The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
A review by tallangryplanet
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
5.0
We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship – to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate.
I fall in love more and more with every one of Becky's books I read. This one follows a group of astronauts as they explore the planets of the Zhenyi system, many light years away from Earth. Their mission is to explore, not colonize (I loved the focus on this aspect), so they adapt their bodies to the planets' natural conditions, and they try to do as little damage as possible to the environment of the places they explore.
It's a short but beautiful and impactful story, written for those of us who just want to know more, who ask questions not because it'll get anyone money or fame but because we have a hunger to get to know the universe we inhabit. It makes me long for more, and it's heartbreaking to see that humanity, even in fiction, just can't deal with the scope of life sometimes. The ending somehow made me cry both in despair and hopefulness.
The characters are amazing, I loved their relationships and how they helped each other through the hardest parts of their mission. The narration is also very evocative and I was absolutely captivated by each of the worlds the characters visited while also feeling like I knew the narrator closely. It had just the right amount of science-y talk (which was awesomely explained) to keep things interesting without annoying people with less expertise.
All in all, I absolutely recommend this book, especially to those people who, like me, couldn't stop watching documentaries as children, no matter the topic. It's just so tender and hopeful and yet real that I don't think I'll be able to stop thinking about it any time soon.
Other quotes I can't get out of my head:
...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.
Other quotes I can't get out of my head:
...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.
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.