The first two books in Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit, both of which I loved, were largely focused on encounters between aliens of different species in the quasi-utopian spacefaring civilisation that she so brilliantly imagines. While humans were included in this mix, human society was not at the centre of the story; in The Long Way, the human protagonist Rosemary spends her time learning about the very different alien societies she encounters, while in A Closed and Common Orbit, the most significant human character, Pepper, has lived much of her life cast out from human worlds, brought up by an AI. Because of this, Record of a Spaceborn Few is the first chance we’ve had to consider how human society itself has changed in this imagined future.
Record of a Spaceborn Few is set on the Exodus fleet, the fleet on which humans migrated from a dying Earth, and on which many of them still make their homes. Life on the fleet is, broadly speaking, communist: resources are distributed centrally, as are jobs, and everyone receives the same renumeration for whatever work they do. It’s suggested that this system is working; very few able-bodied adults are willing to risk the social stigma of being idle, and those who invest more time and effort in their training are rewarded with higher status in the community. As far as I could tell, however, this society is also portrayed as a post-patriarchy (and as a post-patriarchy that has, crucially, also rejected white supremacy and hetronormativity). Race or sex seem irrelevant, although women still seem to be giving birth (and – irritatingly – there seems to have been no technological advances in this area, as one of the characters refers to birth as necessarily painful – why?). We meet gay, lesbian and bisexual characters, and there’s no sense that they face any prejudice. To be clear, this is all so far so good for me – I love the utopian nature of Chambers’s world and I think it’s hugely important to write stories like this where diverse characters can exist without constantly being defined by oppression.
The problem with Record of a Spaceborn Few, for me, comes down to a familiar feminist question: how far can we, who have been fundamentally shaped by being born and raised in a patriarchal society, conceive of a post-patriarchy at all? (Same questions also go for a genuinely post-racial society, but Chambers seems much less concerned with this issue.) In other words, Chambers’s world felt far too familiar to me, especially when she’s shown how adept she is at envisaging fundamentally different alien set-ups. Shouldn’t these post-patriarchal humans feel – well, more alien? One particular sticking point for me came with sex work. Chambers presents sex work as simply another occupation that Exodans can choose when they come of age. Sex workers are valued by this society, and it’s strongly implied that most adults have visited sex workers at some point or another. Pleasingly, Chambers emphasises the significant skill-set that sex workers possess: empathy, perception, intuition, the ability to get on with people.
Treated critically, this could have been fascinating. How much of the inherent abuse and exploitation in the sex work industry is due to the fact that we live in a capitalist patriarchy, where sex is treated as a commodity like any other? Is it possible to imagine a world where selling sex is removed from harmful power dynamics? I’m not sure I can imagine such a world, but perhaps that’s precisely the point. However, Record of a Spaceborn Few doesn’t ask these questions. Instead, I found myself getting more and more uncomfortable with its presentation of sex work. While I’m open to the idea that things might be different in a society that is so radically different from our own, presenting this scenario uncritically in a world that still fails to recognise the harm that sex work does to women feeds into damaging myths. I think that Chambers could have pulled this ‘what-if’ off, but she doesn’t seem to have given it enough thought.
There are other aspects of the text that also felt uncomfortably familiar. One of the central characters is Kip, a sixteen-year-old boy who hasn’t done enough work for his final exams and isn’t sure what he wants to do with his life. He’s bored and tempted to rebel. He and his friend get hold of fake ID, experiment with alcohol and drugs, and try to get access to the aforementioned sex workers. He basically behaves like an idiot. I found this whole plot a bit dismaying. Given that adolescence is culturally constructed – teenagers haven’t behaved the same way at the same age throughout history, and obviously the concept of the ‘teenager’ is, itself, relatively new – I don’t see why Kip would necessarily be doing any of these things. Wouldn’t it have been more interesting to challenge our ageist assumptions about young people?
I’m aware I’m holding Chambers to very high standards because her first two books were just so good, and I really enjoyed reading Record of a Spaceborn Few, despite my misgivings – the worldbuilding is richer and more original than in A Close and Common Orbit. However, I’d like to see any future books in this series think more about how humans themselves have changed, alongside the different models of sex, gender and race that they encounter in the alien species with whom they now share the universe.
Excellent points all – I enjoyed The Long Way very much, but this was essentially the problem I ran into with it (its imagined utopia and post-patriarchal, post-homophobic society still seemed to define itself in relation to those systems). Re the birth stuff, have you read any Anne Charnock? Her novel that just won the Clarke Award, Dreams Before the Start of Time, deals explicitly with advances in birthing technology and how that changes the whole endeavour (though it has its own blind spots, apparently).
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Thanks! You put the issue very well – after writing this, it occurred to me that the nuclear family set-up Chambers describes (with everyone arranged in six-person ‘hexes’) also feels pretty conservative – although I guess you could argue that this has continued because of the way the Fleet was originally constructed. Anne Charnock’s Dreams Before The Start of Time is definitely on my TBR list – I think I put it there after reading your review?
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I haven’t read it yet, so can’t have been my review – but I do have it on my phone! Have heard conflicting reports, so very keen to see for myself.
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Haha don’t know whose review I was thinking of then! They were obviously convincing!
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I often struggle with science fiction, but I’ve seen such enthusiastic overall responses that I think Chambers is an author I’d like to try. I’m currently reading The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, so maybe after I finish that one I’ll get the first book of this series out from the library. Ursula Le Guin is another author I mean to try this year.
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I’ve recommended the Wayfarers books to friends who aren’t big SF readers and they’ve always gone down well.
To my embarrassment, I haven’t read any of Le Guin’s SF, which I will be addressing ASAP!
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I have a copy of The Left Hand of Darkness. I tried reading it some years back and only got about 20 pages in before giving up, but I’m determined to try again.
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This is the one I want to try first as well – we can see how we both get on! I’m a big fan of her Earthsea books, especially The Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu.
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Despite reading oodles of SF over the years, I never read Le Guin either!
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Wow! Who’s up for a buddy read of Left Hand of Darkness? 🙂 (So, Laura, the Earthsea books aren’t considered SF?)
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I think I have this on the shelves – if I do – I’m in.
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I’d been keen to join in as well! Rebecca, the Earthsea books are (high?) fantasy, I’d say.
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Oh, ok! I don’t know enough about SFF to understand such distinctions 🙂 When would suit you both for a buddy read?
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Mid-Sept onwards would be best for me so I can try and finish 20 books of summer – am very behind!
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No problem. I have quite a few new release books to review in Sept., but I can try to start the book that month and it will probably carry over into Oct.
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I loved all three of Chamber’s books, especially the exoticism of various alien cultures in the first two, and agree that the third is the weakest, although it is clear that she believes in and writes her five characters who take the story well..I would have liked a little more plot earlier in the novel though too.
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I actually preferred this one to A Closed and Common Orbit – I found the Jane thread in that one pretty cliched. But I’m happy with no plot in this kind of thing – I’m more interested in the worldbuilding – and I can see how the previous ones had more narrative drive.
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She is superb at worldbuilding
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