To Be Taught, If Fortunate audiobook

One of my newest favorite books.Becky Chambers has a way with words that makes every book she writes feel like home. I was sucked into this story from the first sentence ( If you read nothing else we've sent home, please at least read this. Eum yes?!).I've never read such a wholesome character driven sci-fi and I can't recommend this enough.A must read!

WOW, this reminded me so much of why I love sci-fi and why I need to make it a priority to read more of it. Becky Chambers has such a knack for writing heartbreakingly human, character driven stories. I loved this a whole heck of a lot.

‘Have you ever been in a place where history becomes tangible? Where you stand motionless, feeling time and importance press around you, press into you?’Space, the final frontier. Since humans have first looked up in wonder at the cosmos we have always dreamed of knowing what awaits us there. As a kid I was a massive space nerd, I mean I was the kid with the planets on their bedroom ceiling surrounded by glow-in-the-dark stars and read countless books about space that often went way over my head and loved all the novels and films about space exploration (still a huge Star Wars fan). In 5th grade we had to turn in an original short story each semester and I opted to heavily research how a Mars mission would work and used each assignment as another chapter of my little kid hard-sci-fi story about me and my friends going to Mars. So needless to say, Becky Chamber’s Hugo nominated To Be Taught, If Fortunate, a novella that centers on the earnest scientific awe and discovery of scientists exploring exoplanets, is very much my jam. While technically a prequel (by thousands of years) to Chamber’s much-lauded Wayfarers series which has been dubbed ‘cozy sci fi’, this novella can also be enjoyed as a stand-alone. And what an enjoyable ride it is. Eschewing the standard space adventuring heroics of most sci-fi, Chamber’s story puts all the action in the joy of discovery and scientists doing scientist things while trying to not upset the ecosystems of the marvelous destinations on their trip. Chamber’s balances philosophical inquiry with an awe-inspiring story in a comfortably quiet book of the how and why for space exploration because ‘we’re scientists. We live and breathe why.’ While a slim novella, To Be Taught, If Fortunate has a vast cosmos of thought swirling through it, examining the purpose of exploration and how to remain pure in both intentions and execution, and delivering the reader the jaw-dropping magic of boldly going where no one has gone before.‘We believe the potential answers are worth the challenges.’Chambers effortlessly taps into the wonderment of space travel in a way that makes this just as gripping a story as the epic space operas despite mostly being scientists gathering observations and basking in the bliss of chronicling cutting-edge cosmic discoveries. I mean, this makes scientists quietly examining samples and running diagnostics into a thrill-ride. Like, when you are a kid and first learn about cool science stuff—Chambers has written a book for adults that launch us straight into the galaxies of childhood astonishment. Framed as a final transmission to Earth from the narrator with a question she’d like us all to ponder, the story follows this team of four across four exoplanets as they ponder the great existential questions of existing in such a vast universe full of life beyond our own. Not that this is bland, and while admittedly it seemed slow at first, this became impossible to put down and has plenty of friction and tension created without needing character’s with trauma or difficult personalities or even a high-stakes plot with threatening elements or villains. It’s just a celebration of the human quest for knowledge and it signs out in proud harmonies that echo from star to star.‘if you understand that space exploration is best when it’s done in the name of the people, then the people are the ones who have to make it happen.’I really enjoyed the discourse on how space exploration should be ethically conducted, which is a theme that pulses through the entire book. If we are to explore, we must ask ourselves why, must look at our methods and goals to ask who will it serve, and wonder what will be done with what we learn. Are we doing this for the sake of exploration and knowledge or is it tainted by ulterior motives that spoil the statement that “we came in peace for all mankind” as the US astronauts said on the moon missions we forever wonder how much flexing technological might at Russia was the motive behind such robust government funding. This is all asked lightyears away, wondering what people still think back on Earth.‘What we want you to ask yourselves is this: what is space, to you? Is it a playground? A quarry? A flagpole? A classroom? A temple? Who do you believe should go, and for what purpose? Or should we go at all? Is the realm above the clouds immaterial to you, so long as satellites send messages and rocks don’t fall? Is human spaceflight a fool’s errand, a rich man’s fantasy, an unacceptable waste of life and metal? Are our methods grotesque to you, our ethics untenable? Are our hopes outdated? When I tell you of our life out here, do you cheer for us, or do you scoff?’ Chambers never shirks the issues of capitalism and demonstrates how a profit motive will always poison the pot. The narrative examines previous attempts at launching into the cosmos and how ‘they found that dream inextricably, cripplingly anchored to the very founts of nationalistic myopia and materialistic greed that said dream was antithetical to.’ Funding by government leads to nationalism, funding by corporations leads to slapdash plans where cost cutting is valued over all else and built by the lowest bidder who’s shady business practices haven’t been a news scandal yet. So an international coalition of people who want to do science for the sake of science funds this expedition, but with over forty years of space travel separating the astronauts from the planet, what will change in priorities, funding, government and more when they need Earth to retrieve them home?‘When the world you know is out of reach, nothing is more welcome than a measurable reminder that it still exists.’Perhaps some of the most endearing moments of the book are the ways the astronauts engage with memories of a planet light years behind them. There are discussions on what they miss and often find it is the feelings and experiences around things more than the actual things themselves, such as when one astronaut states ‘I don’t miss drinking [coffee]. I miss it being around.’ In space they are forming a sort of found-family to stave off the loneliness being separated from the ones they left behind. But they also left behind a world that is constantly in flux and must acknowledge ‘how much a world can change within the bookends of a lifetime.’ I enjoyed the way they begin to reject the daily news updates which was ‘an odd mix of unpredictable changes that follow tragically predictable patterns. War, elections, lines drawn in the sand. The perpetual ebb and flow of some countries reaching out while others walled themselves in. A constant parade of societal drama, powerful within its own sphere, yet impotent when pitted against the colossal rhythms of the planet itself.’It is interesting to see how they decide to reject the daily play-by-play of politics (it doesn’t help that its a 40 year trip home so none of that will be relevant when they return anyways) but it is also a message to us, the reader, that the sports-castification of politics is about drawing us in for clicks and views for the sake of power, profits, and visibility. The story takes a twist when the transmissions cease (leading to the human diaspora which will lead to the Wayfarers series) and the book takes an interesting vantage point on the collapse of society from a planet not even visible across the void of space.‘Because sometimes we go, and we try, and we suffer, and despite it all, we learn nothing. Sometimes we are left with more questions than when we started. Sometimes we do harm, despite our best efforts. We are human. We are fragile’In this novella that probes what it means to be human against the infinite backdrop of space, Chambers grounds the story through a lot of explanation of the science behind the inner workings of the voyage. It never bogs down the story with unnecessary description and, honestly, I never care much how something works, mostly instead what it means philosophically and emotionally in context which is another element Chambers elegantly balances. I enjoy the idea that the freezing process for travel can only delay time and the scene about them having aged two years during the travel is delivered through their emotional responses and the narrator’s interior reactions to their own reflection. It really works and latches the readers emotions to the ideas. This is another way the story centers the idea of science but in a way that focuses primarily on the ethical implications. There is an extreme care to not upset the planet’s ecosystem or interfere. This is balanced with the fact that ‘at some point, you have to accept the fact that any movement creates waves, and the only other option is to lie still and learn nothing,’ so they take great care to ethically approach this boundary. I really love this element of the book, the idea that communities thrive together and that science should be done for the sake of knowledge without any ulterior motive. No profit, no search for something that can be a weapon, no colonization, only knowledge for the benefit of all. The question is, will anyone else care about knowledge only for the sake of knowledge and this is how Chambers makes us look at our own lives, our own times and ask if our efforts are gifting or grifting.‘We have found nothing you can sell. We have found nothing you can put to practical use. We have found no worlds that could be easily or ethically settled, were that end desired. We have satisfied nothing but curiosity, gained nothing but knowledge.To me, these are the noblest goals.’This is a short but sweet novella that hits so many high notes and is just a warm, comforting place to be. I love the efforts towards championing science over conquest and examining why this is as well as looking at the existential questions an explorer headed towards the unknown reaches of space might ponder. Chambers has a knack for folding into philosophical inquiry while keeping the pace moving forward. This is an inspiring story, one to uplift the curious minds and question our place in the greater cosmos, and one I definitely recommend to you.See you, Space Cowboy.4.5/5‘Where we go from there is up to you.’

The moment Mrin realized that she did not enjoy FANTASY her go-to genre BUT ended up liking this book...This was me after reading this bookNO, I WON'T LET YOU GUYS KNOW THE PLOT OF THE BOOK!!!!I forbid you all to look at the blurb!!!!Just go into it blindlyThis book was so atmospheric and fascinating !!!Also, you DON'T have to be a science student to enjoy thisthough you will enjoy it more if you are (Which is what happened to me🤗)The various terms the author used were something I was familiar with BUT she did an AMAZING job of explaining it!!It felt like I went with the crew on an adventure!!It also seemed like a mixture between The MARTIAN and INTERSTELLARThis book was unlike ANY OTHER book I have read!!The story itself was uniqueMrin to the author:Thanks to my friend Rue for bringing this under my radar😊🥰SORING CEREMONY!!!🤗Chikondi: HufflepuffElena: SlytherinJack: GryffindorAriadne: RavenclawSpecial mention to the fuffy animal (I still mourn its loss)I had named it fluffyI thought it looked like this😥😭RIP Fluffy😭😣~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Reading this because my friends were raving about this ...So even though we have different taste in books...I have decided to give this book a try*shrugs*What can I say?? Its peer pressure

THE MARTIAN meets INTERSTELLAR, this is high-concept speculative fic at its finest. Rendered with startling clarity, Chambers' latest offering is a short but fierce ode to humanity and all our reaches and flaws. Unputdownable.

Guys, if you haven't read any of Becky Chambers' uplifting solar punk (see her Hugo-award wining Wayfarers trilogy), then To Be Taught, If Fortunate is the perfect place to start. Stuffed into less than 200 pages, it is a compelling, intelligent, and deeply humanistic science-fiction yarn that is representative of what Chambers does best. The story is told as a letter being sent back to Earth from Adriane, pilot of a OCA spaceship meant to categorize and study exoplanets. These four pilots travel the stars, alter their physiology, and do massive scientific investigations of local flora and fauna. The story's structure is roughly chopped into four planets that the team explores throughout their journey, with decades spent in suspended animation in the interim. Chambers has a real knack for pulling the hope out of hopeless-seeming situations. The crew of Merian modify their bodies to be able to absorb the harsh radiation of the stars, manage 2G gravity, and prevent the blood in their veins from freezing. This human ability to adapt and evolve is a constant in Chambers' work, but is most prominent here. Even though the wacky science transformations are cool, it is just as satisfying to travel with Adriane, Elena, Chikondi, and Jack through their personal hardships. Their unbridled excitement for scientific discovery is heartening and captures both the mundane reality of benchwork with the exhilaration of uncovering something heretofore unknown.Overall, this is a super solid sci-fi. It is interesting, well constructed, and has that uniquely positive spin that makes Chambers' work so satisfying. This tends more toward hard sci-fi than Wayfarers' more fantastical alien civilization, but also touches on real-world struggles of today (climate change is a frequent talking point). Again, if you haven't given Chambers' solarpunk a try, To Be Taught, If Fortunate provides the perfect entry point.

This is a book difficult to review. Not in its parts, I mean, it has a plot, and an interesting one, and the characters are profound and very well written. Interaction between them is credible, the same as the dialogues. Chambers is a naturally gifted storyteller, and it shows. There's not much action, though, and that can make the reading a little boring. Where's then the difficulty? The thing is, this book, as is often the case with Chambers, has a heart. A spark of something unexplainable, a soul that is the soul of Humanity. A specular quality that forces the reader to look into himself and question what he finds there. Everyone that reads this book will find out something about themselves. And they may not like it, but it will be true. And Becky Chambers always writes true.

I’ll say right off the bat that I’m not a science fiction reader, and initially I struggled to get into this. There’s not much in the way of a traditional ‘story’ beyond following four explorers as they leave Earth to investigate specific planets. These planets are varied, some teeming with life, some none. All have differing environments too, and the book explores how we humans can ‘change’ to adapt to that environment - which was interesting, as well as the moral dilemma of interfering with life for our own gain. There was certainly a lot of moral thinking here. It’s a quiet novella, with a small amount of mystery and internal struggles. It’s about life, familial love, science and space. It’s a very different kind of read for me, and while I couldn’t get into this at first, when the mystery element kicked in I was intrigued. Intrigued enough to give Becky Chambers’ other books a go.

“It is difficult to give thought to the stars when the ground is swallowing you up.” ★★★★.5representation: queer characters, asexual rep, trans rep, polyamorous relationship, characters of colour (Mexican and Zambian). [trigger warnings are listed at the bottom of this review and may contain spoilers]A lovely, quiet novella that is quite thought-provoking and packs quite a punch. Becky Chambers is a master at writing heartbreakingly human stories that just happen to be set in space. “I know how much a world can change within the bookends of a lifetime.” trigger warnings: animal death, suicide attempt.

I kind of did a double take when I read in the brief author bio at the end of this novella that Becky Chambers has a … wife. Nothing wrong with that in our enlightened age, but it is quite ironic in the light of the main criticism of her Wayfarers’ series as being too conventional, hopeful, optimistic, and too caught up in the minutiae of her characters’ (often very complex and sex-packed) lives.Well, this criticism goes out the window with this short novella, which packs more gung-ho action into its slim length than the entire Wayfarers’ sequence to date. It is about a starship crew and the series of earth-like exoplanets they visit in a whistlestop tour of the universe as part of a crowd-funded space quest (one of the many thoughtful ideas in this wonderful tale; another is that a sapling is planted for every explorer that heads out to the stars, helping reforest our home world).Chambers comments in the Acknowledgements that while she is no scientist, she more than makes up for this with her enthusiasm for the genre, and its potential to enlighten our current zeitgeist, and to perhaps make meaningful pointers to a more sustainable future. Of course, it also helps having an astrobiologist as a mother.What I loved about this novella is that it is so full of the sheer joy and wonder of scientific research, which often consists of mundane and rote work in hazardous conditions. It takes a certain mindset to be so enquiring and persistent, and Chambers captures the mentality, and the mundanity, in a manner that is totally enthralling and mesmerising.One quibble: she never pays as much attention to the propulsion system of her starship. We just get the sense that it zips around contentedly (at sub-lightspeed, of course. This is not Star Trek). I also would have thought the OCA would have at least considered the contingency that the Merian loses contact with Earth, or that Earth stops communicating in turn, indicating some terminal catastrophe.What the four scientists – as the representatives of humanity in space, as it were – ultimately choose as their final statement took me quite by surprise. I don’t think I agree with it fully; but Chambers puts a lot of thought into her rationale. It does make for a sober and heartfelt ending.The different worlds visited by the Merian are depicted beautifully and in considerable detail, given that this is such a short book (which actually feels longer, as there is so much packed into its pages). First contact is one of those genre tropes that seems to have been done to death. Despite the fact that there is really nothing new here, Chambers brings an energy to her storytelling, and a commitment to her world-building, that is invigorating and uplifting.

Becky Chambers does it again with To Be Taught, If Fortunate. A beautifully written, incredibly quick read full of wonder, exploration, and discovery within and without. This novella is centred around four astronauts on a mission to a far away system of planets and moons orbiting a red dwarf star. Sent on a several decade long mission to discover new life, learn all they can, and return home to share it with the world - even if their families won’t be around to see it. Our main cast of characters are incredibly diverse and well fleshed out, and honestly just an absolute joy to meet. There is representation of queerness, asexuality, and polyamory, as well as transgender representation and racial diversity. I would encourage you to seek out own voices reviews to determine the quality of the representation, but I will say it felt quite natural and non-exploitative. Chambers is incredibly talented when it comes to creating three dimensional characters with rich relationships, and she is equally adept at the creation of alien species. I will never tire of the detailed descriptions of alien life in this novella that had me stopping and searching for pencil and paper to sketch them and marvel right along with the characters. This novella left me with a lingering feeling of awe and the pure joy of scientific discovery. As a Star Trek fan, this novella scratched an itch for wholesome science heavy sci fi with a side of moral quandary to my utter satisfaction. We read this book as our final 2020 selection for my PBB Patreon Book Club and it incited a few hours of in depth and absolutely fascinating discussion! I would highly recommend this novella to any sci-fi lover. It has certainly become a new favourite of mine!“Viewed in this way, you can never again see a tree as a single entity, despite its visual dominance. It towers. It’s impressive. But in the end, it’s a fragile endeavour that can only stand thanks to the contributions of many. We celebrate the tree that stretches to the sky, but it is the ground we should ultimately thank.”Trigger Warnings: suicidal ideationWatch me rave about how much I loved this in my December Wrap Up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEUKd...You can find me on...Youtube | Instagram | Twitter

This was just such a lovely novella about everything. I'd be laying if I said it didn't leave me wanting more, but isn't that what a good book is supposed to do?