The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

It’s a mediocre sci-fi story for SJWs. I’m reading along waiting for something to like and all get is poorly veiled preaching about diversity. There are moments when you see the author could be good, maybe great, but then she feels compelled to awkwardly steer the story toward short “teaching moments” about LGBT tolerance, racism, and other post-millennial tolerance BS. I suspect the high rating is due to SJW listings rather than the quality of the story.

It’s unfortunate that our kids are growing up in age where Orwell’s 1984 is viewed as a how-to manual. This book is acclaimed as a masterpiece solely because the “woke” tribe wants it to be so. Please, go read “The Left Hand of Darkness” and then read this one. Which is the masterpiece? Go read “Shards of Honor” and then come back and read this. Both of those books have renowned feminist authors, and are obviously orders of magnitude better than this. This book frankly reminds me of the movie “Short Circuit” and not in a good way.

I really wanted to like this book, but was quite disappointed. Ms. Chambers influences are easily discernible (Star Trek TNG, Farscape), but to an extent where I felt like I was reading a teleplay for a single TV episode. The story feels like it should be building towards something big, but it fizzles. There is some decent world building, and some of the characters are well-drawn (exception is Kizzy the annoying zany genius trope…ugh). My biggest issue is that Ms.Chambers has some elements for a really great yarn, but ends up using this as a forum for a tired treatise of political correctness. All the heros are identified and bound together by one motto “we celebrate diversity”, and all the villains by the motto “were xenophobic”. This could have been demonstrated by their actions alone, but the author continually hits the reader over the head with this to the point like I felt I was in a Contemporary Anthropology” course at Berkeley. It was just far too on the nose and the constant moralizing pulled me out of the story as the authors agenda was intrusively evident. There was also a more subtle attack on religion in the story arc of the character Ohan, and is a curious contradiction to the books ceaseless championing of inclusiveness. Basically I feel the author is an extreme liberal with intolerance to ny viewpoint except her own, and an agenda to proclaim. The writing and dialogue are sophomoric at best. There is little to no science in this science fiction. I could barely finish this book, and am bewildered by its acclaim.

I have been reading Sci Fi since age 10 – call it 59 years.There have always been strong women authors including Le Guin, Norton and McCaffrey. In the last 20 years or so, women have made major inroads into the genre. Connie Willis, Martha Wells, Ann Leckie, writers of serious science fiction with strong female characters, have garnered Hugo and Nebula awards for their work. However I can only categorize Becky Chambers’ work as the Sci Fi equivalent of a chick flick. What seemed to start as a good space opera soon devolved into a touchy feely fest. I shook off the physical love affair between a human and an alien species as amateur (I’m not sure how any serious Sci Fi reader could buy this), but when one of the female characters started having feelings for a lizard alien, I moved on to a better book.

I am perplexed as to how this book has garnered most of the awards it has been awarded. I would certainly hate to think that she is merely riding the women’s movement of recent years.

After reading the award nominations and praise from various organizations, I had high hopes for this book. After reading it, I can only ask “what were they thinking?”

I’ll start with the good: it is well edited. OK, we got that out of the way.

There is zero character development and I didn’t find any of the characters likable or interesting. The principals don’t have any character, chase the money and make excuses when something goes bad. They all care, so I guess there is that. Every romantic interest is cross species. One of the crew members is in love with the ship’s AI and likes to take off his clothes, lean against the AI’s processors and have “romantic” conversations.
There is almost no science in this book and that is fine. Unfortunately there is a little bit. For instance, the ship is fueled by algae. If the ship’s engines were made out of gingerbread I could go with the flow. In this case, just no.

Spoilers follow. Read it anyway, you’ll be glad you did.

The protagonists crew a small ship that specializes in opening “tunnels” between star systems. The crew are all pacifists. They aren’t pacifists who have taken a reasoned moral stance and stick to it despite the temptation to defend themselves. Nope, they are pacifists because guns are scary and its someone else’s job to only send them to safe spaces. The captain’s love interest is an alien. When he learns she used a gun to defend herself in a life or death situation, he encounters his biggest moral dilemma: is he bad because he is glad his lover defended herself”?

The crew learns that there is a contract to open a “tunnel” connecting the rest of “civilized” space with an incredibly violent and genocidal species Torema) near the galactic center. There is lots of money at stake and the crew jumps at it. After a long journey filled with plenty of emotional chaos and not much action, they arrive at the star system of a Torema faction.

The crew has been warned that each Torema faction only tolerates the beliefs held by that particular faction and does their best to exterminate anyone who doesn’t hold those views. They also have incredibly acute hearing. Five of the crew (including Kizzy who has the impulse control of a 3 year old and has a habit of blurting out random and inappropriate comments) attend a meeting. What could go wrong? A few of the Torema show up and of course three of the crew (including Kizzy) decide the topic of conversation should be how they think having anything to do with the Torema (remember how they don’t tolerate dissenting opinions) might be a bad idea. One of the Torema is on the edge, gets triggered and later fires on the crew’s ship just as it is in the process of creating the new tunnel.

The crew, oblivious feel good morons that they are, has absolutely no idea why a Torema would fire on them. Much later when the crew has returned to “civilization” and the captain is being debriefed, he is specifically asked if anyone on his crew might have said something to trigger the Torema. He answers “no”, then remembers Kizzy was there and amends his answer to “I don’t know but just because some people want to get rich off of trade with the Torema, they are too violent and we shouldn’t have anything to do with them”. The captain doesn’t recognize the irony that he and his crew wanted to get rich off of opening the tunnel right up until they were personally affected by opening the tunnel. I’m guessing the author is also oblivious.

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