As the Secretary General of the United Nations, an organisation of one hundred and forty seven member states who represent almost all of the human inhabitants of the planet Earth, I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship – to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope that we take this step.
Former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, 1977, as recorded on the Voyager Golden Record, Epigraph of To Be Taught If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
Table of Contents
Preamble
After I finished the Monk and Robot duology last week, the only remaining Becky Chambers novel/novella I had left was this one so when I saw this on sale on the Kobo ebook store I picked it up and read it.
I have taken a liking to reading novellas lately as it provides a nice change of pace from longer novels and it means I can avoid the dreaded reading slump that I can feel hovering around the edges of my mind these days.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
This book is short and sweet and so I’ll keep my review similarly short as well. This book is a meditation on the nature of long term space travel and exploration. What that means for the humans doing the travel and for the people back home. The book also captures that sense of wonder and joy that comes from discovering new forms and configurations of life that are very different from the ones found on Earth.
I really enjoyed the space exploration aspects of this book, the characters finding new forms of life on every planet. Some of it reminded me of playing the video game No Man’s Sky where one could discover some truly weird new forms of life on the planets in the game. I also loved the descriptions of the planets the scientists explored, each one was unique and I could visualize what they looked like in my head.
As far as characters are concerned, there isn’t much character development here outside of the main character Ariadne from whose perspective the story is told. That is one of the downsides of being a novella, there isn’t enough time for the story to explore its primary themes and also do the kind of character development necessary to really flesh out the characters. The book does attempt to humanize our scientists but ultimately there isn’t enough here to write home about (heh, this pun makes sense if you’ve read the book).
Conclusions
It is bittersweet that this will be the last review of a Becky Chambers book I’ll write until whenever she releases another book. Of all the Becky Chambers books I’ve read, I think I enjoyed this one the least which is to say – I still enjoyed it but not as much as the other ones. There are no bad Becky Chambers books.
I am still on the lookout for more humane and/or reflective speculative fiction. Recently I was reminded of the works of Ursula K. LeGuin, I haven’t read any of her books and I think I should at some point soon. I was thinking of starting with The Left Hand of Darkness.
That’s all from me this time around. See y’all next time.
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