Vorkosiverse Fan Fiction

psikeyhackr

Physics is Phutile, Fiziks is Fundamental
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Does anyone else read fan fiction for Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga?

Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold - Works | Archive of Our Own

Let's face it, how much can a single author produce? One novel per year would be pretty good and how many authors do that? It was 3 years from Captain Vorpatril's Alliance to Gentlrman Jole and the Red Queen and I don't think GJ&RQ is particularly interesting.

So what do you think of fans filling in details?

Rediscovery - Chapter 1 - ScottWashburn - Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold [Archive of Our Own]

Loose Ends - ScottWashburn - Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold [Archive of Our Own]

psik
 
Oh, dear. I'm not sure if I could take that or not. Is it going to make me happy, or agitated?
 
I've looked at that fan fiction before but tbh I was getting a bit bored with Miles and his family.
Younger Miles stories when he was still Admiral Naismith were a lot of fun. Then, instead of the odd affair with strong women, the R word surfaced and things slid downhill. Laser beams, not love! Combat, not cuddles! Warp drive, not warm glances. Er Er Er (fizzles out with creativity death)
 
I've looked at that fan fiction before but tbh I was getting a bit bored with Miles and his family.
Younger Miles stories when he was still Admiral Naismith were a lot of fun. Then, instead of the odd affair with strong women, the R word surfaced and things slid downhill. Laser beams, not love! Combat, not cuddles! Warp drive, not warm glances. Er Er Er (fizzles out with creativity death)

Did you read Diplomatic Immunity?

psik
 
I got my Mom hooked on the Vorkosigan books 20 years ago and she mentioned the same thing DannyMCQ.( She is in her 80's) I still like them, mostly for the character interplay. I read so many straight action 2 dimensional characters that it is often a relief to return to characters that are smartly written.
 
So have any Bujold fans here tried any of the fanfic or do you regard it as disloyalty to the original author.
 
I rather enjoy fanfiction, I must confess - not the slash, or the ludicrous twisting of character basics, but the genuine attempts to tell back- and forward-stories of the characters, especially the minor and glimpsed ones that the author is never going to revisit.

The LMcB ones that I've read are generally pretty average - I think it's very hard to capture LMcB's "voice" compared with, say, JKRs or the scriptwriters of BtVS - but there's often the feeling of satisfaction when a loosish end is tidied away.

Disloyalty? No. It's not as if I'm going to say "Oh, I see there's a new Vorkosigan novel out tomorrow - but I don't think I'll buy it because it doesn't fit with the ff that I've been reading." Whereas authors may not like fanfictioneers using their characters, I'm sure that most of then realise that such usage is a compliment in itself (in that people want more of them than the author can supply).


Incidentally, my favourite FF is that based on the "Swallows and Amazons" books by Arthur Ransome. As these are set in the 1930s, and involve children who would be becoming adults just before WW2, some of the Whatever Happenened To....ff is really quite inspired and well written.
 
I provided the links to works by Scott Washburn because they were pretty good.

Some fans want to mix universes or create very non-canon works.

Honor Harrington and Miles Vorkosigan, Noooo!
 
I did yeah, then Cryoburn etc. Just thought things started slumping a bit in the series when he fell seriously in love

Those were the best books in the series. The early books were OK but they were just adventure stories, not a lot there. Then you have Memory and things got much more interesting. Komarr was a bit predictable, but A Civil Campaign is one of the best books she's ever done. After that I sort of hoped she'd let Miles have his happy ending, and continue the series by following Ivan on more comic versions of the same capers. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance was an excellent beginning to that, but I don't know if there are any more in that line. I could have lived without Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn completely.
 
Those were the best books in the series. The early books were OK but they were just adventure stories, not a lot there. Then you have Memory and things got much more interesting. Komarr was a bit predictable, but A Civil Campaign is one of the best books she's ever done. After that I sort of hoped she'd let Miles have his happy ending, and continue the series by following Ivan on more comic versions of the same capers. Captain Vorpatril's Alliance was an excellent beginning to that, but I don't know if there are any more in that line. I could have lived without Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn completely.

Cryoburn was a disappointment on the first read and it still isn't great but it is interesting in how it explores how a society can strangle itself with the misuse of technology. Don't just look at the characters but the entire environment created for the story.

Plus I think Cryoburn suffers from the bummer at the end. [Can't have a spoiler for anyone that hasn't read it.]

It is the Red queen that really fell flat. But I have not seen any good Vorkosigan fanfic lately.
 

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