Record of a Spaceborn Few

People talk about the "Wayfarers series", but in most senses the books are quite unalike. One was a roadtrip story. One was about identity and bodies. This one is about sustainability, about a species finding its place, and visiting vs belonging (OK, so plenty of identity there at different levels, but in a different way to Orbit). They do have some things in common, apart from the universe they inhabit and a few characters. They are all relatively low-stakes stories: What's going on matters deeply to those involved, but most of the time they're not about to change the world. Certainly not save the world.

This book is... slices of life. It has lots of characters, which was hard to keep track of at first, and they don't all interact very strongly. It's effectively a series of vignettes looking into parts of life in the Exodus Fleet (a series of generation ships upon which much of humanity embarked when Earth couldn't support them any more). Quite a lot of thought has gone into how things might work in an obviously-closed system, where what you have with you is all that you have for centuries. And because this is Chambers, as much thought has gone into the social implications as the technical.

Unlike the books that came before, although the stakes of the story are low, the scope of the backstory is gigantic. It's about the near-extinction of humanity, and then our species finding a place in the galaxy, seen through the eyes of normal folk. This, combined with the sustainability aspects that are meaningful for me, hit me quite hard. It was one of those books where every so often there was a gut punch, and I had to stop reading and reflect.

"The guilt lingered, even so. Ghosts were imaginary, but hauntings were real."

Well, I didn't cry at this one, even though at the funeral I wanted to. It's amazing to me how Chambers just keeps piling people on people, building up history and widening the scope of her universe in each novel.

"Make sure people remember that a closed system is a closed system even when you can’t see the edges."

By the halfway point, I was totally hooked - being a little uncertain from the start made the joy all the sweeter, watching the records of these Spaceborn Few unfold. Morality stories, inter-species exchanges, appreciating what you have and who you are, moving on, letting go, getting old, growing up. It's all here, skillfully blended to provide a vivid, harmonious glimpse into a galaxy of possibilities and variety.

Very much worth buying if the other two appealed in the slightest, and to be re-read one day as a whole trilogy, until more comes to engage, excite and contemplate in years to come. I hope!