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For the holidays I’m reading something I’ve read before, and loving it even more [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2023-12-30
As one, or possibly two, people may have noticed, I was on vacation over the past week. I’d love to tell you I’ve spent that time nose-down in scientific journals digging out the latest on COVID-19, or in talks with Ukrainian soldiers collecting insight on events across the front (It seems obvious that Ukraine has decided to switch to a tit-for-tat strategy on Russian missile strikes. Which, as 70-years of “prisoner’s dilemma” simulations show, is the only viable long-term solution. Even so … I have no idea what happens next.)
I’d also love to say that I’ve devoted these precious free hours to finishing a novel now more than a year overdue. Believe me, there are a number of people who share that wish. But nope. Didn’t happen.
Other than opening presents, consuming unhealthy amounts of sugar, and becoming frustrated by a bird feeder/camera combo, there’s really one thing that has consumed most of my time in the last week, and that’s re-reading a set of science fiction novels that I’ve read several times before. Now, allow me to tell you why this was the best use of my time.
That series is the “Wayfarers” novels by Becky Chambers. These are not exactly small books, in that no one reading science fiction over the last decade is likely to have avoided hearing about them, and the first book in the series, “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet,” was a genuine hit. Someone will make a movie of this book. Count on it.
From the beginning the books have featured absolutely excellent characters, evocative writing, and deep examinations of relationships. You know that thing people are always saying about science fiction and its ability to take social issues out of their usual context and present them from a different angle that lends fresh perspective? That. Exactly that. A masterclass in that. Becky Chambers does that.
Plus her books are filled with ordinary people living ordinary lives and trying to be nice to each other. That some of these people have scales, or two-dozen legs, or are robots is very much a side issue.
But mostly I’m sitting here on my couch, tapping away on an iPad to tell you how much I like the final book in this series, “The Galaxy, and the Ground Within.” It is so good. So. Good.
The book concerns five aliens of four different species and cultures brought together at what is essentially a highway rest stop while waiting for an accident to be cleared. The only human in the entire book appears as a walk-on character late in the book.
if that sounds boring, it’s not. If it seems like it might be cold, it’s absolutely not. Chambers uses this setup as an invitation to present clashing cultures and viewpoints in a cascading series of dialogues that illuminate these characters in a fully-defined, multi-dimensional way that few works of “serious fiction” can match.
Take your best experience in being thrown together with someone a conference, or vacation, or summer camp and sharing thoughts you might never express to your closest friend. Multiple by ten.
The book also features deep discussions of issues that are incredibly difficult. Like, I wish I could send a copy of the audiobook to every U.S. politician good. I wish I could convince English teachers across America to cut both Ethan Frome and Madam Bovary from every curricula and substitute this book good. I wish I could air drop copies over Gaza and Israel good.
I wish I had the right to take the entirety of the last prolonged multi-character discussion from the book and gift it to everyone. But I don’t. So you’re going to have to find it yourself.
It will be worth it.
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