Weatherman

Author's Note

“Weatherman”, a Miles Vorkosigan novella, first saw print in the February 1990 issue of Analog Science Fiction Magazine.

It went on from that appearance, the following year, to garner a nomination for the Hugo Award in the novella category, but I withdrew it from the list of final nominees in favor of my novel The Vor Game (first printing September 1990 from Baen Books), from which it was an out-take. Prolific authors may in a fortunate year have different works up for award nominations in several categories; it seemed to me to be double-dipping, however, to have what was in large measure the same work up in two different categories. I was later glad for that coin-toss, because The Vor Game won my first Hugo Award for Best Novel, at ChiCon V, the 1991 Chicago World Science Fiction Convention.

The Vor Game was not a simple extension of the novella; the story of how Miles returned to the Dendarii Mercenaries, whom he’d left so precipitously at the end of The Warrior’s Apprentice, was conceived in one piece, and I only saw as the work progressed how the Kyril Island setting and its underlying themes made the opening section so neatly detachable as a stand-alone tale. Happily, the Analog editor agreed. The Vor Game, as well as the work to which it is a sequel, The Warrior’s Apprentice, are as of this writing still in print from Baen Books in the form of the omnibus volume Young Miles. An e-edition of the omnibus is available from Webscriptions at www.baen.com

This e-edition has been newly edited by the author, to tidy up some minor grammatical issues.