Signal Boost: Baen Books Nazis

[writerkit]

Jason Sandford has published an investigative report on the people advocating for a second civil war on the Baen Books forums. Well-written, deeply horrifying, highly recommended.

Comments

[siderea]

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

While Bujold, as best I know, indeed does not follow in the mould of what Sandford calls the "conservative author narrative", I get the impression a lot of her fans do not grasp how conservative her works' politics actually are.

[writerkit]

I couldn't get past the "Miles is always right and Beta Colony is always perfect" elements enough to start thinking about the politics, though I have always been baffled by the "It's such wonderful disability representation!"-ness of the fans.

[siderea]

Well, it's complicated, which is probably why I like it. :) Yes, Beta Colony is always right – but she undermines that in a bunch of places, starting with the fact that Cordelia rejects Beta, chosing to move to Barrayar, and even has a pointed comment or two about the dark side of Beta to young Barrayarans who are getting starry-eyed about Beta. It's as if she were saying, "Beta's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

Fundamentally, Barrayar is presented as a wildly militaristic totalitarian police-state monarchy/aristocracy that would just be wonderful if it were meritocratic enough and social-justice-y enough. Which, gotta hand it to her, is a fascinating and novel stance from which to spin SF.