Rebels and rascals are rife in fiction and this is especially true in science fiction. Science fiction readers like to see evil being fought in all of its forms and want to follow bold, brash heroes who stand up against tyranny and plain idiocy, too.
I wrote in an earlier Shelf Talk post on how I am slowly reading though Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series and was struck by just how much commentary about bureaucracy in work and politics was present in her work. I just read Falling Free (also in the Miles, Mutants and Microbes omnibus) and Cetaganda and Ethan of Athos (also in the Miles, Mystery & Mayhem omnibus) and found some choice scenes and dialogues to support my theory.
Miles Vorkosigan is the principal character in the series, an ambitious young man from an important family who refuses to let his congenital physical defects of brittle bones and a twisted spine hold him back. Miles is headstrong, witty, compassionate and confident to a fault. But underlying his confidence is Bujold’s running commentary on challenging incompetency and suspect power structures in bureaucracy.
“You don’t hire a genius to solve the most intractable imaginable problem, and then hedge him around with a lot of rules, not try to micro-manage him from two weeks’ distance. You turn him loose. If all you need is somebody to follow orders, you can hire an idiot. In fact, an idiot would be better suited.”—Lord Miles Vorkosigan, Cetaganda
Miles’ high opinion of himself, as insufferable as it can be at times, is balanced by his struggles and by his fierce intelligence and commitment to justice for others, not just himself.
In Ethan of Athos, Elli Quinn, an employee of the mercenary fleet Miles commands, comments on Miles’ unorthodox approach to things:
“Naw. He has unprofessional moments himself. Terribly impractical, it’s going to kill him one of these days. Though so far he seems able to make things come out all right by sheer force of will.”–Commander Elli Quinn, Ethan of Athos
Miles is the heart of the Vorkosigan books because he flaunts convention and authority, he strikes against protocol when it might get in the way of what’s right or what might achieve a better outcome than was envisioned. Miles refuses to be subordinate when it doesn’t make any sense, which is his flaw and his strength.
Then I noticed that Bujold wields these beliefs in other characters as well. In Falling Free, a prequel in the series, set 200 years before Miles is born, engineer Leo Graf is assigned to a top secret project where humans are being created to withstand zero gravity. The Quaddies, as they are called, are a race of genetically modified children with four arms and no legs, enabling them to move freely in gravity free environments. Leo Graf finds himself fighting for the rights of the Quaddies, against a prior peer who is the illustration of the Peter Principle, when he learns that they are going to be sterilized and summarily dispatched to die. Bujold attacks the kinds of thinking in individuals and corporations/bureaucracies that can cause the justification of the elimination of ‘inefficiencies’ even in the case of sentient beings. Leo realizes that he can challenge the morally bankrupt plot at hand:
“The solution had been lying around him in pieces all this time, invisible until he’d changed. He grinned dementedly, possessed. He yielded himself up to it without reservation. All. All. There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.”–Leo Graf, Falling Free
Overall, Bujold writes about brave individuals who will risk much in order to save and defend those weaker than themselves and stand up against ill-used authority. There’s no doubt that rebels make for exciting reading and it’s all the more satisfying when you agree with the reasons for their rebellion.
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