Living in Another World

Spend time in District 12? Nope.

I've been thinking about the books I'd want to live in for a while. My first thought was I would definitely never, ever live in The Hunger Games or in Game of Thrones. How funny that I quickly came up with the places I'd stay away from. In contrast, I had to give quite a bit of thought to those places where I'd want to live.

People who know me and my reading habits also know that I'm a huge fan of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series. I love the characters, and I also love the world. It depicts a fascinating future. Years ago I mentioned to a non-sf fan how I would love it if uterine replicators were a real thing, and she thought I was nuts. But imagine a perfect environment for one's developing baby, with the right balance of nutrients, located in a safe place. A woman could go on working in any kind of job, she could drink or eat whatever she wanted, and most importantly, she wouldn't have to go through the stresses on her body that carrying a baby can bring. When I was pregnant with my son, I was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. It would have been nice to have never experienced that or the uncertainty and fear that goes along with it. My blood pressure was so high before, during, and after delivery that I could feel my heartbeat in my face. My lips throbbed in time with my heart. I nearly wept with joy when I filled my prescription for blood pressure medication and took that first pill. With a uterine replicator, though, my son could have developed in a healthy environment, and I could have stayed healthy myself.

That detail aside, the books also have space travel, other worlds, and fantastic characters. People have better health, and so have longer life spans. One of the main characters, Cordelia, has a life expectancy of somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 years old. How much could a person learn in that lifetime? How many careers could a person have? How much wisdom could a person gain? You could see your grandchildren grow up and have grandchildren of their own.

There's conflict in the Vorkosigan series, and war, but the overall themes are hopeful. There's an underlying current of joy in the stories. While I enjoy novels like The Hunger Games or the Game of Thrones series, they don't make the same impression or give me the same sense of happiness as the Vorkosigan series does. And I certainly wouldn't want to spend any time there.

Fictional Moms

A post on Christine Amsden's blog got me thinking about fictional mothers (as did Mother's Day) and which ones I enjoy, or at least could relate to.

The first that came to mind was Captain Cordelia Naismith of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan universe. Yes, I mention these books a lot, but I love them. If you read the first two books in the series, which are bundled together in Cordelia's Honor, then you get to witness her transformation from captain of a starship to mother. It's difficult to describe without providing oodles of spoilers, but trust me when I tell you that you don't want to mess with this woman. Anyhow, she's intelligent, brave, and diplomatic in her own special way. While the reader doesn't get to witness her in mothering action with a young Miles (the series, from his point of view, begins when he is 17 years old), the reader does get to see the repercussions of his having a mother from a different planet, and one who was a ship's captain in a time and society where most women lived according to more conservative standards.

I also want to mention Claire Beauchamp Randall, a character in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. I gave up on the series after four books, incidentally, because (1) too many coincidences began to happen, and (2) I started to dislike the characters for a variety of reasons. Spoiler alert! If you plan to read the series and you don't want to know a thing that happens, then skip to the next paragraph. So, Claire is a complex character to begin with, and motherhood definitely adds another layer to that. She ends up married to a man she used to love (but doesn't any longer) while pregnant with another man's child. While her daughter is an infant, Claire attends medical school. Claire is stretched thin, thin, thin. She struggles with her marriage, motherhood, and school, all while dreaming of the man she truly loves. And eventually, she leaves her adult daughter to return to her true love.

I enjoy reading about motherhood when it's done right. I enjoy saying, "Yes, that's how it is!" I don't like reading about women who are perfect or who simply exist to rub their hands gleefully as they plot evil things. I like messy, complex women who have to deal with colicky babies or temper tantrums while they're trying to accomplish whatever it is they want, or while trying to hold together their relationships or achieve things at work, because that's how life is, and anyone who finds things coming too easily to them just makes me want to roll my eyes.