Well loved books: The Vorkosigan Saga

As I stated in my last post, for Christmas I received an iPad mini from my Uncle Bob. Actually, in the note he sent with the iPad, he said he sent it to me for "Winterfair" - a reference to my favorite book series, one which he introduced to me to years ago: the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. So naturally, one of the first things I want to do when receiving a bookreader (or something I'll primarily use as a bookreader) is load all my favorite books onto it. So the series of Vorkosigan books were the first ones I loaded onto the iPad. Now, I own hard copies of all of these books (in fact, I own pretty much every book that Bujold has written, either alone or in a compilation). However, due to what I think is pretty good marketing savvy on her - or her publishers - part, I also own all the e-books for this series as well, for the various omnibuses. One of the latest books in the series, Cryoburn, came with a disk which included ALL the Vorksigan e-books. It also included a note that basically boils down to this: "We want you to enjoy these books so that you will buy them. We want you to recommend these to your friends, and lend them to your friends, so that THEY will buy them. Go nuts." So, basically, I can hook up my friends and family with this series extremely easily, and without misgivings; and in exchange maybe I'll hook someone else on the series and they, too, will go out and buy all of her books.

I'm not JUST going to use the iPad mini as a book reader, of course; I've already downloaded a number  useful applications for myself, in addition to the iBook and the Kindle apps. For example, on the astronomy front, I've got the fantastic app Star Walk, which allows you to point your screen in any direction and see exactly what stars, planets, and constellations are up. I've also got a number of travel/map apps, including Exit Strategy, which gives you not only subway and bus maps of NYC, but also tells you WHERE TO STAND and what car to get into for the subway, depending on what stop you get off at. So you can get in the car which will be right by the exit or the transfer point! And of course, plenty of games, like Bastion (AMAZING game, though better on the computer than the iPad, buy the computer game first and the app second), Mahjong (REAL mahjong, not matching mahjong), various puzzles, and so on and so fifth. But I suspect the bulk of time I spend using this device will be reading books.


Anyways, my mother also got a book reader for Christmas, a Kindle, and she's very excited by this, since it will make it a lot easier for her to read in general and carry books around with her. She's been vaguely interested in trying the Vorkosigan books for some time, since she knows I love them, but it's been getting difficult for her to hold heavy books and turn pages. So last week, while she and my dad were up in NYC for a day after Christmas, I loaded all of of my Vorkosigan ebooks onto her Kindle, as well! And because I have strong opinions on this series, I wrote up a bit of background and description about it for her, as well as a recommendation of where to start, etc. And then, of course, I decided I wanted to expand on it even further, for a general audience, and thus, this blog post was born.

The Vorkosigan Saga is a series of science fiction books, taking place perhaps 1000 years in the future or so. However, the bulk of the stories are more about the people than the technology - or, if technology is an issue, it's more about how those technologies affect people and planets. For example, one futuristic piece of technology is the 'uterine replicator' - basically, allows people to skip the whole "being pregnant" thing, and just directly cook up your kid in the lab. As a bonus, you can therefore also make sure said kid is free of genetic defects, or choose the gender, or whatever. It also makes bio-engineering a lot more feasible. The planet Barrayer (from which Miles, the protagonist, hails) in fact has a bit of a problem with gender statistics, since when gender selecting came about, everyone started having lots of boys. Another of the books (Ethan of Athos) is about a man from a planet which doesn't have any women at all, since they aren't really necessary to the process anymore, except for the preliminary genetic material. The book Cryoburn looks more into cryogenics - freezing people when they're near death in hopes that a cure will come along eventually to extend their live. But again, its more about the people involved than the technology itself, and people remain people no matter what technology is available.

The bulk of these books focus on Miles Vorkosigan, the crippled heir of an extremely politically important aristocratic family on the planet Barrayer. Barrayer is very militarized, and historically has treated those who are physically different horrendously. However, Miles is extremely intelligent (and a bit hyper), and has an extreme need to prove himself. Over the course of the books, he becomes a successful mercenary commander which is in the employ of his government, running secret missions around the Nexus (the various planetary systems which make up the Vorkosigan universe) which the government doesn't want traced back to them. However, this means that the bulk of his achievements are classified. Which means back on Barrayer, he's largely seen as having some token military job because of nepotism. The books follow him throughout is life, from starting out in Military school (Young Miles) to his later life - the last book chronologically occurs when he's in his late 30s (Cryoburn). Some of the books are from other perspectives: Cordelia's Honor is from the perspective of his mother, for example, before Miles is born.

The books have been published both individually and in omnibuses - in general, I have the omnibuses of the books, and that's the way that all the e-books are collected as well. Therefore, in my overview below, I've listed the omnibuses in the order such that the bulk of the stories are in internal chronological order. However, this is not the published order  - Bujold wrote them a bit scattered over the timeline, though they're actually QUITE internally consistant! In general, you don't really NEED to read them chronologically, since the earliest books aren't required for understanding, and each book stands pretty well on its own. I would read the books in each omnibus in the general order presented, however. For the new reader, I'd say that once you've read a couple which sound interesting to you, then to go back and read them chronologically.

Personally, if you want to see if you are interested in the series, I would recommend starting with the short story The Mountains of Morning (in Young Miles). This will give you some perspective on the culture of Barrayar, and why Miles being damaged is such a cultural problem for him. I would also recommend Cetegania (in Miles, Mystery and Meyhem) as a good place to start, it gives an idea of what Miles' personality is like - plus, it's a nice little mystery. This was, in fact, the first book that I read in the Vorkosigan series! The other two books in the omnibus with Cetegania (Miles, Mystery and Meyhem) are also fun and give you a good picture of the Nexus and Mile's mercenaries. From there on, reading in chronological order is generally best, but not strictly required. You SHOULD read each omnibus in the order presented.

BUT.  

This series is basically broken in half - before and after the book Memory. You should read all the Miles books before Memory before you read Memory. You should read all the books AFTER Memory after you read Memory. 

Additionally, the 6th omnibus (Miles, Mutants, and Microbes) contains a story (Falling Free) which takes place, chronologically, 200 years before any of the other stories in the book. Read it whenever you like, it's a nice story, but largely irrelevant to the story-at-large. It also contains a repeat story (Labyrinth), which chronologically belongs in the first omnibus in which it's listed (Miles, Mystery and Meyhem). The final story is a new Miles story (Diplomatic Immunity), and belongs in the location it's listed, after Winterfaire Gifts and before Captain Vorpatril's Alliance!

You can find free snippets of Bujolds' various books and stories on her website, here. They used to have the story "Mountains of Mourning" up there for free, but that link currently seems to be broken.
Bujold has two other series, both fantasy instead of Science fiction: the Challion books and the Sharing Knife books. These are both ALSO very good, but Vorkosigan remains the top in my eyes. The Challion books is more action driven, whereas Sharing Knife is more of a romance. But both are fun fantasy books which I would also recommend. Worth taking a look at the snippets, at least!

So, here are the collections of Vorkosigan books and omnibuses, with brief descriptions:

0)  Cordelia's Honor (contains 2 books)

• Shards of Honor: Miles' parents meet and fall in love during a war, on which they're on opposing sides.
• Barrayer: Miles' mother is pregnant (with Miles), during a political upheaval.

1)  Young Miles  (contains 2 books and one short story):  the books here tend to be a bit more military based than some of the later books, with smuggling and internal politics. It is also partly a coming of age type thing as Miles finds a place for himself in his (very militarized) society as someone who is ... damaged.

• The Warrior's Apprentice: The FIRST Miles book: Miles meets the mercenaries
• Mountains of Morning (short): A short murder mystery, taking place in a local district on Barrayer
• The Vor Game: Miles gets his first official mission and promptly gets into trouble.

2)  Miles, Mystery and Meyhem (contains 2 books and one short): these books are more mystery based, trying to figure out what's going on with various mysterious situations. These are the books I started off with, and all three are a LOT of fun.

• Cetegania: Miles is on a diplomatic mission to another planet which has historically been an enemy of Barrayar.
• Ethan of Athos: This book is NOT about Miles, but focuses instead on a doctor who gets mixed up with some business which Mile's mercenaries are also involved with. You won't see Miles, but you will see his second in command, Eli Quinn.
• Labyrinth (short): Back to Miles, a short mission which spawns from the previous book, a rescue.

3)  Miles Errant (contains 2 books and one short): These books are great, but intense.

• Borders of Infinity (Short): Miles infiltrates a POW camp.
• Brother in Arms: Miles and his mercenaries take refuge on Earth after the fall out of the previous mission.
• Mirror Dance: Various fallouts from previous books catches up with Miles and his family. 

4)  Memory (contains 1 book): "Miles hits 30. 30 hits back."

     This book really cuts the series in half. Before this and after this are two very separate stages in Miles life. Therefore, I would HIGHLY recommend reading books before this, before this, and the books after this, after this.

      

5)  Miles in Love  (contains 2 books and one short)

• Komarr: Miles, in his new job, investigates an apparent accident on the planet of Komarr. And meets a woman. (more political/investigative, less romance)
• A Civil Campaign: Miles attempts to court a lady while keeping this a secret from her. In addition, there is political fallout from the previous book's investigation. Romance! And lots of humor! 
• Winterfaire Gifts (short): Miles' wedding (from the perspective of one of Mile's guards).

6*)  Miles, Mutants, and Microbes  (contains 2 shorts and one book)

• Falling Free (short): This story takes place 200 years before the rest, and focuses on a race of bioengeneered people called "Quaddies." However, this is by no means required to understand the rest of the series, it will only really provide understanding to Diplomatic Immunity (also in omnibus 6), so I'd just recommend reading it before that!
• Labyrinth (short): This is the same story as in Miles, Mystery and Meyhem - they just published it in this collection as well, since it also involves a Quaddie.
• Diplomatic Immunity: Miles travels to Quaddie-space in order to sort out a tense situation with the Quaddies. This story chronologically follows "Winterfaire Gifts"

      

7)  Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (contains 1 book): Focusing on Miles' cousin Ivan, this is his romance. Ivan meets a damsel in distress, and partakes to help her. (Quite funny).

8)  Cryoburn (contains 1 book): Miles travels to the planet Kibou-daini, which specializes in cryogenics, and promptly stumbles into a number of tangled conspiracies.

The Astronomer's Day On

Me on Mauna Kea (HI), during an observing run last August.
Those aren't the telescopes I was working with - the
SMA is an array of 8 radio dishes, whereas these are all
optical telescopes near the top of the mountain!

As I said in my introductory post, I am an Astronomy PhD student, studying at Columbia University. While the main focus of this blog is what I do when NOT at work, astronomy is a very important part of my life. Last week, I had a thesis committee review: every six months (or so), the panel that will eventually be deciding if I get a PhD meets, and I give an overview of what I've been doing, and what I plan to do. This is all designed to keep my thesis ON TRACK, make sure I'm not floundering, and to give me advice on what they think I need to work on, or keep doing right. So, having just ruminated on my research, where it's going, and what my accomplishments are to prepare for this meeting, it seemed an appropriate time to introduce readers of this blog to my research.

In a word, I study novae. Novae can occur in binary systems where a compact star (most often a white dwarf) accretes mass from its companion. When enough matter builds up on the surface of the star and some critical mass is reached, it triggers a thermonuclear reaction which blows off material from the white dwarf as a shell of plasma. This material is quite hot and luminous, so naturally at this point you will see the star brighten - hence the name, "nova", which means "new star." Depending on the type of nova, this material will brighten and fade on the order of days to weeks to a few months - in the OPTICAL range. However, my research focuses on the RADIO light curves of novae, and how they evolve over time. In the radio regime, the time it takes for the lightcurve to rise and fall is usually on the order of months to years.

A lot of my work is based on the fact that different frequencies of light travel through plasma differently (like X-rays travel through your hand, making it possible to image bones, but you can't see through your hand in visible light). Therefore, if you look at the plasma ejected from a nova in two different frequencies, you'll get two separate brightnesses. So you can watch a nova in multiple frequencies and watch how it changes in each one, put it all together, and using some simple models and assumptions, make estimates about various properties of the ejecta (and thus the star and explosion as well). One of the things I really like about novae is that they occur on a time scale that we can NOTICE and KEEP TRACK OF. A new nova can go off at any time, and people all converge on it at once. You can clearly see the time evolution of these objects, and have a list of novae which are doing interesting things.

 But... sometimes the models don't quite work. Our assumptions are too broad, or there is some extra factor we overlook, or we get an answer which flies in the face of current nova theory. One of these issues is going to be the basis of my thesis: we're finding too much mass. Based on standard nova theory, we can estimate how much mass should be ejected in a nova shell. But when we do our model fits with observations, we seem to get masses over an order of magnitude (ie 10x) greater than what we expect. So is the problem with theory, or with our model fit assumptions? We've been making more and more detailed observations of novae, and we're still getting these large masses, even when taking in some additional factors in our model fit - because you can only stretch parameters so far and still keep your assumptions reasonable.

One of the assumptions we generally make in our models of novae is that the material ejected is spherically symmetric. Now, we KNOW that isn't true - nova ejecta is known to have clumps, or jets, or other asymmetries - but its a useful first-order approximation to make. So I'm also interested in jets and outflows in general, and what they imply about the system. Jets appear on multiple size scales in the universe: they can appear in outflowing systems from white dwarves to active galactic nuclei. So, in addition to novae, I have interest in other systems with varying brightness due to accretion, with outflows - like cataclysmic variables in general (where variation is due to accretion between two stars), and symbiotic stars (white dwarf/red giant binary system). I also have a fondness for neutron stars, though I don't really study them specifically at the moment. So really, binaries, jets, and compact stars in general hold my interest!

Some of the VLA telescopes
(in it's SMALLEST configuration)

I'm working with a collaborative group (the e-Nova project) looking at a number of different novae in radio, optical, and X-ray. The majority of our observations come from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array near Socorro, New Mexico.  This is an array of 27 individual antenna, working together as one (very large) radio telescope. I've been out there three times; however, these have generally been to learn how to do radio data reduction and analysis, not for observations themselves. When you get time on the VLA, you can input your operating instructions in the online system, and the operators out in New Mexico take care of the observing for you. The only observing I've done personally has been one trip out to MDM at Kitt Peak, AZ, two years ago, and one trip last August to the Sub Milli-meter Array (SMA) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The first of those trips was with a class on observational astronomy, where students got sent to the telescope (of which Columbia owns a share) to get experience with optical observing. The second, however, was directly related to my research: in order to obtain time on the SMA, you are required to send out an observer for a week to assist the local operators. So, when we wanted time for high-frequency radio observations of a few young novae, I got tapped to go. It was a pretty awesome experience... though sitting for a control room over a long night actually gets rather dull after a while.

Anyway, my collaboration has recently submitted two papers on which I'm a co-author. They are still undergoing the referee process, so they're not "published" yet and will undoubtedly change a bit before final publication, but they've been listed on the Astro-ph archives. I'm 9th and 10th author on these - it's a large collaboration - so I didn't actually do much of the writing, my contributions were more on the data side, as well as in editing and general discussion. But if you are interested in a bit more technical detail about what I've been working on, you can find those papers here.