Oh, and by the way...

Ok -- speaking of Georgette Heyer brings me to Lois McMaster Bujold and her character Miles Vorkosigan.

Again, if you're not a fan of SF / Fantasy, you might not have heard of either Ms. Bujold or Miles.  (which would be a darned shame, if you ask me).

A Civil Campaign - Lois McMaster Bujold

So -- there's one book that Ms. Bujold wrote expressly as her version of fan fiction  -- or something to that effect.  It's called A Civil Campaign  and it's one of the most goofball / screwball comedy books in the Vorkosigan series, and at the same time, one of the most poignant books about how Miles really has fallen in love with someone, but doesn't know how to go about dealing with the whole concept.  Love is not something that Miles can control. And Miles is a control freak.  The dinner party sequence in this book is un-fricking - believable!

One of the things I find fascinating about this book is the way it reads as both SF and romance at the same time.  And it does both extremely well, without condescension to either the romance or the SF portions.

(As an aside, a note about readership -- female readers of Fantasy / SF also happen, in large numbers, to be readers of romantic / historical fiction.  Some people find this dichotomy to be rather odd and publishers tend to ignore that it exists, but I've seen it over and over through the years and find it awe inspiring that women can use both sides of their brain in their choice of reading. Ok, done with the spouting.)

While the book can be read as a stand alone novel, it's better if you've had some background in the Miles Vorkosigan Universe to understand just how the personalities interact. 


And now, I have to get back to doing real work. 

Data Entry calls. 

Sigh.