One of my projects right now is exploring what a canon of speculative fiction for our time might look like. For context, check out The Wood Between the Worlds Substack and my recent article The Sun’s Reflection in Water.
Many of you probably expected me to start with The Lord of the Rings–-which is of course in the canon!–but I actually started by asking whether grimdark as a genre belongs in the canon. You may be surprised by my conclusion (I certainly was!). Click here to listen to my thoughts on grimdark vs. noblebright. (As a reminder, The Wood Between the Worlds podcast will replace my old Fantasy for Our Time podcast in the near future.)
The Vorkosigan Saga
Today I’ll examine the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. This series, which starts with “Shards of Honour,” has been on my radar ever since I read a Miles Vorkosigan novella titled “The Borders of Infinity” about five years ago. I fell in love with Miles as a character, and indeed, he’s one of the most popular characters in modern science fiction novels, bar none.
In that novella, Miles infiltrates a prison camp in space and undertakes a rather daring escape. (For those of you who enjoy this prison-in-space subgenre, check out “The Dregs of Empire: A Tale of the Sun Eater” by Christopher Ruocchio.)
I wanted to go straight to the first Miles novel, but I decided to start with the first book in the series, “Shards of Honour,” thanks to a sale on Chirp (a fantastic discount audiobook service).
A Prescient Political and Cultural Depiction in Science Fiction
I’ll be honest: the plot was a little formulaic, and the romance was nothing to write home about, but what intrigues me is the science fiction political scenario that strongly reflects the political landscape of 2024. This is very interesting because “Shards of Honour” was published in 1986.
The set-up is fairly simple: a group of scientists from a place called Beta Colony is exploring an uncharted alien planet. Beta Colony is a liberal, tolerant democracy that smells and tastes very much like the U.S. in 2024. For example, In Beta Colony, “tolerance” and the democratic instinct is so extreme that no superior officer can ever be completely sure his or her orders are followed.
This group of scientists is attacked by a military contingent from the planet of Barrayar, which is effectively a military dictatorship with a social structure reminiscent of Soviet Russia: it’s a military-first autocracy in which a strong oligarchy butts heads with the centralized power of the emperor; there’s also a prevailing influence of something called the political office of government, which is a kind of secret police or 1984-style “right-think” enforcer.
Later in the story, we see both civilians and military personnel being tailed by agents of the political office in ways that people would have been tailed by the KGB had they visited Russia in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
A War Between Political Extremes
You can see how this political conflict between opposite extremes is very intriguing: on the one side we have Beta Colony, an extremely democratic and tolerant society with decentralized power, and on the other we have Barrayar, a Soviet-style autocracy.
This is the setting for a traditional romance in which a woman from Beta and a man from Barrayar fall in love, marry, and assume a position of political importance quite unlikely in real life. (This is one of the pleasant things about this kind of fiction – you take political realities reminiscent of our own time and give them the glorious, consoling resolution you’ll probably never see in your own life. As Tolkien discusses in his wonderful essay “On Fairy Stories,” this is exactly the kind of eucatastrophe we want from escapist fiction.)
In this article, however, I want to focus on two particular scenes from “Shards of Honour” that highlight the pitfalls of each political system. Buckle up, because while the novel in general is light on objectionable material, these two scenes include intense and disturbing violence.
The Dark Side of Autocracy
The first scene I want to examine is one of impending rape. The political context of this scene is as follows:
Barrayar has started an unjust war. The Betan response is to aid the antagonized country by sending them weapons. (Although there is no cultural connection between the countries in this science fiction novel, this whole scenario is uncomfortably similar to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.)
The Betan protagonist Cordelia Naismith, who is law-abiding and God-loving in a manner reminiscent of a kind of watered-down Christianity, takes a risk and heads up a very daring foray into the war zone to distract attention from a freighter supplying weapons.
Prior to this mission, Cordelia has had an experience with Barrayar that makes her think Barrayar is not as brutal as propaganda suggests; in fact, she has fallen in love with a Barrayaran named Aral Vorkosigan, who is in many ways a paragon of chivalric virtue.
Because of this, Cordelia falls into the mistaken supposition that all Barrayarans are honorable. Unfortunately, she is wrong.
Cordelia falls into the clutches of someone who wants to watch as she’s being raped by someone else. Luckily, there is no rape scene, but it gets very close. This situation reveals the evils of a political system like the one on Barrayar (or late-stage Soviet Russia, or any communist or fascist autocracy): namely, the system is not strong enough to prevent perverted individuals from exerting their power over others in ways that are abhorrent, brutalizing, and disgusting.
The Heroism Autocracy Enables
This is a really interesting scene in that Cordelia is rescued in part by her own agency (she does something quite eucatastrophically remarkable) but also by Aral Vorkosigan, who is able – by the same limitations of the system of the monster who wants to have Cordelia raped – to display a personal heroism that (the author suggests) may be less possible in a more democratic system.
Anyone who has studied Russian history will know that a limitation of autocracy is lack of systematized protection for the common man. A perverse human being can perpetual all kinds of evils in an autocratic system; however, this same system also tends to produce real aristocratic and chivalric ideals that allow for people who are strong in character to assert themselves in ways that more democratic systems simply don’t allow, either because of bureaucratic red tape or because that kind of heroism simply isn’t cultivated on a cultural scale.
I’m not making a value judgment on the two political systems in this story. Rather, I’m saying that the science fiction novel “Shards of Honour” suggests, either explicitly or implicitly, that one of the positives of such a repressive system is that you can have remarkable examples of heroism. Because the system is controlled by a small group of people, it allows for extremes of both good and evil.
If you’re subordinate to someone who is virtuous, you’ll be fine. You see this in 19th century Russian history, where figures like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy had real, lasting impact on common people through the force of their writing. Indeed, certain ministers in government – even the Tsar himself – had the ability to perform immense acts of mercy that are simply not possible for someone like the president of a democracy who is bound by the checks and balances of a democratic system.
Cordelia’s impending rape and ultimate escape explore the extremes of both the bad and the good that are possible in a repressive system.
Rather than suggest that the Betan democracy is intrinsically better than the Barrayaran autocracy, Lois McMaster Bujold seems to allow the possibility that both can be equally human (or inhuman).
The Dark Side of Democracy
The danger inherent in Betan democracy is shown when Cordelia returns from a Barrayaran prisoner of war camp in which she was treated extremely well. The camp was, in fact, controlled by her future husband (I know–it sounds like Stockholm syndrome, but in the context of this science fiction novel, it’s fine!).
Because Cordelia doesn’t exhibit significant mental strain when she returns, the psychiatrist assigned to her case becomes obsessed with the idea that Cordelia has been reconditioned during her captivity and is now a sleeper agent of Barrayar.
This psychiatrist gets the government to give her the same kind of power that exists in repressive political systems. In fact, she explains to Cordelia that she has permission to use coercive psychological manipulation methods on Cordelia even if Cordelia doesn’t consent. She has this power because she assumes Cordelia will give her consent post-factum after she becomes aware that she has been reconditioned.
In this extremely disturbing scene, Cordelia is very nearly mentally raped by her psychologist, who now has the backing of the military to use all kinds of insane methods to try to get Cordelia to uncover repressed memories of a conditioning that never happened.
Which Violence Is Worse?
As a reader, I can’t decide which of the two scenes of violence is worse. Obviously, the scene of almost physical rape was absolutely horrific, but the scene of almost mental rape was equally disturbing.
As an example of how horrific mental rape can be, I’ll point to the novel “Exogenesis” by Peco Gaskovski, which I have gone on record as saying is probably the best dystopian novel I’ve ever read.
In this novel, there’s a scene where one of the characters is forced to watch from his prison cell as the girl he’s in love with is subjected to a series of rapes; the character has the power to stop the rapes if he gives up valuable information that only he possessess. The rapes turn out to be a virtual simulation, but the character is so psychologically damaged by watching him that he is ultimately destroyed.
Whom Do We Trust in War Time?
The science fiction novel “Shards of Honour” asks several important questions:
- Who is good and who is honorable in war time?
- Who has the right to determine who is good and honorable?
- Does that determination come from the structures of a political society and its related social structure, or does it come from the choices of individuals?
While this science fiction novel offers a remarkable examination of these questions, the best part of the novel is actually a short story appended to it called “Aftermaths.” This is one of the greatest short stories I have ever read. I’m not going to tell you what happens because I want you to go read it. It shows, in absolutely stark reality, how you cannot trust the evidence of your eyes in a time of war.
That’s the thought I want to leave with all of you.
We in the U.S. are approaching one of the most dangerous and divisive elections of our time, and at the same time, things are becoming very complicated in both the European and the Middle Eastern theaters of war.
As this happens, it is my hope that all of us, instead of spending our time reading The New York Times or other partisan news outlets that are not interested in uncovering the truth, turn instead to novels like “Shards of Honour.”
These novels inform and illumine the experience of what it means to be human on every possible side of the ideological, political, spiritual, and social divides of our time.
It’s these kinds of reading experiences that heal you, the reader, so that you can go out and have healed and integrated conversations with other people seeking integration in a time that is extremely fractured.
Author Update
This article was originally a free live stream hosted on my Patreon community. We have a free tier, so come join us!
This is where you can interact with me more directly, both in livestreams and Zoom meetings. I’m going to be talking about some secret projects I’m working on right now, including:
- New projects
- New stories
- New universes
I am going to be opening up the vault next week in a Patreon-only livestream!