{"id":48,"date":"2016-02-21T00:27:37","date_gmt":"2016-02-21T06:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/?p=48"},"modified":"2016-02-21T14:28:55","modified_gmt":"2016-02-21T20:28:55","slug":"backing-up-a-little","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/2016\/02\/21\/backing-up-a-little\/","title":{"rendered":"Backing Up a Little"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cold Welcome<\/em> is not the first book in the Vatta Universe, so the new book has under it the foundation built by Vatta’s War.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>Yet it needs to be understandable to new readers without their having to buy the first five books.\u00a0 This is not meant to discourage anyone from buying the first five books if they want to (and there’s plenty of time to read them all before Cold Welcome comes out.\u00a0 Just sayin’.)\u00a0\u00a0 But walking the knife-edge between confusing new readers with carry-over from the first five for which they have no reference, and annoying Vatta fans by explaining everything that might confuse a new reader…is tricky.<\/p>\n

So tonight, as something is holding up the printer’s acquisition and installation of updated software (and it can’t be turned off or canceled, the directions said) here’s some background on the Vatta family.\u00a0 Not quite equivalent, I hope, to the introduction to the Bobbsey family that appeared in the first chapter of every Bobbsey Twins book I read as a six year old and quickly came to loathe.\u00a0 But it’s only once, and you can skip it without having the story interrupted.<\/p>\n

The Vatta family settled on Slotter Key well after the planet had been colonized.\u00a0 They arrived on a stolen space ship stuffed full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins by the dozens…and money.\u00a0 No one asked where it had come from, which made their arrival less stressful.\u00a0 They owned their own spaceship (supposedly); they had money; they had skills; the planet wasn’t crowded at all–and thus they were more or less welcome.\u00a0 The Founders looked down their noses (as Founders usually will) but plenty of other immigrants had arrived by then, most with less wealth than the Vattas.<\/p>\n

On Old Earth, our Earth, their ancestors had been merchants all along the Silk Road, plus some marrying in later.\u00a0 But predominantly, think Turkey to eastern India.\u00a0\u00a0 Those arriving on Slotter Key were intelligent, hardworking, skillful traders, and intent on growing their investment.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Other families of similar but not identical background were also on Slotter Key, natural allies and competitors both.<\/p>\n

By the time of the first Vatta book, Trading in Danger<\/em>, the Vatta business was headed by two brothers, Stavros and Gerard.\u00a0\u00a0 The business by this time was a very large corporation; the family ran a fleet of cargo vessels hauling freight to many planets and independent space stations as well as on-planet transport (air, land, and sea) on Slotter Key\u00a0 (Vatta Transport Ltd), owned farms\u00a0 producing agricultural products for both local sale and export offworld, operated many other kinds of business as opportunity and profit suggested.\u00a0\u00a0 Branch businesses were managed by a Vatta family member, with the result that there were Vattas on many worlds besides Slotter Key.<\/p>\n

In other words, the central part of the Vatta family was rich and successful–and thus envied, and even in some place hated.\u00a0 Ky Vatta, the central character of Vatta’s War, is the daughter of Gerard (former CFO) and Stella Vatta, her cousin, is the daughter of Stavros (former CEO), her light coloring explained by her mother’s family (many of them were lighter and some were blond.) \u00a0 Or so everyone but Stella’s adoptive parents thought: she is actually the natural daughter of one of the clan’s most despised black sheep, Osman, who was kicked out of the clan, stole a Vatta ship, and proceeded to live out his nasty desires, including siring many many children on captive women.\u00a0 The family, once aware of this, tried to find the children and bring them into the family, but they found mostly girls.\u00a0\u00a0 Stella’s birth-mother’s name is not known, nor is her location or fate.<\/p>\n

So Ky.\u00a0 Ky at the start of the first book was about 22, within months of graduating with honors from Slotter Key’s military academy, first in her family to seek a military profession.\u00a0 But she made a mistake, bad judgment, that caused a political ruckus, and was forced to resign.\u00a0 Ky is relatively short, dark-skinned and dark-haired like her parents, compact, athletic, highly intelligent, with a natural talent for military science.\u00a0\u00a0 Her family thinks of\u00a0 her as one of the “smart ones” but worries that she has a soft spot for people in trouble, a rescue complex…the mistake she made at the Academy confirms their suspicion.\u00a0\u00a0 Otherwise she’s shown herself to have good judgment; she’s expected to do well.\u00a0 So the family reaction to her disgrace is to give her command of an small, old ship with an experienced crew, which she’s to take on its last trading route and then sell for scrap.\u00a0\u00a0 They expect her to have an easy trip, maybe make a small profit, and then come back in a year or two, when the media attention on her has died down.<\/p>\n

Then comes a sector wide attack on Vatta–destroying Ky’s home (and her family), Vatta’s headquarters on Slotter Key along with her uncle and many more, and blowing up Vatta ships both in open space and when docked at space stations.\u00a0 Simultaneously there’s an attack on the vast communications network run by InterStellar Communications, or ISC.\u00a0\u00a0 For the first time Ky is alone, without recourse to her family and its influence and money (Vatta accounts are frozen pending claims for damages, etc.)\u00a0 Yet Ky is determined to resurrect Vatta and–as she sees more and more damage–convince others to join her in defending against what she sees as a dangerous enemy.\u00a0 Stella is more focused on restoring Vatta’s fortunes; Ky is certain that’s not enough.<\/p>\n

By the end of Victory Conditions<\/em>, the fifth book, Ky has defeated a fleet larger than the one she cobbled together, and the sociopath who started the attacks is dead.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Not without damage and loss, certainly.\u00a0\u00a0 She and Stella are getting along much better, with a few bumps still in the road.<\/p>\n

Other notable Vattas in Vatta’s War:\u00a0 Helen Stamarkos Vatta, Stella’s legal mother, who has been caretaker CEO for Vatta interests on Slotter Key.\u00a0 She is the guardian of her twin grandchildren (their mother, Helen and Stavros’ oldest child, was killed in the attack.)\u00a0\u00a0 Grace Lane Vatta, much older, who has a checkered past (barely hinted at in Vatta’s War<\/em>) but who has spy skills\u00a0 and worked undercover for Vatta in that capacity.\u00a0 She also makes interesting fruitcakes, a way of transporting valuables secretly.\u00a0 Toby Vatta, a young cousin (4th cousin, probably) , the only survivor when the Vatta ship he was on was blown up in dock; he was then 14; rescued from police custody by Stella, he spends several years with her and contributes to her revival of Vatta’s business in a distant system (Cascadia, or more properly, the Moscoe Confederation.)<\/p>\n

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Cold Welcome is not the first book in the Vatta Universe, so the new book has under it the foundation built by Vatta’s War.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet it needs to be understandable to new readers without their having to buy the first five books.\u00a0 This is not meant to discourage anyone from buying the first five books Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[20,21],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background","category-vatta","tag-characters","tag-vatta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}