Review of "To Be Taught, If Fortunate" By Becky Chambers
(Contains Spoilers)
Part Star Trek and part Expedition by Wayne Barlowe, To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers delivers on the mix of charming characters and wondrous space exploration that I first discovered in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Despite some similarities, the approach taken by Chambers in To Be Taught… is a more grounded science-based one than the fantastical Long Way…. To Be Taught has no chases, no shootouts, and no intelligent alien species that the characters interact with. Most all of the drama happens “off-screen” in messages from Earth, and the eventual lack thereof. What remains of Long Way, then, is the endearing relationships between the crew members, their nonchalant queerness, and their willingness to work together to overcome the many challenges of space travel in search of the ultimate goal: discovering new life in the universe and the knowledge it brings.
I found the novella format suited this story well, where I felt Long Way fell a bit short for me was toward the end of the book, where the crew and reader alike have to stop playing around and get on with the plot. I did enjoy it but in the end it left me wanting more from the crew of the Wayfarer and their journeys. To Be Taught sidesteps all that with a simpler format, they are on a mission to explore this single star system then head home. Each planet provides a new scene and a new challenge for the characters to interact with each other, and their mission carries them swiftly from one to the next before the story begins to overstay it’s welcome. For all the exploration and fantastical alien creatures, the part that sticks with me most is Ariadne’s interrogation of her own feelings. We see the entire story through her eyes, as she recounts her experiences of the mission to the reader. We get the highs of discovering new alien species, the lows of being trapped on the ship for four months in a raging storm and things get tense between the crew, and along with her we discover the things that are important to her. Having a home, having a family she can rely on, having peace and quiet. Even though they are in such wild and exotic environments, the things she craves most are the simple human pleasures. When they left Earth they knew they would have no homes or families to return to, but when they learn Earth has been devastated by an unknown disaster, with no way to contact anyone, the Lawki 6 crew have only each other as their family, only their ship as their home.
“Metamorphosis” is another main theme of the book, both physically as their bodies are changed to adapt to the different celestial bodies they are traveling to, and emotionally as the experiences they have there change their personalities and relationships in permanent ways. I don’t think it’s a coincidence then that there is a character, Jack, who is transgender (or at least implied to be with a reference to his “second puberty” and a need for testosterone supplied via the patches that make the other changes to their bodies). The experience of watching your body change in your adult years in ways that are both exciting and disappointing, both rapid and slow is one that I think is one that is central to the transgender experience, and Chambers nails it here. I want to just take a minute to really praise Chambers for how natural she is able to make queer characters feel in her books, the way she writes it just makes sense, like there’s nothing out of the ordinary at all. It’s beautiful and relatable in a way that I just don’t get that often in any media. The metamorphosis in To Be Taught is emotional as well, toward the end of the book Ariadne reflects on how the journey and getting older have changed her and her perspective on life and what matters to her. That is more broadly relatable as well, most of us will never travel to space but we will have our perspectives and opinions shift as we get older. We will find things mattering to us in the present that we had eschewed in the past.
All in all To Be Taught, If Fortunate does a great job at making me want to travel the galaxy in search of new life, and that is what I love most about science fiction. I remember as a child reading the pulpiest space operas I could get my hands on and dreaming of those far away places. Dashing rogues smuggling cargo between systems, wars enveloping entire planets, beings who live for thousands of years. This book is not that, exactly. It is maybe a more mature version of that, one that I can appreciate now that I’m a little older and I have a little more perspective on what matters to me. It still hits the same chord, while at the same time taking that step back and recognizing that none of us is the person we used to be, and I appreciated spending the time to go on this little journey to the far reaches of space. To Be Taught, If Fortunate gets a strong recommendation from me. Plus it’s short anyway. Read it!