bibliogramma: (Default)
I enjoyed Becky Chambers’ first two books, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit, even though, as some have noted, the novels are light on linear narrative and long on character development and interaction. I enjoyed watching the characters grow and interact - together. Each of these novels focused on a small group of people doing things together, an that was what made them work for me.

Unfortunately, Record of a Spaceborn Few, though like her other novels, almost entirely character driven, doesn’t do the same for me, and I think it’s because here, the characters are not, for the most part, in conversation (in the broadest sense of that phrase) with each other. They are all connected through their presence on one particular ship in the Exodan Fleet - the collection of ships that carried almost all of what remained of the human racd away from the ravaged planet they had once called home, in which they had lived and died, creating a culture of ecological self-sufficiency to replace the rapacious and unsustainable culture of humanity on Earth.

Though the human race is not part of the galactic community, it has been given a home planet, where some have settled, and is free to travel, work and live among all the planets and peoples in that community. However, many have remained in the Fleet, holding onto the culture and ship-based way of life that evolved out of the near-death of the Earth. Even though the Fleet no longer wanders, but remains in formation around their new sun.

But, now that humanity has options, and change is inevitable due to new contacts and new technologies, what effect will this ultimately have on the Fleet. Chambers examines that question through her characters, most of whom are natives of the Fleet, one of whom is a human whose grandmother left the Fleet to live planetside, but who is curious about the ways his ancestors developed before they bound themselves to a world again.

The novel thus consists of a number of independent stories, each one focused on a different individual, linked primarily by a commonality of place and circumstance, but not initially interacting with each other. And I think that’s why this novel has not worked for me as her earlier books did, though over the course of the novel I did become invested in the stories of some of the characters, and enjoyed reading about their lives and experiences. The consequences of alien influence on a massive convoy of human refugees isn’t quite a tightly enough focused story for me to open to all of the characters because of their role in the story.

However, when a significant event takes place about two-thirds of the way into the book, and all the characters begin to respond in at least some degree to that, it seems to pull the narrative together, tightening the focus and making the story more engaging, at least for my tastes. It’s safe to say that the book grew on me, rather than capturing me at once.

And in the long run, the examination of what keeps a society together, and what causes some to abandon it, when there are such options, was an interesting meditation, and raised some issues I’ll be thinking about for a while.
bibliogramma: (Default)

Becky Chambers' new novel, A Closed and Common Orbit, is set in the same universe and time period as her break-out first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, and shares some of its characters. The main protagonist is Lovelace, now called Sidra, the former AI of the tunnelling ship Wayfarer. In the previous novel, Lovelace decided to download herself into a humanoid artificial body, despite the legal penalty of termination of consciousness, and now, with the assistance of rogue tech Pepper, Lovelace is becoming Sidra.

As part of the acclimatisation process to her new human-shaped bodykit, Sidra has come to stay with Pepper and her partner/lover Blue, and to work as Pepper's shop assistant. As Pepper and Blue introduce Sidra to humaniform living, we feel every moment of Sidra's physical and psychological transition from ship-based AI to body-based consciousness - her discomfort, her feelings of sensory disorientation, her sense of being cut off from the information flow she lived in, her inability to control the sensory perceptions of a mobile body, all the details (as Chambers presents them) of how a ship-based AI perceives and how that maps onto the ways in which a body-based AI must learn to function.

A Closed and Common Orbit is not just the story of Sidra's adaptation to a humanoid body and a human way of being, however. Parallelling Sidra's present experiences as an AI becoming human, is Pepper's childhood as a child raised by AIs. Designated Jane 23, her ealiest memories are those of a cloned child labourer, living in a factory/workhouse under the supervision of robot taskmasters called Mothers, learning to process scrap technology. Jane knows only the Mothers and her fellow workers - her agemates, all named Jane, and those of the other cadres, each agegroup sharing one name, living regimented lives of work, exercise and sleep, never setting foot outside the rooms of the workhouse. When a freak explosion shows Jane the incomprehensible outside of ground and sky and endless piles of scrap tech waiting to be processed, her curiosity draws her out of the factory and into a desolate junkyard world of feral animals. She escapes thanks to Owl, the still-functional AI of a junked spaceship who takes her in and manages to teach her just enough about being a free human to survive off-world.

The concepts here - sentient AIs, artificial consciousness downloaded into bodies, ideas of personhood and family that don't distinguish between fleshed and coded beings - are nothing new in the world of science fiction. What delights is the interlinked stories of two women who don't fit in, don't belong, finding out who they are and making a place where both can be at home.

bibliogramma: (Default)

Becky Chambers' debut novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, is a delicious read. It focuses on the experiences of the multi-species crew of Wayfarer, a tunnelling ship specifically designed to create the equivalent of stable wormholes between planets that facilitate intergalactic travel. Captain Ashby Santoso and his crew are a motley bunch, the ship mostly held together by the eccentric brilliance of her two human techs, Kizzy and Jenks, and the ship's AI Lovey. The most indispensable crew member is their Navigator Ohan, a Sianat pair - one body, two entities, one a symbiotic infection that enables the Pair to perceive the otherspace they tunnel through. The actual flying of the ship is done by pilot Sissex, a cold-blooded but extremely affectionate Aandrisk. The ship's doctor, a six-legged Grum who answers to the name of Dr. Chef, doubles as the cook and gardener. Rounding out the crew is Corbin, another human, who is responsible for maintaining the production of the algae used to fuel the ship. Into this mix comes Rosemary, the ship's new clerk, whose ability to navigate the bureaucracies of multiple worlds will make the Wayfarer more likely to win and effectively complete higher-end contracts.

The first of these is a very valuable contract - requiring them to travel in normal space for a full year to the home planet of a species newly welcomed into the Galactic Commons, and then "punch" the tunnel back to GC space.

The story unfolds slowly, giving us time to enjoy discovering the depths and mysteries of the characters, and their cultures. It's in some ways a different kind of space story, one that's more about the people undertaking a tricky mission and how that affects their relationships over time than it is about action and adventure - although there's a fair bit of that, too.

I'm looking forward to more from Chambers - maybe even more tales of the good ship Wayfarer and her crew.

Profile

bibliogramma: (Default)
bibliogramma

May 2019

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930 31 

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 16th, 2025 02:56 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios