To Be Taught If Fortunate
Aug. 24th, 2019 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI *love* the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, which actually won the Best Series at the 2019 Hugo Awards recently - yay!
So, I was very excited to find out that Becky Chambers was publishing a novella in early August. It's called To Be Taught If Fortunate (a reference to a speech by the UN Secretary about space travel in 1977) and it's about a group of astronauts who are travelling many light years from Earth to study other planets that might harbour life.
What I love about the Wayfarers series is that, even though it's set in space or far-flung planets, with multiple alien races and lots of interplanetary politics, it's really about people, emotions and interpersonal relationships.
To Be Taught If Fortunate was disappointing in that respect because it felt very remote. It was an interesting story and had a lot of great detail about space travel and visiting other planets that was practical and realistic, and that I hadn't come across in other sci-fi. However, in a 135-page book, it felt like there was way too much mundane and technical detail, and not nearly enough character, emotion or actually plot.
I wasn't exactly bored reading it, and I had no trouble finishing it (though if it had been 350 pages that might not have been true), but I wasn't engaged in the way I would expect from Becky Chambers. And I also wasn't keen on the ending. The main characters lose contact with Earth and then get some information that suggests Earth has suffered some kind of apocalypse, and the whole book turns out to be a report sent back by the protagonist to whoever might still be around to read it.
At the end, they have a choice between heading back to Earth and going on (beyond the remit of their original mission) to explore additional planets. Rather than making a decision, they decide to go into stasis until someone from Earth contacts them to tell them what to do (thus triggering the ship computer to wake them up). Whilst I appreciate their desire within the context of the story not to go beyond their instructions, the situation based on the information they have is that they are very unlikely to get any response. Which means they'll just die when their tech breaks down. Which sucks, and feels like a very cop-out and anti-climactic ending. And also weird and passive.
So, while the writing was good and the setup was interesting, not an awful lot actually happened, I wasn't drawn into the emotions of the characters, and the end was disappointing... Hey ho.
So, I was very excited to find out that Becky Chambers was publishing a novella in early August. It's called To Be Taught If Fortunate (a reference to a speech by the UN Secretary about space travel in 1977) and it's about a group of astronauts who are travelling many light years from Earth to study other planets that might harbour life.
What I love about the Wayfarers series is that, even though it's set in space or far-flung planets, with multiple alien races and lots of interplanetary politics, it's really about people, emotions and interpersonal relationships.
To Be Taught If Fortunate was disappointing in that respect because it felt very remote. It was an interesting story and had a lot of great detail about space travel and visiting other planets that was practical and realistic, and that I hadn't come across in other sci-fi. However, in a 135-page book, it felt like there was way too much mundane and technical detail, and not nearly enough character, emotion or actually plot.
I wasn't exactly bored reading it, and I had no trouble finishing it (though if it had been 350 pages that might not have been true), but I wasn't engaged in the way I would expect from Becky Chambers. And I also wasn't keen on the ending. The main characters lose contact with Earth and then get some information that suggests Earth has suffered some kind of apocalypse, and the whole book turns out to be a report sent back by the protagonist to whoever might still be around to read it.
At the end, they have a choice between heading back to Earth and going on (beyond the remit of their original mission) to explore additional planets. Rather than making a decision, they decide to go into stasis until someone from Earth contacts them to tell them what to do (thus triggering the ship computer to wake them up). Whilst I appreciate their desire within the context of the story not to go beyond their instructions, the situation based on the information they have is that they are very unlikely to get any response. Which means they'll just die when their tech breaks down. Which sucks, and feels like a very cop-out and anti-climactic ending. And also weird and passive.
So, while the writing was good and the setup was interesting, not an awful lot actually happened, I wasn't drawn into the emotions of the characters, and the end was disappointing... Hey ho.
