Every novel is a story, but some novels have a story about their journey to publication. Becky Sawyer’s Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet has both. Sawyer writes for multiple genre web-sites and like many such writers, had aspirations for fiction writing, so she launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for Long Way and the book was eventually picked up and published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton in 2015 and published recently (July 2016) by Harper Voyager in the US. The novel takes place in a far future where the galaxy is populated (referred to as The Galactic Commons) and humanity is just one of many intelligent species who traverse the spaceways and seek to eke out a living and a sustainable life. Humanity is in a state of Earthly Diaspora and is still fairly new to the Galactic Commons. Into the story enters our central character, a clerk/administrator from Mars named Rosemary Harper who joins the crew of the Wayfarer just as they are about to accept a job tunneling through a wormhole in a relatively unexplored area space where a civilization of once hostile but now potentially allies lives. Rosemary’s hiring was the final cog in the machine that allowed the Wayfarer to be awarded the major tunneling contract, it gave the Wayfarer polish and organization.
As the Wayfarer ramps to this new tunneling job, Chambers introduces the motley crew of the Wayfarer; the human captain Ashby, who is neither gruff, nor militaristic, but rather a fair man who sees his crew as his family; the lizard-like Sissix; Lovey (short for Lovelace), the A.I. running the Wayfarer with whom engineer/mechanic Jenks is in love; Jenks’ outgoing, bubbly engineering partner Kizzy (who constantly made me think of Amy of Futurama); Corbin, the scientist who ensures the algae required for keeping the ship and its atmosphere going; and the multi-being collective pilot Ohan; and perhaps my favorite character, Dr. Chef – an insect like alien, who as his name implies is both Doctor and Cook, and one of the last remaining beings of his species.
While the plot keeps the characters going along quite well, the strength of this novel is the characters themselves to a very large degree, and to a smaller, but intimately connected degree, the future galaxy Chambers has created for these characters. The novel works quite episodically, with each character getting their own origin story. It is initially implied that Rosemary might have something to hide, or something from which she is running when she joins the Wayfarer, and in a smart move that parallels her interactions with the characters, just what that something is does not reveal itself until we the reader and the characters get to know (and really like) Rosemary. Setting Rosemary, the newest member of the Wayfarer, as the point character also gives us the same view of the ship and its crew, it puts the reader on the same level as her. A simple and tried-and-true way to frame a novel with such a cast of characters, but when handled as well as Chambers handles it here, it feels genuinely elegant.
While there are high stakes by the end of the novel and grim backgrounds for some of the characters, on the whole, Long Way is a very upbeat, forward-thinking, and optimistic science fiction novel. Chambers doesn’t let species lines interfere with any of the relationships either from a friendship or romantic level. On the whole, the majority of the characters, at least those who are on the Wayfarer are treated with a level of respect that trickles down from the captain. I also appreciated how Chambers made her protagonist not a space marine, star pilot, or even a scientist, but rather an administrator and how critical that role is to the success of The Wayfarer and how critical it is implied that role is to any starship seeking to be successful.
In the best ways, I was reminded of one of my favorite, if not very favorite, science fiction show FarScape. A great central character aboard a ship (not a living ship, though) with wonderfully drawn alien characters. Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is very much a character driven story and feels like what I hope will be the first of a series of stories about these characters. This is a novel that would be near the top of the list of books I’d recommend as exactly what epitomizes excellent Space Opera / Space Based Science Fiction.
Mark Chitty reviewed this book when it published in the UK in 2015 for SFFWorld.
Highly Recommended
© 2016 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | July 2016
Harper Voyager | 464 Pages
http://www.otherscribbles.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
TBR!