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kareilaIn a happy coincidence, someone I follow on Twitter posted a link this morning to this Wired article that interviews Becky Chambers and talks generally about her contributions to the SF genre. The author of the article makes a particularly insightful observation that as the Wayfarer series progresses, less and less actually happens. This perfectly explains why I thought that the first book was too busy, the fourth book was too sparse, and the second and third books were just right.
This new Monk and Robot series, while still falling under the umbrella of hopeful and -- dare I say cozy? -- science fiction, is definitely not a space opera. There's not a whisper of interstellar travel. Humans are living out perfectly satisfactory lives on some distant moon in apparent seclusion from the greater universe. They worship their small gods, and pursue their small joys, and generally live in harmony, and don't think much about the fact that at some point in their past, their robots mysteriously gained consciousness and disappeared into the wild, not to be seen again for generations... until our protagonist, a humble tea-monk, encounters one when setting out on an inexplicable pilgrimage.
The ensuing conversations -- their attempts to understand their respective divergent cultures and perspectives, revise faulty assumptions, and generally help each other navigate the road they find themselves on -- make even an existential crisis seem like a mere hiccup in a long and promising journey. I can't wait to see where they go next.
This new Monk and Robot series, while still falling under the umbrella of hopeful and -- dare I say cozy? -- science fiction, is definitely not a space opera. There's not a whisper of interstellar travel. Humans are living out perfectly satisfactory lives on some distant moon in apparent seclusion from the greater universe. They worship their small gods, and pursue their small joys, and generally live in harmony, and don't think much about the fact that at some point in their past, their robots mysteriously gained consciousness and disappeared into the wild, not to be seen again for generations... until our protagonist, a humble tea-monk, encounters one when setting out on an inexplicable pilgrimage.
The ensuing conversations -- their attempts to understand their respective divergent cultures and perspectives, revise faulty assumptions, and generally help each other navigate the road they find themselves on -- make even an existential crisis seem like a mere hiccup in a long and promising journey. I can't wait to see where they go next.
