A Closed and Common Orbit

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

If you haven't read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, I'd recommend reading it before opening A Closed Common Orbit. Technically you COULD read them non-sequentially as they focus on different characters and each have a contained story arc, BUT you would miss out on some fantastic world building, and some crucial details that explain how our protagonist, Sidra, ended up where she is.

Sidra is an AI designed to interface throughout a ship, but she has instead been installed in a human body kit - a very illegal one at that. Our story begins with her trying to get her bearings, accept the kit's limitations, and create a backstory while working around her protocol not to lie. She lands with her guardian of sorts, Pepper, on Corion and tries to find a way to exist both in her new form and on solid land instead of in space.

Now I'm a bit of a sucker for the philosophical debate about the rights of sentient AI's. Do they classify as sapient enough to have the same rights as natural born sapients? Are the circuits and electrical pathways that give them signals of distress or a sense of rightness any less valid that the neurons that provide those same feelings to organic beings? You can probably tell where I fall from how I've phrased these questions. In the book a lot of this debate is explored in the friendship between Sidra & and Auleon named Tak, as well as flashbacks of Pepper and the woman who raised her - another ship's AI named Owl.

While this is the second Wayfarer's book, the tone is different from the first. Where Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a fun ride through space with a crew of misfits, this is a story of self-awareness, what it means to be alive, and how each of us shapes our own identity & our own place in the world. It is a book about accepting those who are 'other,' whom society has told us are 'too different' or 'less than' and giving everyone an equal space to be. Chambers voice is still unmistakable, and her humor and the even flow of her storytelling I so loved in book 1 is still present, but the subject matter digs a little deeper than an outer space adventure story.

Favorite Quotes:

“She was glad to have met someone who liked to read.” 

“Life is terrifying. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we're doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it. If you believe you have control, then you believe you're at the top. And if you're at the top, then people who aren't like you... well, they've got to be somewhere lower, right? Every species does this. Does it again and again and again. Doesn't matter if they do it to themselves, or another species, or someone they created.” 

“I do.’ Pepper nodded seriously. ‘I’d like the left side of the menu, please.” 

  “When I see the ocean, I feel calm. It makes me want to’ – to keep eating candy – ‘to keep going. To keep trying new things. To keep living.”