'Discovering' Your Book

 

“For me, writing is more a process of ‘discovering’ the book than planning it.” –

Lois McMaster Bujold

In 1947, science fiction writer Robert Heinlein coined the term “speculative fiction” in an editorial essay about writing science fiction and fantasy.  Many authors were quick to adopt it as a way to tell about the characters and ideas that they were creating from the other worlds in their imaginations.

But few authors, other than Heinlein of course, have been as successful in speculative fiction development as McMaster Bujold (born on this date in 1949) who even eclipsed the great Heinlein in both her use of speculative fiction and her awards and honors for those uses.

One of the most acclaimed writers in her field, she has won Science Fiction’s Hugo Award for best novel four times.  Her novel Paladin of Souls and her novella The Mountains of Mourning both “doubled,” winning both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. And, in the fantasy genre, her Curse of Chalion won the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for best novel.

A longtime resident of Ohio, she now makes her home

 in Minnesota where she

  continues to work on what she 

playfully calls “escapist literature.”

“Escapist literature gets a bad rap,” she said.  “But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.”