So after a decade and a half of obsessing over the Honorverse, I got into the Vorkosigan books, and given their similarities (both space operas, first published just a few years apart, same publisher, both continuing to the present day), I can't help comparing them, particularly their politics.
And it's interesting bc I used to describe the Honorverse to friends as "a conservative man writing a progressive future". Female MC with complete gender and racial equality as the ideal, but queer people are hardly mentioned. Military service is the Highest Calling and battles are shown in minute detail. Diplomatic solutions almost never work out. Abortion is legal, sex work is legal, "unconventional" family arrangements are legal, etc. but so is duelling in multiple legal traditions. One woman gives a speech about how important women's work is but it never impacts the plot in any way. Democracy is usually a problem whereas the use of strong monarch powers is a good thing. Lots of soapboxing about the evils of socialism/ communism, people 2000 years in the future inexplicably love the American Founding Fathers. The female MC has a kid and it's a minor b-plot that doesn't impact her career in any way and no one even suggests it should.
Meanwhile, I kinda feel like the Vorkosigan books are the inverse? A liberal woman writing a conservative universe. Like, we have disabled, queer, trans, and otherly-gendered people existing on a sexist planet. There are still ethnic divides. The male MC tells a friend he can't do anything to help her with sexism bc he depends on it. One hero is an entrepreneur but capitalism corrupts the voting system and the justice system in multiple books and the Planet of No Laws and Regulations is hell. Women's power is overlooked but it shapes the entire empire. The battle scenes are barely shown and war crimes and PTSD are ever-present no matter which side you're on. Diplomacy saves the day on multiple occasions. Punitive vs restorative justice. Duelling is illegal and leads to disasters. And the overarching theme of the entire series is family and social continuity, traditionally a big preoccupation of conservatives: how do we continue the family, how do we continue our society, how do we balance tradition and the need for change as we move into the future? The whole thing to date starts and ends with the deutero-Main Character, a woman, giving up a career to have kids.
And of course both series began in the late 80s/ early 90s with all the baggage that entails and slowly evolved as their authors' thinking did. Just an absolutely fascinating juxtaposition. I am sticking them in a blender and making myself a smoothie.
