A Closed and Common Orbit

 

By Becky Chambers

This is a continuation of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.

The story has two main characters, Pepper aka Jane and Lovelace aka Lovey aka Sidra. Pepper is the owner of a small shop that does repairs of tech equipment. Sidra is an artificial intelligence who used to maintain a starship. But it was reset and removed from the starship and placed in an artificial human-appearing body by Pepper.

In this story we learn about Pepper's childhood. Known as Jane 23, she was a child worker in a factory that refurbished used parts. The factory is run by robots referred by the child workers as Mothers. It's a harsh and strict life and children who don't measure up are simply eliminated. Jane escapes one night only to find herself in a huge junkyard, the source of the tech that she and the other kids worked on. Knowing that going back to the factory will mean her death, Jane wanders until she is guided to safety by a disembodied voice. The voice turns out to be the AI of a grounded spaceship. The AI, named Owl, has been stranded alone in the ship for a long time after its crew was arrested for trespassing. Owl is thrilled to have someone to interact with. It gets Jane into the ship and together they work over the years to make the ship useable again to escape the hostile inhabitants of the junkyard planet. 

Some ten years later is when Pepper (Jane 23) takes on the responsibility of helping the AI that was known as Lovelace adapt to no longer being the AI of a spaceship but instead was inhabiting a "human" body, a situation it was never meant to be in. It has a lot to learn and some programming from its past life to deal with.

The AIs in the story are sentient and the story is a look at the idea that a sentient machine is a person that has thoughts and feelings. I didn't find Lovelace/Sidra's story all that interesting. It was OK but not much happens.

The Pepper/Jane 23 story is much more interesting. Beyond their training, the children in the factory are not taught anything except obedience. So once she is free of the factory, Jane is facing a dangerous world without the common knowledge that most would take for granted. For instance, she didn't know there was an outside of the factory. She had never seen the sun, or trees, or animals and she is ignorant of how dangerous some animals can be. So Jane and Owl work together to keep Jane alive and safe and get the ship repaired by scavenging parts from the huge junkyard the ship is stuck in.

The Guardian has a review of the novel.

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet

 

By Becky Chambers

Book One of the Wayfarers series.

Rosemary Harper is a young woman in trouble. Running away from a notorious past that she did not create, she has spent all her considerable fortune on a new identity and an escape from her home planet of Mars. 

In her new identity, she has been hired as a clerical assistant to the captain, Ashby Santoso, of a private spaceship. She will be in charge of scheduling some stops and overseeing ordering of supplies and helping the captain organize his files and set up an archive of the captain's records.

The spaceship, named Wayfarer, is a private enterprise for hire. Captain Ashby and his crew build "tunnels" through space that are short cuts to manage the vast distances of space travel, basically stabilized "wormholes." It's a small crew, only nine members, including the captain and the built-in Artificial Intelligence that helps run the ship. Mostly composed of humans, three of the crew are not human, including the pilot, the navigator and the medical person/chef. And the AI, of course.

Of this mixed company, all are pretty much decent people with the exception of the navigator and the human in charge of the tanks that produce the algae-based fuel that helps power the ship. The navigator keeps to itself and the human is just unpleasant. Another source of power, for more the power-intensive chore to tunnel building, is ambi which a type of raw energy produced by black holes or other high energy phenomenon. 

Captain Ashby's operation is small time, compared to the huge tunnel manufacturing ships that take on the bigger projects. But a friend gives Ashby some inside info that enables him to be the first in line for a much more ambitious and lucrative project located near a planet held by the Toremi Ka, recent members of the Galactic Commons (GC). The Toremi are known to be rather blood-thirsty and their being admitted to the GC is likely based on the huge source of ambi near the planet held by the Toremi Ka. A questionable decision, certainly, given that the GC usually require that member species have reached a high level of technology and social advancement. While the Toremi are technologically advanced, their willingness to kill each other seems to indicate their lack of social advancement. But in the Toremi's case, the GC's greed has overruled common sense. And Captain Asbhy's crew and ship will be the ones to pay the price for that greed, unbeknownst to them, as they set out on a lucrative new job that will hopefully allow them to expand the capabilities of their tunnel-boring operation.

The book is mainly about the crew, how they get along with each other and work together to benefit of them all. Basically a crew of really decent and skilled persons, with very little conflict, although there are a few problems as can only be expected of people who live together for long periods of time in restricted conditions. 

The small angry planet of the title is Toremi Ka. My copy of the book was about 400 pages long and they only arrive at Toremi Ka after page 332. So the majority of the story is about the trip and the people onboard the Wayfarer and their interactions and the problems encountered on the trip. 

The story continues in the second book of the series, A Close and Common Orbit. I have put it on my wishlist because this was a pretty good story and I want to know more about the adventures of the crew of the Wayfarer.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

 

By Becky Chambers

Sibling Dex is a monk at Meadow Den Monastery. Dex is feeling a bit discontented and decides they (throughout the story, Dex is never referred to as he or she, only as they) want to be a tea monk. Tea monks are monks who travel around making tea. They brew the tea they feel their clients need and listen to their problems and give the client feedback. Sometimes it is just sympathy, sometimes it is gentle advice, sometimes it is just a quiet moment in which to relax and enjoy their tea. Tea monks hitch a camper to a bike-like vehicle and peddle along to the next destination on their route. They are very popular with the communities they visit.

Back before Dex's time, the people on this world were just like us, with their factories and their technology. Part of the technology was intelligent, humanoid robots. Who suddenly one day became self-aware and who walked away from their robot jobs and into the wilderness. This event caused the people to rethink their way of life and they shut down most of the factories and put aside much of the land to let it return to wilderness. And they tried their best live their lives in the most sustainable way possible and with the fewest negative impacts on their world.

So Dex learns to be a very skillful and valued tea monk. People enjoy his teas and they appreciate his care of them. But Dex is not satisfied. The same feelings that caused him to leave the monastery now push him to leave his tea route and venture off into the wilderness, ostensibly to search for an abandoned monastery, Hart's Brow Hermitage. But soon after setting forth on his search, a robot wanders into his camp and kind of attaches itself to Dex. So together Dex and his new companion, the robot Mosscap, will travel through the wilderness, searching for Hart's Brow and getting to know each other and possibly becoming fast friends.

The first part of this story was the best part, with Dex setting forth to become a tea monk and learning his craft. But after Dex is joined by Mosscap it became a lot more philosophical. And I'm not the least bit interested in philosophy. 

Here's a review by Publishers Weekly.