| Some science fiction predicts grim, dire futures that unsettle and unnerve. Some science fiction goes pew-pew! And Becky Chambers' science fiction soothes, it repairs; people talk about their feelings and work things out. They drink tea. As WIRED senior editor Jason Kehe writes in his profile of the author of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Psalm for the Wild-Built, "Chambers is, herself, the tea of our times, a soothing soothsayer whose well-meaning characters act out a fragrant, curative optimism. This makes Chambers some combination of two things: kind of sort of extremely boring, and one of the best hopes for the future." Hopepunk, in fact, is what Chambers' brand of storytelling has come to be called; the unspooling of kind, decent narratives about kind, decent people is, in this numbed cynical moment, "punk as hell," as she puts it. And the reporting of the piece was a kind, decent experience as well, notes Kehe, who, like Chambers, grew up closeted in Southern California. "Talking to someone like Becky made me a little gladder of—a little more grateful for—my own place in the world, my history, my upbringing. And I think that's ultimately what she wants for all her readers. In her careful and ultrasensitive way, she lightens the load." Sarah Fallon | Deputy Editor, WIRED |
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