2023/069: To Be Taught, If Fortunate — Becky Chambers

2023/069: To Be Taught, If Fortunate — Becky Chambers

It’s understandable why humans stopped living in space in the 2020s. How can you think of the stars when the seas are spilling over? How can you spare thought for alien ecosystems when your cities are too hot to inhabit? How can you trade fuel and metal and ideas when the lines on every map are in flux? [loc. 234]

A science fiction novella set early in the next century, when citizen-funded space exploration has replaced the national space agencies of our own time. This is exploration for its own sake, without the desire to profit or colonise. The narrator is Ariadne O'Neill, one of four crew members on the Lawki 6. Their mission is to investigate a solar system containing four habitable worlds: to enable this, they make use of a technique called somaforming, which temporarily alters the human body, conferring 'that little bit extra we need to survive on different worlds'.( Read more... )