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bibliogrammaLois McMaster Bujold’s novella The Flowers of Vashnoi focuses on Ekaterin Vorkosigan. The Vorkosigan holdings include a large area, still dangerously contaminated with radiation from the Cetagundan invasion, when the city of Vashnoi was destroyed by nuclear weapons, killing hundreds of thousands. Though the size of the contaminated region has shrunk a little over the many years since the bombing, most of what was once a major metropolis is still radioactive at a level dangerous to human health.
Miles Vorkosigan is determined to find a way to clean the soil and make Vashnoi livable again. Ekaterin has joined firces with another scientist to breed insects that are not only resistant to radioactivity, but are capable of eating soil, plants, and other organic matter, extracting the dangerous isotopes, and depositing them in concentrated packets that can be collected and dealt with as radioactive waste, leaving behind clean matter that can serve as fertiliser.
But when Ekayerin and her team start on-site trials, strange events interfere with the testing protocols. Half of the ‘radbugs’ disappear, and further investigation reveals that a small group of humans have been living - and dying - inside the contaminated area. Mostly children born ‘different’ and abandoned in the unsafe zone - since the war, Barrayar’s people have had both a higher than average rate of children born with genetic defects, and a culture that rejects imperfect children - generations have been nurtured, protected, and buried by a bitter woman who chose exile in the ruin of Vashnoi over execution for and her own unborn child.
Ekaterin’s dreams of creating a garden where Vashnoi once stood entwine with her hope to save the last of the inhabitants of Vashnoi’s ruins in this latest installment in the Vorgosigan story that explores the roles of both technology and human tenacity in the struggle for survival and rebirth.
Miles Vorkosigan is determined to find a way to clean the soil and make Vashnoi livable again. Ekaterin has joined firces with another scientist to breed insects that are not only resistant to radioactivity, but are capable of eating soil, plants, and other organic matter, extracting the dangerous isotopes, and depositing them in concentrated packets that can be collected and dealt with as radioactive waste, leaving behind clean matter that can serve as fertiliser.
But when Ekayerin and her team start on-site trials, strange events interfere with the testing protocols. Half of the ‘radbugs’ disappear, and further investigation reveals that a small group of humans have been living - and dying - inside the contaminated area. Mostly children born ‘different’ and abandoned in the unsafe zone - since the war, Barrayar’s people have had both a higher than average rate of children born with genetic defects, and a culture that rejects imperfect children - generations have been nurtured, protected, and buried by a bitter woman who chose exile in the ruin of Vashnoi over execution for and her own unborn child.
Ekaterin’s dreams of creating a garden where Vashnoi once stood entwine with her hope to save the last of the inhabitants of Vashnoi’s ruins in this latest installment in the Vorgosigan story that explores the roles of both technology and human tenacity in the struggle for survival and rebirth.