The Vor Game

The Vor Game is a science fiction novel by the American writer Lois McMaster Bujold, first published in 1990. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1991, belongs to the Vorkosigan Saga, and was later collected in the omnibus Young Miles.

Miles Vorkosigan is small, physically fragile and unsuited to the military career his rank would normally bring him, and he has spent his life compensating for it. He graduates from the Academy and is told he is being sent to a remote training base as its weather officer, a placement designed to show whether he can handle routine and discipline before he is given anything more interesting.

On Kyril Island he is drawn into a dispute with the base commander, whose orders he judges to be criminal, and his refusal to carry them out ends with his arrest on a charge that amounts to treason. He is brought back to the capital and shut away by Imperial Security, whose chief concludes that Miles behaved correctly and that his career in the Imperial Service is nonetheless over before it has properly begun.