Apatt's Reviews > The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“I wanted to create a setting in which space felt like a place for everybody. This is a story about the ordinary people living within an intergalactic society, the people who walk through the spaceport behind the heroes, who are normally not at the forefront of the story.”
An Interview with Becky Chambers

I first heard of this book when the SF Book Club I (barely) help to moderate picked it as Book of the Month for October 2015. Being such a terrible moderator I ignored the selection as I do 95% of them. Then recently Carol invited me to join her The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet Flash Group, this intrigued me, because Carol has impeccable taste, especially for SF/F, so if she deems this book worthy of an entire discussion group it is surely worth investigating. Still, I am a bit cautious about trying new authors, so I downloaded a 30 pages (approx) sample from Amazon and I was quickly sold on Becky Chambers’ writing style. In the first chapter, she vividly describes space life in a tiny craft for a single traveler and then the life aboard a large spaceship. I like to be transported by books (especially when I’m supposed to be working at the office!) and Ms. Chambers is skilled at providing such transportation.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is basically about the adventures of the motley "multi-species" crew of the spaceship Wayfarer. That’s it, in a nutshell. However, the book is by no means thinly plotted; the first half of the book introduces us to the myriad members of the crew who are all interesting in their own ways. Each of them has their own secrets and issues, I like that there is no single protagonist and each character takes center stage at some points. The narrative is appropriately written in the third-person, switching to each crew member’s point of view when the story is focused on them. For once I don’t feel it necessary to reveal much of the plot as the first half of the book is an exploration of the characters, humans, and aliens. The overarching plotline really kicks in at about half way through the book and the Wayfarer travels to Hedra Ka, the titular “small, angry planet”, so-called because of the unfriendly and bad tempered Toremi aliens living there. In a space opera which focuses on a crew of a spaceship the crew is usually military, mercenary, smugglers or rebels. In The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet the crew is civilian, they are “tunnelers” who construct a sort of hyperspace bypass to facilitate FTL travel. The overarching plotline concerns their commission to make a tunnel from Hedra Ka to join up with the Galactic Commons (a sort of intergalactic UN), part from the immensely long distance the Wayfarer has to travel due to lack of preexisting “tunnel” (hyperspace passage) the job seems quite routine and well paid, of course it is not.

If you like Star Trek and Firefly TV shows you should find much to like in this book. Both shows focus on the characters as well as the plot, in some episodes, the story is secondary to the character study, in others the plot is prominent. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is also episodic at times and the balance between character development and plot makes this book stand head and shoulders above the average sci-fi novels. Interestingly the Wayfarer’s technician, a bubbly, excitable girl called Kizzy is very similar to Firefly’s Kaylee*.


I don’t want to go on about the individual characters, the captain is very well drawn, the aliens are great and suitably strange. There are quite a few subplots, one about loving an alien, one about loving an AI with a “real girl/Pinocchio” philosophical discussion, one about alien parenting, one about cloning etc. The world galaxy building is a mighty feat of imagination, all the different cultural and biological details are thoughtfully worked out. However, this book does not read like hard sci-fi, and Becky Chambers is not a scientist, but she must have done her research because the scientific details sound convincing (I’m not a scientist either). Better still, the interrelationship, friendship and the Tumblr type of "ships" are very vividly and touchingly depicted.

If there is a caveat to this book I would say it is the pacing during the first third of the book (about 160 pages). Nothing “exciting” happen during this early part of the book, but – for me – it is never less than charming and interesting. It felt like I was just hanging out with the characters, shooting the breeze. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, is up there with the best of Alastair Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton, it also has an advantage of being neither too long nor too short (about 500 pages). It certainly is a very confident, very well written and spectacular debut novel. It has practically everything, if it was a number it would be 42.
______________________
Notes:

* Becky Chambers has never seen Firefly prior to writing this novel.
The sequel A Closed and Common Orbit to be published later this year sounds fabulous, featuring the sympathetic AI from The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Can’t wait!

According to Becky Chambers , her sci-fi influences are:
“Ursula K. Le Guin, hands down. Her work is what made me want to write science fiction. I hugely admire her ability to write truly alien aliens. Octavia Butler falls into that category as well. I also admire John Scalzi's ability to write accessible, super fun SF. That's a quality I aim for in my own stuff.”
______________________

Quotes:
“Humans’ preoccupation with “being happy” was something he had never been able to figure out. No sapient could sustain happiness all of the time, just as no one could live permanently within anger, or boredom, or grief.”

“In Jenks’ eyes, the only real difference in cognitive development between Humans and AIs was that of speed. He’d had to learn to walk and talk and eat and all the other essentials before he’d begun to have a sense of identity. Lovey (the AI) didn’t have to worry about those things. There hadn’t been a need for her to spend years learning how to monitor systems or switch off circuits. She had started life out with all the maturity and knowledge she needed to do her job competently.”

“Humans can’t handle war. Everything I know about our history shows that it brings out the worst in us. We’re just not … mature enough for it, or something. Once we start, we can’t stop. And I’ve felt that in me, you know, that inclination toward acting out in anger. Nothing like what you’ve seen. I don’t pretend to know what war is like. But Humans, we’ve got something dangerous in us.”