Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)

by Becky Chambers

‘From the ground, we stand. From our ships, we live. By the stars, we hope.’

What I mean is that what lay before me was a species other than myself, and so any connection to my own mortality, my own eventual fate, was at first safely distant.

the ended lives I did not grieve for because I did not understand them fully. I did not see myself in them, and therefore it did not matter.

When we decompose under the right conditions, we turn into soil – something awfully like it, anyway. You see? We’re not detached from Earth. We turn into earth.

I crossed paths with one of these on my way to the resource centre – not an elderly person, as you might have expected, but a man somewhere in his middle years.

Mirrors real world aasumptions and realities

‘Knowledge should always be free,’ she said. ‘What people do with it is up to them.’

He didn’t want to feel like this. He wanted to be okay. He wanted to live. He wanted to live so badly.

She was Exodan already. Maybe, in her daughter’s eyes, it was the Fleet that wasn’t Exodan anymore.

‘From the stars, came the ground. From the ground, we stood. To the ground, we return.’

He was cold now, and heavy, but those things would soon change. He’d followed his ancestors. He’d rejoined their ancient cycle. They would keep him warm.

I don’t know if this will make sense, but I keep wondering where we’re going to draw the line. Nobody’s talking about replacing pilots or bug farmers or teachers, even though AIs could do all of those, because those are fun jobs. Jobs that mean something, right? But I liked my job. There were things in it that I found fun. I thought what I did was meaningful.

‘Either we are all worthy of the Commons, dear Tamsin, or none of us are.’