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I walked with M.
I made waffles, and I put the blondies I made on Friday into the freezer.
Yesterday, I read the last book in the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, _The Galaxy and the Ground Within_.
Like the rest of the series, Chambers is telling a slice of life / slow-moving story involving multiple viewpoint characters of various different species within the Galactic Commons. This one is set on a rocky planet with minimal atmosphere and only life that has arrived via space ship. There are people living on the planet providing services, but most of the people on the planet at any given time are people who are stopping over between tunnel trips, generally waiting for their spot in the queue for a tunnel, as there are five tunnels that converge in this system.
A Laru and her offspring run one of the habitats that provides fuel, activities, snacks and similar to people who are stopping for a few hours or a day in the system, awaiting the next leg of their journey. We see her wake up, notice that she has three people who will be arriving today. A slow day, but not the slowest. After the three visitors arrive — Pei, Ashby’s Aeluon lover; Speaker, an Akarak, and Roveg, a Quelin — the satellite network (which supplies power, communications, connections to the GC linkings and planetside access to the ansible network) suffers a catastrophic, cascading failure. While the dome our characters are in is undamaged, they cannot leave the planet for an unknown period of time. They cannot communicate with their ships in orbit. They cannot connect to the Linkings.
Trapping the characters somewhere in a storm or storm equivalent and forcing them to get to know each other better is a trope in romance novels (put the hero and heroine in a mountain cabin during a snowstorm is a really common version), mystery novels (and then start killing off the characters and make them have to figure out which one of their number is the murderer) and adventure stories. Of course Becky Chambers has something else in mind here.
SPOILERS!!!
Pei is enjoying the quiet time, but is uncomfortable with where she is in her life. She absolutely wants to continue to love and spend time with Ashby, and where she is personally within the political world of the Aeluon mean that she has felt compelled to hide her relationship with Ashby. She starts to shimmer while at the Five Hop One Stop, and if she does what she is obviously “supposed” to do when shimmering (go find a creche and lay her egg), she’s going to miss seeing Ashby.
Roveg got kicked out for being not nearly fundamentalist enough as a Quelin, but is headed back to Quelin space in hopes of attending his son’s First Brand. He can’t be late; they’ll use any excuse to deny him entry. He simultaneously really wants to go and really doesn’t. He makes sims for a living. A sim with a not cleverly enough concealed subversive theme got him kicked out, so now he just makes vacation sims / setting sims.
The Akarak are a species we haven’t met in any detail in the previous books. They have a short life, an unliveable home planet destroyed by the Harmagians, and while they have refugee status within the GC, they have been unsuccessful at getting a replacement planet or meaningful support. They are methane breathers in an oxygen breathing community, and their short life span inhibits their ability to get through long, drawn out negotiations with the GC. Speaker is unusual in her ability to communicate really effectively with member species of the GC AND her willingness to directly interact with them. She will ask them what they have to offer and offer what she has to give, which is how Akarak interact with each other.
The Laru running the rest area just wants everyone to get along, and to feed people snacks. Her offspring is growing up, and she really wants zyr to feel about other sapients the way that Laru feel about each other.
Everyone here is so wildly at odds, so incredibly subversive of their communities of origin, and at the same time trying to paper over how at odds with their communities of origin they really are. The days at the One Stop starkly highly how un-representative they are of their species, while at the same time offering a bridge between species. They are not people who _hate_ or want to have nothing to do with their own species. They are very committed to their own people.
That complicated mixture helps each member ease through their current, personal crisis (Pei’s decision about shimmering and about her relationship with Ashby, Roveg’s return to Quelin space) and provide meaningful assistance to the others (Speaker helps Pei reframe her decision, Pei creates a framework for Roveg’s return to Quelin that greatly improves his chance of seeing his sons and the places he misses). Best of all, Roveg takes his sim skills and the awareness of how forgotten the Akarak truly are, and uses that to make a sim for Akarak while he is in Quelin space. We can see the opportunity created, once it becomes possible for Akarak to experience what it would be like to have their own planet, and not always be seals within seals within seals.
When Topu, the Laru offspring, wants to bring cake to Speaker — I mean, Roveg, managed it, how hard can it be? — and winds up being a medical emergency, we finally get an Exodan on scene. It’s really more of a cameo than anything else, but the presence of the doctor highlights again how prejudice and bigotry within the GC inhibits those with desperately needed skills from being able to use them to help people who desperately want them. And wow, does that hit hard, in our world, in which that is all too frequently the experience of doctors of color (and, honestly, also all too often women doctors as well. Still.).
My daughter loved these books and has reread them, maybe more than once. They are amazing. I highly recommend the entire series. They are a delight. There is a lot to think about. They are fantastic stories and they are powerful advocates for how we can make our communities better, in the ways that many of the characters are trying to make their communities, and the GC, better. Without being annoyingly preachy.
Altho seriously, book two is brutal, so brace yourself for that one.
I made waffles, and I put the blondies I made on Friday into the freezer.
Yesterday, I read the last book in the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, _The Galaxy and the Ground Within_.
Like the rest of the series, Chambers is telling a slice of life / slow-moving story involving multiple viewpoint characters of various different species within the Galactic Commons. This one is set on a rocky planet with minimal atmosphere and only life that has arrived via space ship. There are people living on the planet providing services, but most of the people on the planet at any given time are people who are stopping over between tunnel trips, generally waiting for their spot in the queue for a tunnel, as there are five tunnels that converge in this system.
A Laru and her offspring run one of the habitats that provides fuel, activities, snacks and similar to people who are stopping for a few hours or a day in the system, awaiting the next leg of their journey. We see her wake up, notice that she has three people who will be arriving today. A slow day, but not the slowest. After the three visitors arrive — Pei, Ashby’s Aeluon lover; Speaker, an Akarak, and Roveg, a Quelin — the satellite network (which supplies power, communications, connections to the GC linkings and planetside access to the ansible network) suffers a catastrophic, cascading failure. While the dome our characters are in is undamaged, they cannot leave the planet for an unknown period of time. They cannot communicate with their ships in orbit. They cannot connect to the Linkings.
Trapping the characters somewhere in a storm or storm equivalent and forcing them to get to know each other better is a trope in romance novels (put the hero and heroine in a mountain cabin during a snowstorm is a really common version), mystery novels (and then start killing off the characters and make them have to figure out which one of their number is the murderer) and adventure stories. Of course Becky Chambers has something else in mind here.
SPOILERS!!!
Pei is enjoying the quiet time, but is uncomfortable with where she is in her life. She absolutely wants to continue to love and spend time with Ashby, and where she is personally within the political world of the Aeluon mean that she has felt compelled to hide her relationship with Ashby. She starts to shimmer while at the Five Hop One Stop, and if she does what she is obviously “supposed” to do when shimmering (go find a creche and lay her egg), she’s going to miss seeing Ashby.
Roveg got kicked out for being not nearly fundamentalist enough as a Quelin, but is headed back to Quelin space in hopes of attending his son’s First Brand. He can’t be late; they’ll use any excuse to deny him entry. He simultaneously really wants to go and really doesn’t. He makes sims for a living. A sim with a not cleverly enough concealed subversive theme got him kicked out, so now he just makes vacation sims / setting sims.
The Akarak are a species we haven’t met in any detail in the previous books. They have a short life, an unliveable home planet destroyed by the Harmagians, and while they have refugee status within the GC, they have been unsuccessful at getting a replacement planet or meaningful support. They are methane breathers in an oxygen breathing community, and their short life span inhibits their ability to get through long, drawn out negotiations with the GC. Speaker is unusual in her ability to communicate really effectively with member species of the GC AND her willingness to directly interact with them. She will ask them what they have to offer and offer what she has to give, which is how Akarak interact with each other.
The Laru running the rest area just wants everyone to get along, and to feed people snacks. Her offspring is growing up, and she really wants zyr to feel about other sapients the way that Laru feel about each other.
Everyone here is so wildly at odds, so incredibly subversive of their communities of origin, and at the same time trying to paper over how at odds with their communities of origin they really are. The days at the One Stop starkly highly how un-representative they are of their species, while at the same time offering a bridge between species. They are not people who _hate_ or want to have nothing to do with their own species. They are very committed to their own people.
That complicated mixture helps each member ease through their current, personal crisis (Pei’s decision about shimmering and about her relationship with Ashby, Roveg’s return to Quelin space) and provide meaningful assistance to the others (Speaker helps Pei reframe her decision, Pei creates a framework for Roveg’s return to Quelin that greatly improves his chance of seeing his sons and the places he misses). Best of all, Roveg takes his sim skills and the awareness of how forgotten the Akarak truly are, and uses that to make a sim for Akarak while he is in Quelin space. We can see the opportunity created, once it becomes possible for Akarak to experience what it would be like to have their own planet, and not always be seals within seals within seals.
When Topu, the Laru offspring, wants to bring cake to Speaker — I mean, Roveg, managed it, how hard can it be? — and winds up being a medical emergency, we finally get an Exodan on scene. It’s really more of a cameo than anything else, but the presence of the doctor highlights again how prejudice and bigotry within the GC inhibits those with desperately needed skills from being able to use them to help people who desperately want them. And wow, does that hit hard, in our world, in which that is all too frequently the experience of doctors of color (and, honestly, also all too often women doctors as well. Still.).
My daughter loved these books and has reread them, maybe more than once. They are amazing. I highly recommend the entire series. They are a delight. There is a lot to think about. They are fantastic stories and they are powerful advocates for how we can make our communities better, in the ways that many of the characters are trying to make their communities, and the GC, better. Without being annoyingly preachy.
Altho seriously, book two is brutal, so brace yourself for that one.