Book Review: To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

To Be Taught, If Fortunate
by Becky Chambers (ebook)

To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a science fiction novella by Becky Chambers, who is best known for her Wayfarers series beginning with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

To Be Taught [etc.] takes place in a much closer future than the Wayfarers series, when humanity has just begun to send expeditions to other stars that are likely to support life. The story is in the form of a mission report from one astronaut on a team of four who are in this first wave of interstellar explorers. Ariadne O’Neill, the crew’s engineer, chronicles what they discover on four planned landing spots in the same system.

This story leans heavily toward the hard science fiction side of the spectrum, as opposed to space fantasy. As with any hard science fiction involving interstellar travel, something beyond current capabilities is needed. In this case, it’s a state of medical hibernation combined with an engine that accelerates their ship to a significant fraction of the speed of light for a decade or two. Thanks to special relativity, it’s a formula that adds up to never seeing the people they love on Earth again, and knowing Earth society will have changed significantly when they come back. During hibernation, their bodies are also “somaformed” to produce moderate enhancements like additional muscle mass for a higher gravity planet. Taken together, this is a reflective narrative about loss, and change, and the joy of encountering new worlds. These themes are echoed large with regard to Earth and small as Ariadne wrestles with personal identity.

If you like the immediate newness and strangeness of brave explorers first touching down on a planet, this is a book for you. But it’s more than that. Chambers writes from a personal and family connection to science as a slow community project. The interstellar missions are not being carried out by a government, but by a global support network of people who wanted to make space exploration by humans happen again, without regard to profits or nationalistic pride. Our four astronaut-scientists don’t just take pictures for a few days and leave. They spend years on these worlds, developing study methods and carrying them out meticulously.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate is also a deeply queer book. These four astronauts have been training together for years before their mission to the stars. They come off, overall, like a communal partnership. Fans of Chambers’ Wayfarers series will see something of Aandrisk culture in them. In this small crew there is–at least–bisexual rep, trans masculine rep, and asexual representation.

Recommended to fans of exploration science fiction, literary fiction, and queer fiction of any genre.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, Blindsight by Peter Watts, or Dawn by Octavia Butler.]

[ official To Be Taught, If Fortunate page on the official Becky Chambers web site ]

Recommended by Garren H.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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