The Vorkosigan Companion - By Lillian S Carl Page 0,2

goes on. While it's possible all these people were got up as plot-mirrors for Miles, the quaddies appear independently of him. So disability, and difference, have become ongoing subjects, directly or obliquely.

I've sometimes wondered if this theme is a personal metaphor. I grew up in a family with a remarkable father, strong older brothers, a close grandfather who'd been widowed in 1916 and never remarried, no sisters, and a mother whose attempts to feminize me I fought from age two onward. I had no extended family nearby to provide alternate models for women's lives, nor did the culture of the Fifties and Sixties offer much relief. In the lexicon of (some) feminist critique, disabled Miles becomes "codedly feminine": he's smaller than those around him, can't win a physical fight, is in a "wrong"-shaped body—has lots of medical problems—and has to beat the bastards using only brains, wit, and charm. The sense of being "wrong" is deeply inculcated in females in our society; I recall a pretty woman of my early acquaintance who wouldn't go out without her makeup on. "I have to put on my face," she explained. Sad, and scary. But regardless of gender, almost everybody harbors some cripplement, emotional if not physical. You can't judge anybody—you never know what backbreaking secret burdens they may be carrying. There is scarcely a more universal appeal to the reader.

The most important feedback I've received from handicapped (and non-handicapped!) readers is the sense that my fiction is energizing for them. Somehow, watching Miles operate gives them the emotional edge they need to tackle, as I described it above, just one more damned day. I think it's a variant of the Dumbo-and-the-magic-feather effect. When I reflect how much Miles's world is stacked in his favor, and how much their world is not stacked in theirs, the idea of anyone trying to use Miles's life as a blueprint gives me cold chills. Yet it seems to work. Miles models success.

I also note in passing that the definition of a handicap goes by majority rule. The fact that I cannot flap my arms and fly is not considered a handicap in Minnesota, because nobody else here can, either. On another world, in some avian evolution such as constructed by several wonderful SF stories, this disability would severely limit my social opportunities.

But, of course, since Miles lives in the future, one must allow that future medical technology will be better and cleverer than our own. In general I see technology as an annihilator of handicaps. I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation. But technology, outside of science fiction, is as awkward as any other bit of reality. It arrives sideways, it never works right at first, the interface problem is always a bitch, and for every problem it solves, several more are created. Still, I adore technology, medical and most other kinds.

Prior to the time his books open, Miles has already undergone many invasive repairs. I had a curious conversation with a fan once, comparing and contrasting the childhoods of Miles and his clone-brother Mark, one of the contrasts being the degree to which Mark was abused and Miles was not (it's a long story, spread through two novels). "But what about all that medical treatment Miles had to endure?" my bright fan inquired. "Oh," I said. I hadn't thought of it like that, but she had a point. There's a scene somewhere in The Warrior's Apprentice where Miles remembers how his father extracted cooperation from him when no one else could: "You must not frighten your liege-people with this show of uncontrol, Lord Miles," his father earnestly addresses the hysterical child-Miles. A consummate politician, that man.

Over the course of the next decade of his life, and several books, Miles gradually acquires more and more repairs; by age twenty-eight, almost all of his original bones have been replaced with synthetics. He's still short, but can scarcely be described anymore as handicapped. This invited new challenges.

Miles's inferiority complex and bad case of Great Man's Son syndrome give him an enormous amount of drive, which is both attractive and gets him into a hell of a lot of trouble, particularly when he drives first and looks later. (He simultaneously has what is popularly called a superiority complex. I figure you can't be that smart and not know it.) As his author, I find his drive an enormously valuable characteristic for kicking my plots into motion, but I'm pretty sure any people