halojedha | To be taught if fortunate by Becky Chambers

5/5. I stayed up til 11.30pm finishing it while E slept beside me. A haunting, thoughtful, beautiful and profoundly moving novella. Four human astronauts go on a decade long mission to a red dwarf solar system to survey its four habitable planets. While they are traveling between them at half the speed of light, enzyme patches transform their bodies to adapt them to each new environment.

This is breathtaking. It's an ode to the joy and wonder of exploration and scientific discovery. It's glorious, imaginative glimpses into the extraordinary beauty of alien flora and fauna. It's about how we enter new spaces, how much space we take up, how we harm and are harmed. It's about the impossibility of seeing more than a tiny slice of the new life we encounter, and the arrogance and humility of thinking that mere glimpse has meaning. It's a rousing invitation to sort our shit out and get into space. It's an eerie, mournful glimpse into a dark period of Earth's future.

Oh, and it's a queer high functioning polycule consisting of trans, ace and neurodiverse characters, at least two of whom are (I think) of colour. Yay, queers in space! But the sex positivity and queerness is so background compared to the main thrust of the story, it barely gets a mention in passing.

I couldn't put it down. It's left my mind and heart ringing. Stunning.