Book: To be Taught, If Fortunate
Author: Becky Chambers
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #5 (a book about women astronauts) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #11 (requires suspension of disbelief).
It is the end of the twenty-second century, and human spaceflight is now possible further and further away with the help of technology known as somaforming – synthetic biological supplementation.
This has blown open the arena for space exploration.
Ariadne, along with a few other explorers, is on a mission to explore four worlds around fifteen light-years away from Earth. They sleep in transit and awaken fully set up for the world they arrive in.
However, it seems, partway through their mission, that priorities on Earth have changed. Ariadne starts a detailed log of their exploration, on the off-chance that someone out there is still listening.
This is a short delightful novella about humans who seek exploration and knowledge for its own sake, sacrificing most of their lives in the effort.
It asks questions about science, ethics, and exploration – does there always have to be a profit or gain? Is space important when we have so many problems on the ground? What is our ethical obligation towards any different ecosystem we may encounter?
It does so simply and effectively through a relatively simple journey through four new worlds.
This small book packs a powerful punch, and gives its readers plenty of (earth-based) food for thought.
Scribblemarks 