Name: To Be Taught, If Fortunate
ISBN: 9781982688851

To Be Taught, If Fortunate

At the turn of the twenty-second century, scientists make a breakthrough in human spaceflight. Through a revolutionary method known as somaforming, astronauts can survive in hostile environments off Earth using synthetic biological supplementations. With the fragile body no longer a limiting factor, human beings are at last able to explore exoplanets long suspected to harbour life.

What Hacker News says

jlcxApr 2025

The novella "To Be Taught, If Fortunate," the only Becky Chambers book not part of either of those series, is also good.

thread

morelispNov 2022

You may enjoy Becky Chambers's To Be Taught, if Fortunate and Ruthanna Emrys's A Half-Built Garden. Neither is very Butlerian in its writing but they's taking aim at the same question of how we may do space colonization without space colonialism.

thread

morelispAug 2020

Of recent laureates I really loved This Is How you Lose The Time War as well as Binti (this is a trilogy, but combined form something novel-length). Becky Chambers's recent novella To Be Taught, if Fortunate was a major step up imo, and the more utopian view of space exploration (less SpaceX hype machine, more cooperative citizen science) is incredibly welcome for me. (I also liked her previous novels, but level of prose did not match the high-quality world-building - but if you are an sf fan you are probably used to this.) I'd suggest Aliette de Bodard's Xuya universe to anyone who likes The Culture, Immersion is often recommended but the one that's stuck most with me is The Shipmaker. If you like Douglas Adams, Catherynne Valente's Space Opera is in a similar vein but also beautifully extra. If you like your sf humor darker and more muted, try Johanna Sinisalo's The Core of the Sun.

Other than Binti none of these are a multi-novel series, which I agree is way too common. ("Thanks" for that among many other terrible directions in sf literature, Robert Jordan.)

thread

DavidPiperDec 2019

Lots of great recommendations here. I'll add the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers:

- The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

- A Closed and Common Orbit

- Record of a Spaceborn Few

(Her more recent "To Be Taught, If Fortunate" is unrelated to the series but also a great read.)

EDIT: Formatting.

thread

Theory5Mar 2021

I read sci-fi. The idea that you only "write what you are/know" is laughable. Sure, if you write a book with such offensive ideas about another culture or race, you're a terrible person. But if you research, interview, try to understand, and come at it for a work of fiction, that is what large swathes of fiction is!

I read books about spaceships, about robots, about humanity that's split off into different evolutionary groups.

I credit part of my immediate acceptance of LBGT+ and people on the sci-fi books I read as a kid, where changing your sex/gender was as simple as a 15 min visit to a shop (or similar), and the protagonists switched genders or sexs regularly. Hell, or some where neutral (in one case, they were neutral, because they used to be a warship, and the author used the female pronouns to describe all characters, even men! Great book series, by the way. Ancillary Justice was the first one).

Or with two characters fall in love, when they're not human, or not male and female or whatever.

One of my favorite authors (two of them, they're sisters, SK Dunstall) wrote some amazing male protagonists (and female ones). Not once while reading their linesman series did i ever stop and go "they shouldn't write about a male protagonist". Hell, at times their male protagonist was better written as a male protagonist than books I've read written by men!

There's a book on my reading list now, (to be taught, if fortunate) about humans genetically modified for specific environments, like space!

The discussions these books generate is important, in many cases. Some are meant to, others meant to just be enjoyed. Intent is important as is accurate research and characterization, when possible. Sure, if someone writes a book that's purposely harmful, or accidentally (but with a huge, disproportionate impact) harmful, then the book should be reviewed and maybe issues addressed to the author or by those who sell it. But only when its extremely harmful as a whole.

But the important thing is, these are all fiction. There's good fiction, bad fiction, and 90% of it is subjective. Fiction gives you the license to go beyond who you are, what you know, what ties you to the real world. And invites those discussions, invites people to learn more.

thread