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    To Be Taught, If Fortunate
    To Be Taught, If Fortunate
    To Be Taught, If Fortunate
    Ebook190 pages3 hours

    To Be Taught, If Fortunate

    By Becky Chambers

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    About this ebook

    “Extraordinary . . . A future sci-fi masterwork in a new and welcome tradition.” -- Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat

    A stand-alone science fiction novella from the award-winning, bestselling, critically-acclaimed author of the Wayfarer series.

    At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. They can produce antifreeze in subzero temperatures, absorb radiation and convert it for food, and conveniently adjust to the pull of different gravitational forces. With the fragility of the body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to journey to neighboring exoplanets long known to harbor life.

    A team of these explorers, Ariadne O’Neill and her three crewmates, are hard at work in a planetary system fifteen light-years from Sol, on a mission to ecologically survey four habitable worlds. But as Ariadne shifts through both form and time, the culture back on Earth has also been transformed. Faced with the possibility of returning to a planet that has forgotten those who have left, Ariadne begins to chronicle the story of the wonders and dangers of her mission, in the hope that someone back home might still be listening.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 3, 2019
    ISBN9780062936028
    Author

    Becky Chambers

    Becky Chambers is a science fiction author based in Northern California. She is best known for her Hugo Award-winning Wayfarers series, which currently includes The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, and Record of a Spaceborn Few. Her books have also been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Locus Award, and the Women's Prize for Fiction, among others. Her most recent work is To Be Taught, If Fortunate, a standalone novella. Becky has a background in performing arts, and grew up in a family heavily involved in space science. She spends her free time playing video and tabletop games, keeping bees, and looking through her telescope. Having hopped around the world a bit, she’s now back in her home state, where she lives with her wife. She hopes to see Earth from orbit one day.  

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    Reviews for To Be Taught, If Fortunate

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    • 5/5
      Due the events of the Hugo's in the last few years, I've gotten to read all the works written by Becky Chambers, and fallen deeper and deeper in love with all her hope punk worlds. The whistful beauty of this book is tied up in its ending, which to touch too lightly or too deeply would ruin it for others. Only know, this little novella is absolutely worth the purchase and it fills my heart and soul with the idea of space, and possibility, and what it means to be truly "for all mankind."
    • 4/5
      An intriguing take on space exploration as a purely scientific endeavor and the mental and emotional toll of signing up for a journey that guarantees you won't recognize your home on your return.
    • 5/5
      Wish i hadn’t finished this in public so i could have cried properly. What a beautiful story.
    • 4/5
      I think this had what I wanted and didn’t get from The Martian. We have diverse characters, in space, doing science that doesn’t feel so repetitive and maintains moments of actual danger - Times when I was actually worried about how characters would get past an issue. There’s also still the vibes of being kind of alone in the universe, even though there’s four crew members.
    • 4/5
      This is a novella-length story about four astronauts exploring four alien planets while decades pass on Earth and things change significantly there.I've really loved some of Chambers' other books, but I found this one kind of a disappointment by contrast. It seems like the sort of thing that should appeal to me, space enthusiast and giant science nerd that I am. It's all about the satisfaction of scientific discovery and the choices we make about whether exploration is something we value or not. But the truth is, I found it absurdly slow-reading for something this short. The science stuff wasn't nearly in-depth enough or the the thrill of discovery thrilling enough to satisfy the science-nerd part of my brain, and the rest of me kept wishing for a little more plot. The mystery of exactly what's happened back on Earth while our heroes were out exploring elsewhere provides a tiny bit of tension, but less than you'd think, and the answer, when it came, did not remotely land for me with the kind of emotional impact you'd expect.Not that it's a bad book. The writing is fine. The alien planets are at least mildly interesting. The characters, while lightly sketched, do feel like people. And I really do appreciate the themes and questions it raises, especially at the end. But I do wish it had been a little bit more... something.
    • 4/5
      I liked this well enough, but it felt a bit like I was waiting for a shoe to drop the entire time. And it did eventually drop. I don’t know if this was skillful foreshadowing, or if it was just too obvious a plot. Maybe I should mark this review as containing spoilers, even though I’m not getting into specifics.
    • 2/5
      Science fiction portrays interplanetary exploration and development two ways. One, like Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars involves terraforming, whch involves creating a climate on a planet more hospitable to humanity. This novella, like Frederik Pohl's Man Plus, involves altering human's anatomy and physiology to enable him or her to survive on another planet. In this novella, this process is known as somaforming. Modifications include increased muscular enhancements to cope with planetary bodies with greater gravitational pull or a form of antifreeze in the circulatory system to improve survival in subzero temperatures.Set at the turn of the 22nd century, Ariadine O'Neill and three other scientists are exploring a planetary system 15 light years from Earth. The novella is divided in four parts as the scientists travel to each of four planets of differing climes and ecologies. Each scientist aboard realize that Earth history is moving faster than from their perspective in space; therefore, Earth would be radically different when, and if, they return.Besides one event on a water world, this novella lacked any tense or suspenseful moments. Although it was interested to read of the author's description of these four planet's environment, there wasn't enough to hold my attention. Thank goodness this work of fiction was short. At times, I felt as if I was reading a National Geographic article.
    • 5/5
      Superb! Fourth win for Becky Chambers, and for her readers.
    • 5/5
      Another great story from Becky Chambers. This novella is very well-written and a pleasure to read.
    • 3/5
      I like small casts in tight spaces so this really grew on me as it progressed. A particularly claustrophobic sequence leads to the book's emotional climax, but then it meandered on afterward to an intellectual ending I found dull, confusing, and ultimately stupid and frustrating. The interviews between the author and her mother in the end matter did nothing for me, but I'm a bit intrigued by the preview for The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and may give that a try sometime.
    • 5/5
      To Be Taught, If Fortunate is a standalone novella narrated by Ariadne, one of four astronauts on a mission in the 22nd century to explore a series of faraway planets that likely harbour life - but challenges arise that make them question what they're really out in space for.I loved the concept of humans being able to biologically engineer themselves to survive in what would otherwise be hostile environments. In fact, I loved all of the science in this book - it's beautifully and simply explained in Chambers' trademark style. There are also some wonderfully evocative descriptions, both out in space and here on Earth - I so want to visit the gardens of the organisation behind Ariadne's mission in real life!To Be Taught… is a small but perfectly formed ode to the wonders of space exploration and what can be achieved through collective effort. I zipped through this in the space of a day during a week filled with particularly bad news, and it is filled with so much warmth and humanity that I couldn't help but feel soothed. Highly recommended!
    • 5/5
      This is a standalone novella unconnected to Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series.Climate change accelerated to a severe crisis that drained the ability and willingness of governments to support space exploration. Yet the drive to explore is not dead, and a private institute forms, to crowd-fund continued research and exploration. With contributions coming from anyone, anywhere in the world, who wants to support it, and all contributions, tiny or enormous, acknowledged, it works. This story follows Lawki 6, a mission to a red dwarf system with four planets that may be habitable. Five missions to other star systems were launched before them, but results from the first weren't yet received when Lawki 6, ship name Merian, departs.The crew is engineer Ariadne O'Neill, nominally in charge, and mission specialists Elena Quesada-Cruz, Jack Vo, and Chikondi Daka. With the information about the worlds gathered before their departure, they have patches that, while they are in deep sleep between worlds, make small but significant changes in their bodies to improve their ability to do their jobs. It might be skin glitter to make them more visible to each other in low light conditions, or improved bone density and musculature for high gravity, or any other small, useful changes that don't require remaking basic body form.And on each world they make fascinating discoveries--sometimes, not always, including life.The system is 14 lightyears away, so news and mission updates from Earth are fourteen years old, essentially history, when received. Likewise, their mission reports are fourteen years old by the time they reach Earth. Because they don't have FTL, they are separated from those they left behind by a good deal more than fourteen years. But this is not designed as a one-way mission. They expected to return to Earth eventually. It's the distance and time delay from Earth, the years of changes in what feels to them like a brief nap, in torpor traveling between their target worlds, that ultimately produces their major crisis.Their instruments are picking up data from another star system, one that has a planet that not only has life, but may have a technological civilization. On the one hand, they have no reason not to go check it out. Distances and consumables reserves are such that they can go there, and still be able to return to Earth. There seems to be no immediate need to return, given the information they have.But why are they out here? What's the purpose of their exploration, and who is it for? They weren't funded, equipped, trained to indulge their own curiosity; they're doing it for Earth. What does Earth want? Is it right or wrong to continue?Chambers always gives us absorbing, compelling characters, whose dilemmas are real and challenging. In this novella, she gives us interesting worlds and life forms, and characters we really care about and understand by the time they face their big decision.Recommended.I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.
    • 5/5
      A message in a "bottle" narrative which describes the voyage of one of a number a publicly funded space explorations. Using a modest palette of notions the encounters on the planetary bodies of a system are wondrous and baleful or both.
    • 4/5
      I had been meaning to read something by Chambers, who won the Hugo Award for best series in 2019, and this novella, about the exploration of another stellar system, was a good choice. The four members of an interstellar expedition come out of hibernation and visit the new star's planets. Earth is fourteen light years away, the speed of light is an absolute limit, and all news from home is old.The story is eventful, but skips over the sorts of conflict and peril common in exploration stories. There are no villains. Rather, the story's turning points, told through the point of view of ship's engineer Ariadne, are the many discoveries that the diverse crew makes on four very different exoplanets. Obstacles arise, but the spacefarers always find some more or less satisfactory way around them.The pleasure presented here is to share in the crew's experience; consumed by their work, ever renewing their joy in scientific discovery. A typical encounter, on an ice-covered moon with water beneath the ice cover:She grabbed my arm. "Oh, my god."Adrenaline shot through me. "What?""Turn off your lights." I did. She did. "Look," she said, pointing.(...)Red. A small patch of soft, fluorescent red, shining quietly up through a hazy pane of ice.It moved.(...)But the ice muted the light, blurring its edges, scattering it in hazy auras that shimmered well beyond the source. New colors joined the party - orange, pink - and new shapes as well. There were snake-like things, full bodied things, worms and flowers and combs. Some shoaled by the dozens. Some travelled alone. Some bobbed. Some chased. The ice sheet below us became a luminescent symphony (...) Imagine a summer carnival behind a wintered windowpane. Imagine the most fabulous aurora you've ever seen, shining below your feet. The book feels like a modern echo of the sense-of-wonder stories of the 1930s.
    • 4/5
      This novella is about a team from the 22nd century exploring four habitable worlds in orbit around a red dwarf star. It’s a fascinating glimpse into what the future might be like -- what space travel and other worlds might be like.When it comes to the characters and their relationships, there’s something quite elliptical about this story -- which is fitting, given that Ariadne is writing this account for a specific purpose. This is a thought-provoking meditation about space, science and life, and Ariadne wants her audience to respond because they value the potential of space exploration rather than because they’re personally invested in Ariadne and her colleagues. (Perhaps she also wants to protect her colleagues’ privacy.)So this left me feeling unsatisfied, but I think that’s because there are particular things I’m looking for as a reader and this book quite intentionally -- and effectively -- chose to focus on something else. Again, I’m as biased as can be, but I believe somaforming is the most ethical option when it comes to setting foot off Earth. I’m an observer, not a conqueror. I have no interest in changing other worlds to suit me. I choose the lighter touch: changing myself to suit them.
    • 4/5
      Really rather clever. I hadn't appreciated the title until the afterword from the author - it's taken from the speech made at the launch of the Voyager carrying humanities plea to the universe. It's very apt given this is sort of a novella of first contact. It seems to be a modern trend (reverting to the past) for SF to be written as shorter length pieces. I'm not a fan, and although this works well, it would probably work better in a longer format, or alternatively as it's a very simple concept, it could also be much shorter.In the not too distant future, the citizens of earth have crowd-funded (really it's a useful concept at the moment, but not one I think likely to endure) a series of missions to the nearer likely life habitable worlds. The crew are in suspended animation until arrival, and have slight non-permanent gene-mods to cope with the expected conditions. This sin't really about the worlds' they discover - and Becky takes through a few of the more common permutations of ice, water, stone and fire, but about the crew how they cope, and finally elapsed time and conditions on Earth that launched them. Becky's writing is always sympathetic, the characters are fun, rounded healthy normal people. They live and love in strange circumstances and have been especially selected to cope, but they're not without ties back home, and do they're best to concentrate on the the Why of being sent so far away. Although the story is only told from the engineer's view, to avoid having too much science focus, you as a reader, love all four of them. (I'm not sure a crew size of four is practical, but then the whole premise is a little flimsy anyway. It's not a details story, it's part philosophy and part ethics and as always what it means to be human when you're so far from home.I think the fourth world (well probably the 2nd is the one I'd cut) is unnecessary, as we've gathered the gist - worlds are very variable and technically life could be almost anywhere. A novella isn't the place to try and mix two themes, and vivid although Becky's imagination is, diversity of alien lifeforms possibilities is best explored in a longer treatise, leaving the focus on this one to be the journey rather than the destination.Very much worth reading though
    • 4/5
      A love letter to science, scientists, and delight in discovery. Knocked off a star because I didn't think the ending was consistent with the characters.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic descriptions, great characters, and an interesting plot. I didn't want it to end.
    • 4/5
      This is not so much a novel (or, more accurately, a novella), as a philosophical and ethical examination of space travel within a fictional context. Becky Chambers’ work tends to be short on plot but long on characters that touch your heart. And while the relationships of the tiny cast of characters will strike a chord, it really is more a novel of ideas and ethics. While I didn’t need as many kleenex as for other Chambers novels, I did need a couple, and I appreciate the food for thought.
    • 4/5
      i've rediscovered a love of sci-fi and this novella was perfect to ease me back in.
    • 5/5
      Well this is a little gem of a book -- not the usual interstellar hijinks I've come to associate with Chambers, but a thoughtful and detailed imagining of exoplanet exploration, based on now and near-now tech. The idea of body adaptation in order to solve gravity challenges (not her idea, but a genius one which she talks about more in the back matter) is mind blowing. The ethics of the current generation of scientists is a beautiful thing (and a heartbreaking one). The quiet imaginings of what life in the universe might be is a constant and riveting wonder. Not a loud book, not a high action book, but deeply satisfying.

      Advanced readers copy provided by Edelweiss.
    • 5/5
      This book makes me ache. I'm doused in feelings of wonder, homesickness, awe, despair, guilt, regret, and intellectual joy. It has flaws. It's not perfect. The characters don't, I believe, change much or learn new things. But we see them go through good and bad very realistically, and they do have their own personalities. They also seemed to perfectly fit within the range of "NASA's ideal astronaut personality," which added realism.

      The details of their explorations and discoveries seem probable and realistic, too, and I enjoyed reading what I suspect is a distilled version of things and experiences scientists expect to encounter on life-bearing exoplanets.

      The story takes a while to get going. I was wondering why Ariadne was being so wordy in what was essentially a progress report. There's not much of a story arc, per se, either.

      I don't care. This book brought the feels. Wondrous, and devastating. I thought of Bradbury and Interstellar.

      But please, never send me to Opera. Thx.
    • 4/5
      To Be Taught, If Fortunateby Becky ChambersI love all the other books she has written and enjoyed this one too but I was disappointed with the ending. Of all the choices that was possible, the least rational one was chosen and didn't fit with the book.The characters and plot were good. The book was short so the character's development wasn't the usual Chambers exquisite but still I felt I knew them enough to know they would not have chosen the ending! Ugh!I gave the book a 3 1/2 rounding to a 4!Terrific narration. I got this from Audible.
    • 4/5
      Loved this story of space exploration, while too short to have the kind of character development of the Wayfarers series, it had more plot and Chambers terrific writing style. The world building was great and the "Rats" will have me awake in bed at night listening for sounds around me.
    • 2/5
      A month ago, I read This Is How You Lose the Time War, an absolutely wonderful book that fuses science fiction, emotional/psychological exploration, romance, and a bit of mystery in an utterly compelling. I read another book, nonfiction, but after it was ready for some more fiction. I checked the 'readers also enjoyed' of TIHYLtTW and this novella seemed somewhat similar from the synopsis: some transhumanism, an epic scope, playing with time and the passage of time, a psychological exploration of what it means to be not quite human anymore. The only ingredient that seem missing was romance, but that wasn't a requirement; in truth no one thing was, To Be Taught, if Fortunate just seemed what I was looking for.

      Well, it was not. And, the synopsis definitely oversold thing. So, I’ll describe the tedium that is this novella. But I’ll give those in a hurry or who are impatient, a TLDR: this book is superficial and passive, nothing is deeply explored, the characters have almost no agency, and none of the characters or anything about them is ever seriously endangered.

      The first half of the book is a regurgitation of various scientific facts and principles, nearly all of which I would guess most people who read sci-fi are aware of. As an example, that by 'fit' Charles Darwin did not mean 'strongest and most powerful,' but, of course, fit for their environment. Chambers then goes on to list various not-strong and not-powerful creatures that are evolutionarily successful. We're also treated to various banal observations about human life. Much of the work of a scientist is quite pedestrian and not very exciting. Apparently, we're supposed to find this insightful, despite the fact that this is true of nearly all occupations as well as the lives of those who don’t work.

      So, 80 pages of this (or 2 hours if you are listening to the audiobook). Just to be clear, nothing happens in the first half. They do get some bad news from earth, but it’s just passively received, not acted upon.

      I'm sorry, synopsis writer, this is neither "brilliant writing" nor "fantastic world-building." It's a boring listing of none too interesting facts presented none-too-interestingly.

      Things do happen in the second half, and you might manage to feel a bit worried that something bad might happen. They are stranded, alien critters adhere to the hull of their lander, but mostly this is boring for them, and thus, boring for the reader. But, by this point it’s pretty clear that not much happens to anyone and certainly nothing bad. It’s all very nice and friendly. And dull.

      By ‘anyone’ I mean the main characters. Some bad stuff happens elsewhere, and they do find out about it, but they are merely passive recipients. They forgo agency right up until the very end when they leave their fates up to the inhabitants of Earth rather than making a decision themselves, despite having clear feelings about what they want. Basically, they don’t want to presume, let alone take much responsibility.

      It's all explained, of course, and in the context of this warped utopian universe, it makes a sort of sense. It's just dreadfully unsatisfying as a story, no matter how noble the sentiments behind it might be. The characters have opinions, feel strongly about things, but as they almost never act on these, at least not in a way that creates any conflict or adversity, the opinions are, like the facts listed in the first half of the book, mere curiosities at best. The few times they do do something, again, there’s no real tension or danger. No risk that someone might die, that a relationship might be on the line.

      The superficiality is pervasive. There’s no plumbing of the experience of having one’s body remade world after world. Sure, the changes and reasons for them are described, but nothing about the experience of it for the narrator (the book uses first person).

      This book is more like a mediocre documentary than storytelling.
    • 3/5
      I listened to this book and got 43% into it when I stopped. It's all description. I never figured out what the protagonist was emotional about... She was just happy and content the whole time and describing things. The descriptions were interesting because I want to make stories about space travel... But not worth continuing further.
    • 3/5
      This is a novella about a crew of four humans who are sent on a scientific mission to explore distant planets that may contain life. Some of the planets they explore are delightful, and some are horrible. As they are exploring, they lose communication with Earth.I enjoyed the descriptions of the scientific exploration, and the geeky scientists' excitement about their discoveries. Aside from that, the book fell pretty flat for me. It is written in the form of a diary, and only the character of the narrator is developed at all. There isn't much of a storyline: the book feels more like a series of loosely-collected vignettes.
    • 5/5
      I am so full of feels right now...as if anything else is to be expected after finishing a work by Becky Chambers. Admittedly, the first half was slow, but then the turning point happened--seriously, right at halfway; I did the math--which itself almost made me cry in the middle of a very unsentimental meal at an unsentimental restaurant. But then there was the WAY it ended, the closing epigraph, followed by the Acknowledgements, FOLLOWED by Chambers' conversation with her mother. BIG SIGHS.

      One thing that came to mind as I was barrelling towards the end was about how this compares with other SF predictions. How we love to talk about how this or that technological development that was seemingly predicted in earlier SF works, and it so often--I feel--is couched within this air of eeriness, if also awe. I suppose Becky Chambers could be seen as making plenty of predictions of her own, and time will tell if they ever come to pass. But to me the most startling prediction she makes is not some technological advance or discovery of lifeforms elsewhere in the universe, but that of beings being not so shitty to each other. While this seems almost more difficult to imagine than new technology or aliens, it absolutely does not inspire uncanny feelings. All I'm left with is "I hope, I hope, I hope..."
    • 5/5
      Wonderful as always from Bekcy Chambers, I am only deducting half a star, beause as an animal lover, I found one scene very distressing.
    • 4/5
      She hasn't lost her touch. This is a short book, and it could have been expanded into a full-length novel but she chose to keep it short and sweet. A first-person account, written as a letter to anybody left on earth after a scientific mission to four lesser planets and moons lose contact with the earth. The only criticism is that with only four characters in the book (the crew of the Merian) the non-pov characters could have been better developed, but there is only so much you can do with 140 pages.

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    To Be Taught, If Fortunate - Becky Chambers

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