The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers *****

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is Science Fiction with alien biology and cultures, scientific creativity, and imagination, but without the dystopia. Captain Ashby is the Captain of the Wayfarer (a spaceship that builds hyperspace tunnels). Ashby’s crew is about diversity, inter-species love, and cooperation. Readers are divided between those who want good to battle evil in a dystopian future and those who are happy with interstellar romance. I’m in the latter group and I enjoy the strange couples like the tech in love with the ship’s AI and the navigator in love with the virus that is threatening his life. A kinder science fiction.

Couples:

The Human captain Ashby has a secret love with Pei, the Aeluon captain of another ship.

Jenks, the Human computer tech, who is in love with Lovelace (aka Lovey), the Wayfarer’s AI.

Sianat Ohan is paired with a virus that enables him to comprehend the tunneling and is killing him.

Human Rosemary falls in love with reptilian Aandrisk Sissix, who is the pilot.

The author makes the case that everyone is the same.

“We are all made from chromosomes and DNA, which are made from a select handful of key elements. We all require a steady intake of water and oxygen to survive (though in varying quantities). We all need food. We all buckle under atmospheres too thick or gravitational fields too strong. We all die in freezing cold or burning heat. We all die, period.”

Also the defense of body modifications (gender-affirming care?).

“Now, modders, modders don’t care about anything as much as individual freedom. They say that nobody can define you but you. So when Bear gave himself a new arm, he didn’t do it because he didn’t like the body he was born in, but because he felt that a new arm fit him better. Tweaking your body, it’s all about trying to make your physical-self fit with who you are inside.”

Great depictions of engineers.

“So, you can fix it?” Oxlen said. “Oh, yeah,” Kizzy said. She looked Oxlen in the eye and placed her hand over her heart. “Believe me when I say that there’s nothing I’d rather do than fix this thing.”

“Thanks. I’ve got a fuck-ton of wrenches in here.” “We’ve got wrenches.” “Yeah, but these are my wrenches.”

Science fiction with plenty to say about equality and equity.

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