But the biggest challenge facing her is this: Lovelace, THIS Lovelace, didn’t ask for these circumstances and she is fairly certain she doesn’t want to stay in the “kit.” Since it is a purpose for which she wasn’t designed, why would Lovelace want to try and be anything other than what she actually is, especially human? If she is discovered to be an AI in an illegal body, the consequences will be disastrous for her, Pepper, and Blue.
Lovelace is taken off the Wayfarer and home with Pepper, the tech who installed her in the “kit.” Lovelace moves into the spare room in Pepper’s, and her partner Blue’s, home in the Sixtop district of a small, out of the way world. When reactivated, she finds herself housed in a “kit,” an illegal, artificial, human-like body, with no memory of what happened before her re-activation or how/why she is where she is. Due to a series of circumstances, recounted in A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Lovelace was subjected to a total system shut-down and reboot. Lovelace is the AI (artificial intelligence) for the Wayfarer, a small ship that creates stable hyperspace lanes or wormholes. Now Chambers is back with her follow-up novel, A Closed and Common Orbit, and it is glorious! The novel was nominated for the Kitschies Award for Best Debut, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Tiptree Award, The British Fantasy Awards for Best Newcomer, and the Arthur C. A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is an unabashed space opera, a bit short on plot, but well outfitted with a wonderful world populated by interesting and relatable characters.
Sci-fi has long been languishing in multiple dystopian visions exploring just how wrong our world, and many others, could possibly go. Published last year, A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is a breath of fresh air in the genre of science fiction.
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