Krista
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
I've noticed some Japanese elements in Barrayaran culture (the two swords, some of their attitude towards their ancestors), but only a couple Asian names. How extensive is that cultural influence, and how did it get so submerged while remaining so important?
Lois McMaster Bujold
The influence of Japan is more structural, on the authorial level, than internal in terms of fictional founder population. (Though the 50,000 Firsters were undoubtedly more racially mixed than most readers seem to realize, drawn from four different kind-of-European Earth regions 200 or more years from "now".) But Japanese history gives a worked example of cultural isolation and forcible rediscovery that is most evocative, psychologically and politically, when thinking about SFnal lost-colony scenarios. Useful stuff.
Reading rec: A Daughter of the Samurai (1925) by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto.
Ta, L.
Reading rec: A Daughter of the Samurai (1925) by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto.
Ta, L.
More Answered Questions
David
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
Will there be more Vorkosigan stories wether Miles his cousin or Mother or even go back to his Father??????
Barbara Wendell
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
Will we see anything more in the Vorkosigan series? I'd love to find out how Cordelia and Aral's daughters come out and what life is like twenty or so years on from Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen. Also, having just re-read (tenth time) Cryoburn I thought I should tell you how very very much the ending touched me. I cry each time I read Gregor's remark. Aral is real to me as are the rest of the characters
Bob
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
You've mentioned dealing with insomnia, do you ever write during that time? If so, have any memorable scenes or ideas come together as a result of your sleeplessness? Or is the causality the other way around? Can you not sleep sometimes because your mind is too busy trying to solve things to sleep? I'm betting on the latter because Miles.
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