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.’

‘The main cylinder.’

Begins the description of the Fleet ship

‘Six homes to a hex, six hexes to a neighbourhood, six neighbourhoods to a district, thirty-six districts to a deck, four decks to a . . . ? ‘Segment.’ ‘A segment. And six segments to a homesteader.’

‘Honeycomb.’

Yet it was a quiet grief, an everyday grief, a heaviness and a lightness all at once. I was overwhelmed, yet there was no way to express that beyond silence.

Perhaps none of us can truly explain death. Perhaps none of us should.

‘Let him be,’ Grandma Ko said. Mom sighed. ‘He’s so impossible right now.’ ‘Yes, well,’ Grandma Ko said. ‘You were a dipshit at that age, too.’

death is not an end. It’s a pattern. A catalyst for change. Death is recycling.

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

The guilt lingered, even so. Ghosts were imaginary, but hauntings were real.

death must feel like nothing more than a ‘dreamless sleep’.

learn nothing of your subjects, and you will disrupt them. Learn something of your subjects, and you will disrupt them.

‘Our species doesn’t operate by reality. It operates by stories. Cities are a story. Money is a story. Space was a story, once. A king tells us a story about who we are and why we’re great, and that story is enough to make us go kill people who tell a different story. Or maybe the people kill the king because they don’t like his story and have begun to tell themselves a different one.

Figure out what you love, specifically. In detail. Figure out what you want to keep. Figure out what you want to change. Otherwise, it’s not love. It’s clinging to the familiar – to the comfortable – and that’s a dangerous thing for us short-term thinkers to do.