Tag: Becky Chambers

by Becky Chambers

ISBN 978-0-06-269922-0

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this title from the publisher as part of the Harper Voyager Super Reader program.

“She thought of the Asteria, orbiting endlessly with its siblings around an alien sun, around and around and around. Holding steady. Searching no more. How long would it stay like that?”

Long ago, the Fleet left behind the dying Earth, tearing down cities to build generation ships that headed for the stars in search of new worlds. The Exodans also left behind the systems and values that destroyed their home world, creating a new culture of sharing, equality, and responsible resource use aboard the homesteaders, a culture that would enable them to survive together in the generations it would take to reach their destination. Now, the Fleet orbits an alien sun, and many of its sons and daughters have left the ships behind for lives on new planets, among the Harmagians, or the Aandrisk, or other peoples of the Galactic Commons that have welcomed Humans into their cultures to varying degrees. But many still live aboard the ancient homesteaders, still repairing and reusing everything, and living in a communal culture of values that were designed to serve a temporary purpose, but have instead become a way of life. But what will become of the Exodan culture now that the Fleet has served its purpose?

The third volume of Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series is set aboard the Fleet, home of the Exodan culture from which the Wayfarer’s Captain Ashby hailed. The main events of this installment take place in the aftermath of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, which would make them roughly concurrent with A Closed and Common Orbit. Likewise, it follows a new cast of characters.

Record of a Spaceborn Few is composed of many disconnected points-of-view belonging to various people who live aboard the Asteria, one of the many ships of the Fleet. Isabel is the head archivist, responsible for keeping records, conducting ceremonies, and maintaining the memory and purpose of the Fleet. Kip is a teenager struggling to find his purpose, going from one job-trial to another as Exodan culture demands, but really dreaming of leaving the Fleet to see the galaxy. Sawyer is a stranger who grew up on a Harmagian world, but is finally fulfilling the dream of seeing the Fleet from whence his ancestors hailed. Tessa is Ashby’s sister, the child who stayed behind when her brother left for the stars. Now she has children of her own, including a daughter who has been traumatized by the explosion of another Fleet ship four years earlier. Eyas is a caretaker, responsible for the Exodan death rites, and returning the people the Asteria to the soil which grows their food, completing the life cycle. But her highly respected ceremonial role leaves her feeling lonely and disconnected. The final perspective belongs to Ghuh’loloan, a Harmagian scholar who is visiting her colleague Isabel aboard the Asteria to study Exodan culture. Her point-of-view is indirect, coming in the form of blog posts she is making about her trip for the Reskit Institute of Interstellar Migration.

One of my favourite things about the Wayfarers series is the world and culture building, and seeing how all of the different alien cultures interact with another. So it was cool to finally see the Fleet where the Exodans come from, and think about how it developed over time, changing from its original purpose of sustaining Humans to the stars, to an independent culture of its own. However, I felt disconnected from the characters, possibly because they have very little relationship to one another. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet also had a large cast, but I came to care about them all partly through their relationships to one another. By contrast, the characters in Record of a Spaceborn Few are only passingly connected. Kip completes a job-trial with Tessa as his supervisor. Eyas and Sawyer have a fleeting conversation in a public corridor. For the most part, they do not know one another. Yet these indirect relationships are undoubtedly significant. Ghuh’loloan and Tessa never meet or interact, but Ghuh’loloan’s mere presence aboard the Asteria ends up changing the course of Tessa’s life. Sawyer knows no one when he arrives on the Fleet, but he too will impact the lives of everyone aboard. This is the nature of a introducing something new into a closed, interdependent system. The narrative follows this ripple effect.

Despite this perhaps being my least favourite of the Wayfarers books, I am still sad to leave this universe behind, and I look forward to Becky Chambers potentially returning to it in the future. I’d love to see more of the Aandrisk culture, or the conflict between the Exodans of the Fleet and the Solan humans who remained on Mars. So many possibilities still remain!

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by Becky Chambers

ISBN 978-0-062569424

“As Jane headed back home, she decided something, and she knew it better than she’d ever known anything. She would die someday—no getting around that. But nobody would find her bones in the scrapyard. She wasn’t going to leave them there.”

The new installation of the AI known as Lovelace has left the Wayfarer and her crew behind to mourn, and joined Pepper and Blue on Port Coriol to build a new life for herself. Away from the Wayfarer, she is free of the expectations and grief of her old installation’s friends, and she can begin to adjust to life in a body kit, rather than a ship. But the code that governs her comes with some protocols that threaten to expose the truth about her origins. She cannot lie, she cannot alter her own code, and she must respond to direct commands. While she and Pepper search for a solution, she must carefully hide her true nature, while also learning how to live in a body, without constant access to the Linkings, or the ability to see from multiple cameras at all times. Throughout it all, she has to wonder, is it really worth having a body? Or would she be better off back in a ship, as her designers intended?

After really enjoying The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, I was both excited and hesitant to read this follow up. I became surprisingly invested in the romance between Jenks and Lovey, and their plan to get Lovey a body kit, so I wasn’t sure how I felt about following a character who was Lovelace, but was decidedly not Lovey. Lovey is dead, and this new AI has no relationship to the crew of the Wayfarer, and finds herself in a body that she agreed to inhabit, but did not choose for herself, so that she can leave the Wayfarer and its crew to grieve in peace. However, I found that once Lovelace chooses a new name for herself, and becomes Sidra, I was able to settle into the story of her life on Port Coriol, and her new friendships with Pepper and Blue. That said, Becky Chambers still managed to punch me in the gut a few times by having Sidra write, and then delete, several emails to Jenks.

In contrast to the multiple shifting perspectives of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit is told from two alternating perspectives, in two timelines. The main events pick up right after the end of the previous book in Sidra’s point-of-view. The alternate chapters take place in the past, and are told from the perspective of Jane 23, a young girl who escapes from a life of factory slave labour sorting scrap and trash on a world inhabited by a group of humans known as the Enhanced. Out in the junkyard, where the Mothers cannot follow, she takes refuge aboard an abandoned, derelict ship, which is still semi-functional thanks to its solar panels. With help from the ship’s AI, Owl, Jane begins to make plans to escape the only world she has ever known. Through these two points of view, Chambers creates two different but complementary narratives about how a human might come to regard an artificial intelligence as a person deserving of the same rights they themselves enjoy.

Indeed, one of the striking things about the Wayfarer books is how Chambers really succeeds in creating emotional investment in AIs as characters. I was devastated by Lovey’s fate in The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, and this in turn gave me complicated feels about Sidra going into book two. However, in this volume, I become most invested in Owl, the AI who raises Jane, slowly teaching her everything the Mothers deliberately keep from their charges, and helping her develop the skills she will need to repair the ship and escape the planet. After what happened to Lovey in the first book, I desperately needed for Owl to be okay. In as much as I enjoy a good, dark, gritty science fiction, fantasy, or dystopia, this series has really reminded me how much I also enjoy hopeful speculative fiction, which doesn’t deny the darkness in the universe, but dares to imagine a bright future anyway.

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by Becky Chambers

ISBN 978-0-06-244413-4

“Living in space was anything but quiet. Grounders never expected that. For anyone who had grown up planetside, it took some time to get used to the clicks and hums of a ship, the ever-present ambience that came with living inside a piece of machinery… Silence belonged to the vacuum outside.”

When Rosemary Harper abandons her privileged life on Mars for a new identity, and takes a job as a clerk aboard the Wayfarer, her only expectation is to get away from the past. Aboard the ship is a motley inter-species crew that makes their living by building wormholes for interstellar travel, and Rosemary has been brought aboard to keep their permits and paperwork in order, so they don’t lose their license. Their latest job begins when a new species is welcomed into the Galactic Commons, which will necessitate building new tunnels to facilitate travel and trade. But the Toremi Ka are only one clan of a warring, nomadic species, Hedra Ka is their newly claimed territory, and the Wayfarer and her crew may be flying into a war zone.

The plot setup led me to believe that the main thrust story would involve the crew getting into trouble at Hedra Ka, where Galactic politics would enter into the equation, and the desire for the resources to be mined in Toremi territory would lead to problems for the Wayfarer. However, much of the story actually takes place aboard the Wayfarer on the journey out to Hedra Ka. They must travel there the long way, since there are no existing wormholes to speed their trip. From there they will punch a tunnel to a marker that will be placed at the other end by another crew. There is plenty of science working beneath the premises Chambers puts forth, but her story is character-driven, and technology is decidedly not the focus. Rather it is the development of the relationships among the crew on this journey that take center stage.

The long journey means that the book is heavy on world-building and character development. Chambers dedicates much of her energy to fleshing out the various species that can be found aboard the Wayfarer, and beyond. The captain, Ashby, is a fellow human, but while Rosemary grew up on Mars, Ashby is an Exodan, raised aboard a multi-generational space ship that fled the dying Earth. His lover, Pei, does not live on the Wayfarer, and because she is an Aeluon, their relationship must be kept secret. Pacifist, tolerant Ashby is a sharp contrast to the algaeist, Corbin, who provides the ship’s fuel, but not much else. The techs, Kizzy and Jenks, are also human, but have their own unique histories as well. Jenks is in love with Lovey, the AI who monitors the ship, and returns his affection. The pilot, Sissix, is an Aandrisk, a free-loving reptilian species, but when they punch a new wormhole, she is guided by Ohan, a Sianat Pair. Their species is infected by a virus that enables them to perceive space-time differently. They are all fed and cared for by Dr. Chef, who hails from a dying species that fought itself to the edge of extinction. I am a sucker for a found family narrative, and The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is great exemplar of a sci-fi take on this trope.

Chambers frequently changes point-of-view between the various characters, who all have their own unique perspective on things. Humanity is not the default, and many key insights and perspectives come from the non-human characters. However, these frequent changes weren’t always well delineated in my Kindle edition, and I often had to backtrack when I realized there had been a jump. Nevertheless, I enjoyed getting to hear from all of the different characters, and seeing the various situations that arose through each unique cultural lens. I really appreciated the attention Chambers put into the inter-species relationships, and the accommodation of differences. If you’d asked me in advance if I could ship a romance between a human and an AI, I probably would not have been into it, but she easily managed to get me on Jenks and Lovey’s side. One benefit of having put off delving into this series for so long is that I can immediately go read the other books in this series, although the follow-ups focus on different characters. But I am excited to get more of this universe, and the unique sensibility Chambers has developed for it.

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