Book review: “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” by Becky Chambers
A mellow and wholesome feel-good odyssey through the galaxy
Today I’m reviewing the multiple award winning “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” by Becky Chambers. It’s feminist space opera, and for Chambers that means that there’s no ingenious technical solutions, no exploration of the impact of future technology in society, instead the focus lies on the characters’ relationships to each other and the culture and norms of the aliens.
The story is about the crew of the Wayfarer, a ship constructing hyperspace tunnels for other ships to use as galactic highways, like an interstellar road roller. The central premise is that the crew of the Wayfarer have been awarded a lucrative contract if they can travel all the way to a planet close to the centre of the galaxy and build a tunnel from there, connecting it with the rest of federation space. The planet is populated by a tribe from a warlike and xenophobic species. A tribe which has just been incorporated into the galactic federation for dubious reasons. So most of the book consist of a very long odyssey through the galaxy, where the crew makes pit stops along the way and gets swept up by random events such as space pirates and interstellar war.
The dramaturgic curve is a complete mess. The episodic pit stops at various planets and rendezvouses with various ships gives no real sense of a red thread throughout the story and they go on for most of the book. The story suffers badly from lack of a proper antagonist.
The crew’s staunch refusal to use any violence apparently grants them an almost complete lack of agency. The protagonists rarely take the initiative, this is a crew which things happen too, not a crew which takes on great challenges and grows through a heroic journey. It’s as if having an agenda, making plans and striving towards a goal is a patriarchal sin in Chamber’s book. The crew is like a leaf, aimlessly twisted and buffeted by the winds of a storm. This doesn’t have to be the case, Notker, in “How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It”, never uses any direct violence and Dr Brooklyn Jens in “Machine” is fairly non-violent too, but they both still make things happen. Those characters take the fight to their respective worlds (See my earlier reviews on this blog).
The saving grace of Chamber’s novel is that the characters are fairly well developed and that there’s a wide diversity of original aliens. It’s clear the author put some thought into the culture of their respective species. This novel is very Woke so almost everyone has some sexual deviancy or non-typical pronoun. It probably passes the Bechdel test. You’ve got Ohan, the navigator, member of a species whose faith compels them to infect themselves with a neurovirus which allows them to navigate hyperspace but also kills them when they turn 30 (It also turns them from a he or she into a they), an interesting suicide cult. You’ve got Sissix, the pilot, belonging a species of cuddly orgy-reptiles who don’t care about their own babies, probably my favourite species of the novel. The love story between Jenks and the ship-AI and Jenk’s quest to find an android body for that AI is a thinly veiled allegory for trans rights issues but it’s pretty cute. I found Kizzy, the mechanic, annoying with her childishness. We’ve all worked with a surly Corbin but I have no idea why you’d want to read about one.
To be frank, I’d hate it if this style of sci-fi became the dominant one and I don’t think the book deserves its awards but neither do I think that science fiction is zero sum game. The genre is big enough for a wide variety of styles. This isn’t mine. “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet” gets 6.5 of 10 cuddle-reptiles. There’s way better feminist sci-fi out there. I recommend “Machine” by Elizabeth Bear if you want something near-utopian with a rich variety of original aliens, “The Stars are legion” by Kameron Hurley if you want something gory and brutal, or “The Dispossessed” by Ursula K. Le Guin if you’re interested in radical politics, though comrade Ursula can be a bit of a sleeping pill at times.
