Comment by mercutio2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mercutio2 | Hacker News Reader

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[not the original person you asked the question of]

I cannot stand Becky Chambers. I've tried to read her three times, and after about 20 pages I give up. Of the thousand or so novels I've read in the last 20 years, I've done that with about 5 books.

One of my friends asked my why I was so vituperative about Becky Chambers. I said it was just so bad.

They pointed out that I really, really sounded like I was channeling the "I am a man and I really want everyone's favorite things to be what men like in Sci Fi" trope.

I don't think this is accurate! I like all sorts of feminist sci-fi.

But I loath characters who sit around and don't do anything much while some low-stakes activity is happening and there's a bunch of angst that strikes me as unimportant whining not driving any plot.

So, fair enough, I have only encountered that style of writing from female authors. But I don't think it's a particularly damning individual preference.

I happened to love Murderbot (and A Memory Called Empire), though, per the original point of discussion for this post.

I absolutely adore Becky Chambers (and Murderbot, incidentally), but I also love low stakes sci-fi.

I want more stories about people just... living unremarkable lives in remarkable places. Like, I don't need to read about Batman, but reading about the guy who runs the bodega in Gotham City? Yum yum yum, that's absolutely food for me.

I describe Chambers to others as "cozy" sci-fi.

That said, I think her different works hit differently. The Monk and Robot series is a really poignant pair of novellas about what it means to be human in a solarpunk world.

The Wayfarer series (Long Way to a Small Angry Planet) is slice of life stories of people caught in awkward situations around space. It's like, "What are people on the fringes doing in Star Trek -- not Picard types, but like, construction crews or black market dealers or space communists or people who get stuck at a motel because the highway shuts down. What if Firefly was a little less high energy.

I disagree with your assessments a little, but not enough to make a fuss. I think it's absolutely fair to say, "This wasn't to my taste".

That said, I'm also queer, poly, and use neopronouns, so I think I may be primed for science fiction that takes the transhumanism language and explores those topics in ways that doesn't treat those topics are scandalous or shocking.

I've read a couple of Chambers' books and found them entertaining but I was frustrated that the books didn't go about answering the big questions that seemed to be at the heart of the world.

I really liked A Psalm for the Wild-Built but was hoping to learn more about the robots but then the second one came out and it was a lot of shallow philosophizing on the meaning of life that was more aimed at a level for YA books. There's nothing wrong with YA novels but that's not what I was looking for.

Yeah, I’m not saying it’s mandatory to like all of Tor’s authors but it seemed somewhat unlikely that the entire list would be female. I consider Chambers a comfort read, but I wouldn’t say she has all that much in common with, say, Ursula Vernon or Nghi Vo.

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