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then-least-selling novel, but we struck deals that fall for Barrayar, for a
fantasy novel I'd long wanted to write, and also for a blank Miles book,
contents to be announced by me later. (That one turned out to be Mirror Dance,
which won my third best-novel Hugo.)
Still under the happy illusion about the "easy and quick" part (Hah.
Novels never are. Never.), I started Barrayar, with the unenticing working
title of Shardssequel. I wrote a new opening chapter, to reintro-duce the
characters and situation for new readers, cut and fit most of the old material
into its new frame, and began the story again as Count Piotr argued with
Cordelia and Captain Negri expired on the lawn at Vorkosigan Surleau. From
that point on, the tale ran on its own legs, and turned into something I
didn't expect. It turned into the book it always should have been, a real
book, where plot, character, and theme all worked together to make a whole
greater than the sum of the parts. It turned out to be about something, beyond
itself. It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a
target you didn't even know you were aiming for.
Shards/Barrayar, as it finally evolved, became a book about the price of
becoming a parent, particularly but not exclusively a mother. Not just Aral
and Cordelia, but all the other supporting couples took up and played their
symphonic variations on the theme, exploring its complexities: Kou and Drou,
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Padma and Alys, Piotr and his dead wife, Vordarian and Serg and Kareen, and
most strangely and SFnally, Bothari and the uterine replicator.
All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an
athlete, or a scientist, or an artist, or an independent business creator. In
service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices
and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny
may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without
giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human
transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship
with the universe-if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-
point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood
especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often
better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified,
certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again. Cordelia undergoes such
a fearsome transformation, at the climax of Barrayar laying down everything
about her old persona, even her cherished Betan principles, to bring her child
to life.
Shards and Barrayar between them contain most of what I presently have to say
about being a mother; it's not by chance that Barrayar was dedicated to my
children, who were my teachers in learning about this part of becoming human.
Further explorations on this theme will almost certainly not return to
Cordelia, but take a new start-point, though Cordelia may yet have a word to
say on other topics. Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like
housework: never finished. It's not something you do once for all. Miles and
his family and friends have become my vehicle for exploring identity, in what
promises to be a continuing fascination. I have not come to the end of that
story yet, nor will I, till I stop learning new things about what it takes to
be human.
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