they only have the audio version, and it isn't listed at all in their list of Vorkosigan works. I'd prefer to read over listen currently. Any ideas why I can't find an Ebook for this novel? Could it be some sort of temporary glitch? I hope so!
Carro
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
Is there going to be another Penric and Desdemona? (If you've already answered this, my apologies.)
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