"Wayfarers" (starting with "A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet") by Becky Chambers (series; 2014-2021)

**It's a big, big galaxy out there.  It's hard to find your place in it.  Becky Chambers is here with a message of hope**

This series is truly wonderful.  And I'm not saying anything radical here, this series has gotten its laurels and deserves every one of them.  But it's worth writing about, because it really is just a hand of friendship extended out into the darkness

I'm tagging this as "Series (concluded)" although there's no reason why it should be.  The four books are only loosely connected to each other, occasionally a character from one books shows up in a later one (or sometimes is only mentioned, and the author trusts the perceptive reader knows who is being talked about:  "‘Which homesteader are you from?’ ‘I’m from the Ratri.’ Pei smiled blue. She knew the name. ‘I have a friend from the Asteria.’ ‘Our waterball team is better.’ ‘He’d fight you on that.’ ‘Yeah, well, he’d lose, just like his team does under pressure.’").  Becky Chambers, if you're reading this, if you ever wanted to write another book in this universe, I don't think any of us would stop you . . .

These books are classic space opera, set out in the farthest reaches of space and filled with fantastic and awesome (in the literal senses of those words) alien life.  Book 1 is basically Firefly, a ragtag spaceship crew.  Book 2 takes place on a single station, and is a coming-of-age story for a very unique character.  Book 3 takes places on a fleet of generation ships traveling without destination, and has a large number of viewpoint characters so we can see how the whole society works.  Book 4 is basically a bottle episode, a group of strangers thrown together.  All classic setups, if somewhat random in their collection

But what's in many ways most remarkable about these books is what they aren't

They aren't adventure stories, massive grand sweeping epics with badass space battles.  They aren't a big adventure, a rugged band of heroes seeking a discovery that will change the whole galaxy.  They aren't a saga of a vast and powerful empire and the plucky rebels fighting against it.  Hell, most of the books in the series barely even have an antagonist, and if they do they probably only appear onscreen once or twice.  There's barely any violence, very few action scenes

It's Firefly, without the Reavers or Alliance Government.  It's the cantina scene in Star Wars, without the fight at the end.  It's Star Trek, but only the quiet and peaceful episodes:

‘Sidra, this is Issek, one of the finest bartenders on this rock.’ 

 

‘One of?’ Issek said, flicking his tongue. ‘Who else?’ 

 

Blue grinned teasingly. ‘Pere’tek at the Sand House pours f-faster than you.’ 

 

Issek rolled his eyes. ‘He’s got tentacles. That’s hardly fair.’

In writing these books, Chambers chose to focus on a much smaller conflict, but in many ways a more important one--in some ways, the most important conflict any of us have to deal with:  How do we put together a life in which we are happy?  That's it.  These are the stories of people (human and otherwise) spread across a vast and lonesome galaxy, just trying to make it work.  And these stories are beautiful

Chambers takes a joy in creating alien societies in a way that I haven't seen since Le Guin.  She comes up with the biology of a species, and then plays the scifi author game of "ok, so then how would they . . ." to construct their societies.  She has filed an entire galaxy with people and planets that feel incredibly real, and that in and of itself is a pretty stupendous achievement

And yet, she doesn't stop there.  Because while there are plenty of characters in these books who are happy with their part in their world, the vast majority are the ones who want something different.  Of the half-dozen main characters per book times four books, there are only a handful of characters who aren't misfits.  Often, by the way, with amusing results:  In Book 3, a young man leaves his dirt-bound life on a planet for the stars, the comradery and culture of an shipbound society; there, he meets plenty of people who are tired of the confines of their ships and dream of one day emigrating to a planet

If there's one theme across this entire series, it's about how people who don't fit in find ways to make a life, regardless.  And yes, just like in the real world, sometimes that means you put together a new family to support you in a way the society you were born into doesn't.  Time and time again, the characters in these books reassure each other that their feelings are valid, that they're ok.  It's an incredibly important message, delivered to people who need to hear it (and does "people who need to hear it" include you, dear reader?)

. . . there’s no reason not to.’ Speaker looked at her for a moment.  

 

‘Of course there is,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to.’  

 

‘That’s not a reason. That’s a feeling. Feelings have to have reason.’  

 

‘Since when?’

All that said, there's one more thing this series isn't:  It isn't a rosy and perfect future utopia, in which simply finding a group of friends is the hardest part.  Far from it. And while very few guns ever get fired onscreen, so many of the characters have tragic or violent backstories.  Even her galactic society, peaceful though it may be, is certainly not perfect:

‘The more I think about these things, the less I understand why they are the way they are.’ 

 

‘It’s very easy to understand,’ Pepper said. She stretched out her legs, crossing one ankle over the other. ‘It’s the same thing the Enhanced did to us factory kids. It’s the same thing the Harmagians did to the Akaraks, or the Felasens, or any of the other species they mowed over. And you guys, you guys invented AIs in the first place. Sentient code didn’t exist before you wrote it down.’ She shrugged. ‘Life is terrifying. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we’re doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it. If you believe you have control, then you believe that you’re at the top. And if you’re at the top, then people who aren’t like you . . . well, they’ve got to be somewhere lower, right? Every species does this. Does it again and again and again. Doesn’t matter if they do it to themselves, or another species, or someone they created.’ She jutted her chin toward Tak. ‘You studied history. You know this. Everybody’s history is one long slog of all the horrible shit we’ve done to each other.’ 

 

‘It’s not all that,’ Tak said. ‘A lot of it, yes. But there’s good things, too. There’s art and cities and science. All the things we’ve discovered. All the things we’ve learned and made better.’ 

 

‘All the things made better for some people. Nobody has ever figured out how to make things better for everybody.’

Chambers isn't interested in pretending that everything is ok.  She's interested in all the ways people can manage to be all right, even when things aren't:

The memories reached out to Dr. Chef, trying to pull him away from his safe observation point. They tugged, begging for him to give in. But he would not. He was not a prisoner of those memories. He was their warden.

That's what this series is about.  How we can find a way

I loved this series most, perhaps, because it holds two truths to be unshakeable in any era or circumstance:

* Things are always going to be hard.  No matter what changes, that won't, it will always be hard to find a place where you fit in and feel loved and accepted.  There will always be days when you feel alone and lost and unsure and alone

* There are always going to be people to help, there is always going to be a place where things are a little bit easier.  You have to work hard to find it or maybe to make it, but it's out there somewhere

I loved this book

Roveg had never been happier to see a pair of Laru offering dessert. He was too drunk for this. Whatever it was Ouloo had given Pei, it had melted his brain, and he had neither head nor heart for a conversation of this sort. He did not want the galaxy to be a mess, but he didn’t want to talk about it, either. He had problems enough without arguing over ones that he could not solve. The only solution he wanted was one for his own mess, and if he couldn’t have that, he wanted to forget about it for a while. And since that was apparently out of the question as well, then if nothing else, he wanted some of that cake.