20 female masters of science fiction to add to your reading list
Ethan of Athos (Cover image via Baen Books)
6. Lois McMaster Bujold
We’ve actually discussed Lois McMaster Bujold’s work before, when we discussed gay characters in her 1986 novel, Ethan of Athos. As it turns out, Ethan of Athos is only one entry in Bujold’s massive oeuvre.
Bujold grew up under the shadow of her father, Robert Charles McMaster, a renowned engineer. She’s often speculated about being the child of a “great man”, though her work also reflects some of the technical aspects of her father and, eventually, brother’s engineering work.
Her science fiction career got off to, for the literary world, a decent start: her first novel was published after four rejections. To be fair, she had also written three novels by this point.
Bujold is best known for her sprawling Vorkosigan Saga, featuring protagonist Miles Vorkosigan. He lives about 1,000 years in the future and makes a living as a kind of interplanetary spy. He’s also a still-rare disabled sci-fi character. Essentially, a chemical attack on his pregnant mother leaves Miles with weak, easily broken bones and short stature.
Though his bones were exchanged for synthetic replacements in his twenties, Miles still has to deal with serious prejudice and discrimination. People around him mistake Miles for a mutant, a decidedly bad first impression, given historic prejudice against mutated people. Other books in the series feature the points of view of female protagonists, too.
Bujold has also written two other major series besides the Vorkosigan Saga: the Chalion Series and the Sharking Knife series. Both are fantasy series and thoroughly enjoyable. However, if you’re dead set on reading a science fiction series, you can’t really go wrong with the Vorkosigan Saga.