Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Most novels tell a story that's meant to hold together as a narrative. Not all of them. This one is several individual stories, none of them exciting heroes, nasty villains, or tragic victims. These are people more like most of us who read SF--we see tragedy, we watch the news, the general tone of society impacts us, and we try to get by in it.

But I read it anticipating that it would, at some point, turn into a story and it never did. That makes it harder to appreciate it for what it is, which is more of an ethnography, told both through an actual ethnographer (though called a reporter) and through personal stories of the people the ethnographer is writing about.

The Exodans escaped a collapsing ecosystem on Earth, and self-selected as basically an ideal communist society--everyone is guaranteed what they need to live, and everyone does what calls them. They share the work no one particularly wants (sanitation etc) as volunteers. Decisions are made collectively. Some critique this book for having an overly saccharine view of human nature, but this is a group selected for that trait. It's an examination of how that society is diversifying now that the pressure of staying alive in self-contained ships is off. They live among aliens, and among humans that chose other paths. It's bringing wealth and causing problems.

And as an exposition, it's all right, except for being not real. As a story, it's ultimately frustrating. I did finish it and wasn't sorry I did, and I even liked it a little for the view of how people *could* be if they cared for one another. I guess I'm not even surprised it got award nominations, since it is interestingly different and nested in a series where the other two books did. But it's not a space opera. Kind of the opposite.



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Blackfish City, by Sam Miller Jr.

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Overall I thought this was a pretty good story--lots of different speculative elements I enjoy. Qaanaaq (love the palindrome) is a really interesting take on climate change--some burst of technology and cooperation allowed for an anchored platform city of over a million people to grow near the arctic circle. It's very much an idea driven book, though toward the end the characters really start to grow and come through.

Like a lot of people I had trouble getting traction with the book. It's not exactly slow, it just didn't really grab me, and I found myself struggling to continue. About halfway through it came together. I really enjoyed Soc, the non-binary character, and the nanobonded woman Massaraq ended up it a tastily complex plot resolution.

I read in the question section that all of Miller's fiction is in a shared universe. That does make for a lot of rich possibility--he'll have a lot of material to draw from. I would definitely try him again.



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Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, by Kelly Robson

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'll say this, it's really different from A Human Stain. We go from a horror story to a corporate story. Our protagonist is a survivor of the collapse of civilization under the pressures of climate change and pollution, and subsequent plagues. Humans figured out how to live underground, and are just now re-emerging, so it's in a tough but hopeful universe. But highly corporatized--the progress is funded by very familiar looking banks, mostly state owned. Our protagonist, Minh, is a plague survivor project manager. I think that what some have complained of as unfamiliar language is corporate speak--we have work breakdown plans, dashboards, reviews, health and safety analysis as a plot driver, all very familiar to this veteran desk jockey. It really read kind of like a dramatic description of an oil company prospecting trip, except it was about ecology.

I really enjoyed the characters in the story. They are quite distinct, and bring out interesting parts of this future. I'm not as enamored of the plot--it makes sense but doesn't quite hang together, and the ending is kind of abrupt--it felt like a lot got tied together in a very few pages. Overall it was a fun book, and I felt a funny sort of nostalgia for old analysis and review grind reading it. Amusing.



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Martha Wells, Artificial Condition

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The second entry in this series is pretty much like the first one. I liked it OK, but I honestly don't see what the fuss is about, and why the first actually won awards. Murderbot is an angsty teenager, slightly more so in this book (tends more to colloquialisms, and is aware of beginning to think of itself as human). The whole novella is from this point of view. In this installment Murderbot gets a sidekick, ART (A******* Robot Transport), and we even get a "kill all humans" moment. So there's some potential for variation. The mystery has room to deepen, but it's on the shallow side right now. It's still a likeable book, I can see its appeal. But a likeable pulpy page-turner is different from work that operates on many levels, or asks for more than minimal attention from the reader, or anything like that. Whatevs.



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