my journey with this book
how I found it
The day before going on holiday I was browsing a second hand book shop with a close friend in Wood Green. Said friend is very well read, I think she has read most books to be honest.
She pointed this one out to me and said the author is really cool, and she crowdfunded the book.
I picked it up and bought it, then I had nearly finished it before even getting on plane the next day.
why I love it
“When watching the latest Star Trek series I read something somewhere that described Star Trek as a Utopia. And my mind exploded.”When I started working in a properly paid job in my early twenties, I used my disposable income to go the cinema more. I then realised I loved dystopia, anything that felt end of the worldy. Even if it was super Hollywood and very mainstream I just loved the feeling that the world had ended.
This led me to exploring the literary world of dystopia, so I searched the internet “best dystopian books” and the first one on the list was “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood and I was completely hooked. This is when I started to read the genre of dystopia and Sci-Fi and I started with all of Atwood’s sci-fi.
When watching the latest Star Trek series I read something somewhere that described Star Trek as a Utopia. And my mind exploded. I didn't understand it, my love for sci-fi and fantasy genre was through the lens of dystopia. How could I enjoy something the viewer considered to be Utopian????
Well..... as the new series, plus spin off series “Pickard”, the Utopian Federation might not be as Utopian as we realised, so maybe I knew this all along.... Especially when the Star Trek series that was most on TV when I was a kid was the series called “Star trek Enterprise” which re-watching now I think is more American exceptionalism.
To go full circle and explain why this realisation that some sci-fi is considered Utopian, the way that Becky Chambers builds worlds is Utopian to me. Yes there are still nuances and problems in the universe, however her world building is absent of hetronormativism and is void of a lot of human societal concepts. To quote her self from a podcast I listened to recently;
“Humans are not the default template for all life in the universe, that goes both biologically and culturally”(Females in Fantasy, 2019)And what is Utopian specifically about her world building is also best explained in her own words;
“Gender is cultural, biology is diverse, to cooperate in a society like that you have to be open minded and set aside your own biases.”(Females in Fantasy, 2019)and as she explains;
“Humans do not fit into a nice neat binary, even from a purely physiological point of view”(Females in Fantasy, 2019)So, yeah. I love her book because ultimately her narrative in terms of her point of view is Utopian, and I want to live in her head please.