Space Opera Fans discussion

The August 2019 Reader Pick is Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold. Please use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at any time.

Official description:
Leo Graf was an effective engineer. Safety regs weren't just the rule book he swore by; he'd helped write them. All that changed on his assignment to the Cay Habitat. Leo was profoundly uneasy with the corporate exploitation of his bright new students... until that exploitation turned to something much worse. He hadn't anticipated a situation where the right thing to do was neither safe, nor in the rules...
Leo Graf adopted a thousand quaddies---now all he had to do was teach them to be free.

Falling Free takes place approximately 200 years before the events in Cordelia's Honor and does not share settings or characters with the main body of the series.

I recently finished this one and I really enjoyed it, even without Miles.

Bujold's books are just so enjoyable. Intelligent, fun, adventurous!

I liked the writing and Leo in this book. It did not help me to get into the Vorkosigan saga itself, though. As said in the original post, it really shares nothing with those books except for the concept of the quaddies.

Kirsten #NeverAgainIsNow wrote: "I recently finished this one and I really enjoyed it, even without Miles.

Bujold's books are just so enjoyable. Intelligent, fun, adventurous!"

I concur.

Brandon wrote: "I liked the writing and Leo in this book. It did not help me to get into the Vorkosigan saga itself, though. As said in the original post, it really shares nothing with those books except for the c..."

However, it does give you a feel of the writing style and Bujold's sympathies. If you aren't sure you'd want to read the Vorkosigan books, this would be a quick way to find out. My first Vorkosigan book was Cetaganda which dropped me right into the water mid-stream.

Teresa wrote: "The August 2019 Reader Pick is Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold. Please use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at a..."

I have been sitting on this book for literally decades. I'll be reading the Science Fiction Book Club edition, which I bought from the club itself, so that dates it at least. Time to dust it off and read along with the group--I'm in!

Is the Science Fiction Book Club still going on? I got a lot of good books from them in the 80s.

Looks like it is https://www.sfbc.com/

Through Chapter 2 and hoping a story starts soon. Do we have to take part in the welding class? Is it me or did that feel like the author saying, "Look at all the research I did!"

That came out snarkier than I intended…

I enjoyed how Leo made it an engineering problem to solve!

Somehow, I managed to lose my copy of this book. I think it was while having all the windows in my house replaced a couple months ago. Grrr. But the good news is that my local library had it as an audiobook. This has been a rather different reading experience than I am used to, and so far I am not really liking the narrator much.

Audrey wrote: "Somehow, I managed to lose my copy of this book. I think it was while having all the windows in my house replaced a couple months ago. Grrr.”

Crossbreezes, the natural enemy of paper.



Audrey wrote: "But the good news is that my local library had it as an audiobook. This has been a rather different reading experience than I am used to, and so far I am not really liking the narrator much. ..."

Grover Gardner’s narration grew on me. After 18 Bujold books it felt like visiting a familiar friend.

Sorry if off-topic and stupid (erase my post if you would like to).

BOTM. Abbreviation for.. Book of the month? YA/NA means what?

BOTM Book of the Month
YA Young Adult (teens)
NA New Adult (college age)

Thank you, Teresa :-)

(English not my native language)

Brandon wrote: "I liked the writing and Leo in this book. It did not help me to get into the Vorkosigan saga itself, though. As said in the original post, it really shares nothing with those books except for the c..."

If you want to read more about the descendants of the quaddies in Falling Free, check out Diplomatic Immunity. Miles Vorkosigan is there in style.

Yeah… I gotta be honest… I really didn't like this book at all. It read like a solid first draft--an interesting idea that could be fleshed out and thought through, but wasn't. Instead it was just sent out there, like the quaddies themselves, without the maturity to fend for itself or to think past the obvious: Slavery is bad--I agree. Genocide is bad--it sure is. Why only one of the humans understands this is because…? Why the company wouldn't sign on to Leo's plan and profit from it is because…? Why the invention of artificial gravity means we have to kill a thousand innocent people is because…?

Just… why?

Philip wrote: "Yeah… I gotta be honest… I really didn't like this book at all. It read like a solid first draft--an interesting idea that could be fleshed out and thought through, but wasn't. Instead it was just ..."

Because companies are evil?

Kirsten #EnoughIsEnough wrote: "Because companies are evil?

Exactly! The villain is the villain because the villain is the villain.

That's not nearly good enough.

I rant and rave in more detail here: https://fantasyhandbook.wordpress.com...

I thought, for Galactech, the fact that they felt quaddies were more or less their property, rather than people (Galactech created them, after all) was sufficient to explain the plan to let them languish in an abandoned barracks somewhere. We see similar attitudes all the time in modern corporations with sweatshop working conditions, and of course it was even worse in the past.

Galactech's response to Leo's actions to move the Habitat is something of a knee-jerk reaction. Recall that the galaxy in general is against genetic engineering, and their desire to keep things neat and tidy by controlling the quaddies directly becomes understandable.

Why artificial gravity would cause Galactech to kill quaddies was also pretty well explained, I thought.

Van Atta's motivations I'm less sure about. Towards the end of the book - was it pure revenge that drove him? It seems so.

I struggled a bit through the engineering aspects of the book. I don't think the purposes behind them were sufficiently explained. What was the vortex mirror near the end of the book for?

Philip wrote: "Kirsten #EnoughIsEnough wrote: "Because companies are evil?

Exactly! The villain is the villain because the villain is the villain.

That's not nearly good enough.

I rant and rave in more detai..."

Have you ever worked for a company or read the news? Sure seems like a lot of corporations behave monstrously, and they reward psychopathy in their executives, and seem to turn their employees heartless.

I usually like (and remember) Bujold's work. And yet, I found that even though this was a re-read, I barely remembered it. I guess once I started reading books about Miles, he just took over - as he has a way of doing.

Sure, but there's always a reason why, and just "because they're evil" isn't ever going to be enough for me, especially in this case where the corporation was clearly working against it's own best interests. It also plays into that vision of the future that says technology will improve but people and institutions will either stay the same or get worse, which is contrary to observable trends.

Philip wrote: "It also plays into that vision of the future that says technology will improve but people and institutions will either stay the same or get worse, which is contrary to observable trends."

What observable trends?

Trike, he's probably referring to the fact that in general, society is healthier, freer, and happier than it's ever been in human history. See https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3....

However, I don't agree with Philip's assertion that the book has a future contrary to current trends is a weakness. Sci-fi) is allowed to take some liberties and present merely a possible future, not necessarily a probable one. And nobody knows what will happen in the future anyway.

Philip, how was Galactech working against its own interests? I thought the book explained the motivations clearly enough. You must not like classic speculative fiction like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter if you don't like evil villains bent on world domination with no nuanced motivations.

I’m just curious what evidence there might be that corporations are becoming better citizens. Just looking at recent events it sure seems like the opposite is true.

To wit:

A decades-long conspiracy to knowingly and intentionally hook people on opioids. Pharma companies knew they were addictive yet pushed the exact opposite message.

Oil companies actively undermining climate change legislation worldwide via bribes and actively influencing politicians. Oil companies not just using the exact same tactics that the cigarette and pharmaceutical companies used to push their deadly agenda, but actually using the exact same lawyers.

BP even going so far as to give themselves bonuses just months after the disastrous Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent leak that contaminated 75% of the Gulf of Mexico’s beaches because of that year’s “outstanding safety record.”

Facebook invading the privacy of its 3 billion users and then covering it up. Facebook further allowing Russia to meddle in the 2016 US Presidential election. Zuckerberg et al knew both things were happening and covered it up. Zuckerberg lied to Congress and European lawmakers to their faces.

Amazon’s ongoing and pervasive mistreatment of its employees, plus its destructive search for a new site for its second HQ, which is only second to Walmart’s mistreatment and underpaying of their employees, to the point where full-time employees of both companies have to sign up for government assistance just to afford food.

Monsanto patenting genetically engineered corn and then suing farmers into bankruptcy when that corn shows up in their fields, which happens because of wind and insects. Monsanto’s use of pesticides wiping out entire populations of bees. Monsanto influencing American and African politicians so that poor African farmers have to use their seed, which incidentally destroys the soil, creating a cycle of dependency.

...and all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. For-profit prisons and the NRA’s stranglehold on American criminal justice system, Wall Street firms literally wrecking the global economy, ALEC writing business-friendly laws that Congress passes, world banks financing drug cartels and terrorists, Johnson&Johnson putting asbestos in their talcum powder, Royal Dutch Shell burning down the Amazon, Asia Paper destroying the Indonesian rainforest, Wells Fargo signing customers up to premiums without their knowledge, on and on.

I haven’t even touched on bad actors on the State level such as Russia and China and Saudi Arabia and Trump.

So no, I don’t see any trends towards “kindler, gentler” companies, nor do I believe the future will be any different. Corporations are soulless enterprises whose very practices turn their executives into heartless predators pursuing the single goal of profits uber alles.

Ryan wrote: I don't agree with Philip's assertion that the book has a future contrary to current trends is a weakness. Sci-fi) is allowed to take some liberties and present merely a possible future, not necessarily a probable one. "

You're correct that I mean that people and institutions, over time, have been improving while news about how awful hey are has been on the increase, and I also 100% agree that SF is not meant to be--or should be meant to be--an accurate prediction of an unknowable future. To that end, the author was certainly playing off the times (the late 80s) in which it did seem clear that corporations were inherently evil and treated people deplorably, and unfortunately that continues to be the case.

What I was missing in the book was any sort of personal touch. The faceless institution doesn't work as a villain--there needs to be a character there, and one with human frailties and motivations, and I wasn't getting enough of that out of this book to satisfy me.

Trike wrote: "I’m just curious what evidence there might be that corporations are becoming better citizens. Just looking at recent events it sure seems like the opposite is true.

To wit:

A decades-long conspir..."

You're right about pretty much all of this stuff, while at the same time showing exactly what I meant by a trend toward the better. You just posted this in a public forum run by a massive corporation (Amazon) that does everything you're afraid of and more, yet at no point will any of us be arrested, summarily executed, sent to a gulag, etc.

The fact that you even know that any of this bad stuff is going on, can put a name and a face to it, represents a massive shift in global culture. It is true that people and institutions continue to do terrible stuff, but the fact that that terrible stuff is recognized as terrible--is recognized at all--makes it more difficult to imagine a corporation a hundred years from now (or whatever) not just engaged in irresponsibly selfish behavior but in behavior that's actually worse than any of your examples here, is increasingly difficult to believe.

That's not something to be angry about but delighted by instead.

Philip wrote: "That's not something to be angry about but delighted by instead."

That’s... overly optimistic. There’s no guarantee Goodreads will be here tomorrow. With the increased concentration of power in corporations, a single person in a company can decide to pull the plug and that’s it. Sure, that can happen in positive ways, such as what happened to the cesspool of vileness that was 8chan, but it can also happen to positive communities, like what Google did to Usenet.

Is Disney bad? Probably not overall, but nonetheless their acquisition of Fox means there will be less competition in the marketplace, less variety in product (Disney has already canceled every R-rated project Fox was working on), and the immediate fallout was that four or five thousand people lost their jobs.

They don’t have to arrest us to stifle our voices. Plus they’ve learned the art of subtlety. Allowing people to vent acts as a safety valve; it relieves the immediate pressure while the rich and powerful continue to get their way. If we have the *appearance* of having a voice and having a choice, we don’t start holding the powerful accountable.

Just look at the mass shootings in America. So far in 2019 we’ve had 277 mass shootings in America; today is day 243 of the year. 99% of them don’t even make the news any more. Nothing changes. We grumble, we argue, then we return to the status quo. The reason is because of money. Corporations sell more guns after each high-profile mass shooting. The NRA makes more money. Politicians make more money. News outlets make more money. No one has any incentive to protect the lives of the citizens. Mass shootings are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to gun violence and gun deaths.

The fact that I’m saying this, the fact I’m allowed to say it, changes nothing. All those people listed above say “that’s terrible” and offer “thoughts and prayers” and then nothing changes. The children of the politicians could literally be gunned down in a mass shooting and still nothing would change.

Yet now we have thousands of little kids who are terrified to go to school because they are scared they’ll be shot. This is a real trend among schoolage children. There is no positive impact that can have on society twenty years from now when those kids are adults. This sort of mass emotional trauma is going to fundamentally alter society in ways we can’t even imagine right now.

First graders are coming home crying to their parents and having nightmares because they’ve been told that wearing bright colors or sneakers with lights on them will draw the attention of shooters. No 6-year-old should have to think about such things, yet this is the kind of trauma we’re burdening them with because corporations control our lives.

We are currently redesigning schools so they don’t have long sightlines, so they have hiding spots, so they can be compartmentalized and locked down in case of an active shooter. These schools cost more to build than normal schools, and we all pay for it because federal funds are used. Not to mention the fact that unintended consequences will arise. How many sexual and physical assaults are going to happen in these secluded areas? How many kids will go missing, even temporarily, when they wander into one of these hidden spaces?

Beyond that, we’re building schools that resemble prisons. That affects you, even if subconsciously.

So back to the book at hand, Falling Free, it’s not unbelievable or tropey to imagine that corporations and those that run them would behave in evil ways, because that’s what they’ve always done. The system is designed to encourage that sort of thing.