Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)

by Becky Chambers

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

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