Literature / Wayfarers

"Scared means we want to live."

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

— Exodan proverb

The Wayfarers series is a Science Fiction series by Becky Chambers. The series is mostly episodic, focusing more on internal and/or interpersonal conflicts than an overarching Myth Arc. The cast tends to rotate between novels, though past characters and events do get referenced from time to time.

• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (2014): Rosemary Harper is desperate to escape her planetside life on Mars and live as a spacer. So, when a clerk job on the multispecies tunneling ship Wayfarer becomes available, she doesn't hesitate to pack her bags and hit the nearest transport. However, none of Rosemary's schooling has prepared her for the reality of living with the Aandrisk pilot Sissix, the Sianat Pair navigator Ohan, the Grum cook and medic Dr. Chef, and the ship's AI Lovelace. Rosemary isn't the only human on the Wayfarer, though: there's the engineers Kizzy and Jenkins, the fuel specialist Corbin, and the ship's captain, Ashby Santoso. Captain Ashby was the one who hired Rosemary since his bookkeeping is atrocious, and the new tunneling job he recently accepted will require clearer filing. As the Wayfarer makes its long journey to its next mission, Rosemary will learn how to adapt to a spacer's way of life, all while worrying that her new crew mates might find the reason behind her departure from Mars.
• A Closed and Common Orbit (2016): Sidra is a sentient AI who used to reside inside of a spaceship until circumstances beyond her control forced her to relocate. Pepper was the engineer who installed Sidra into her new body, a kit designed to look and act Human. Pepper herself is a designer baby who only knew a life of sorting junk until a fateful accident let her escape the factory that bred her. Pepper's past and Sidra's present share more similarities than either of them realize, and it will take Sidra some soul searching and hard thinking before she is able to carve out a space for herself on Port Coriol.
• Record of a Spaceborn Few (2018): The Exodus Fleet is a group of spaceships born from humanity's hubris. Ever since humankind left their failing home planet and took up residence in space, Exodans do whatever they can to pave the way for a better future while never forgetting their ancestor's failings. The spaceship Asteria is home to five such Exodans: Tessa, a tinkerer with two young children; Kip, a restless and bored teenager; Eyas, a caretaker tasked with tending to the deceased; and Isabel, an academic Archivist. Visiting Asteria is the planetside immigrant Sawyer, who hopes to make a home among his fellow humans, and the Harmagian ethnographer Gluh'loloan who documents her stay with her host, Isabel. As the days drift by, the Exodans will be faced with harsh truths and uncertainties about the choices they've made in their pasts, or ones they might have to make in the future if they want to continue living fulfilling lives.
• The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (2021): The Five-Hop One-Stop is something of a galactic truck stop for long-haul spacers, owned by a Laru named Ouloo with help from her child, Tupo. Situated on the otherwise unremarkable planet of Gora, the Five-Hop serves all manner of customers from Aeluon cargo-runners like Pei to Akarak linguists like Speaker and even Quelin exiles like Roveg. All three of these aliens have made a pit stop at the Five-Hop for their own individual reasons, but there's only one that keeps them there: a freak technological failure has put a halt to all traffic both to and from Gora. Unable to do anything except wait for news, they'll have nothing but time to ponder their past choices and mingle with each other. As the wait stretches into days, each sapient will get something unexpected out of the experience that they might not have had otherwise... both for the better and for the worst.

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This series provides examples of:

Series-Wide

• Actual Pacifist: Exodans, such as Ashby, who embraced nonviolence when they left Earth in order to better survive.
• Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Appearances aside, the different alien races are more similar in many ways than some human cultures. Tastes in art and food and entertainment are almost universally adjacent. Including alien punk rock. "Socks... match My Hat!"
• Aliens Speaking English:
  • Subverted — the language that everyone in the Galactic Commons speaks is called Klip (short for Kliptorigan), which A Closed and Common Orbit reveals to be another language entirely when Jane/Pepper starts learning it. It seems to be a simplified language designed for use between GC species - Sissix laments its lack of subtlety compared to her native Reskitkish (which requires speaking while inhaling, something humans at least find challenging)
  • Most people on the Exodus Fleet speak Ensk (a heavily modified form of English), although Klip vocabulary is increasingly present in the speech of the younger generation.
• The Ark: The Exodus fleet was filled with poor refugees from Earth after the collapse. They dismantled their cities to build the ships, then flew off into interplanetary space without any real idea where they were going. Fortunately for their descendants, they were eventually found by an Aeluon scout.
• Artistic License – Physics: Though the series makes no claims of being 'hard' science fiction, a few examples stand out:
  • The Wayfarer's drive is somehow powered by algae, as are most other ships. However, the "bore" which tunnels through the fabric of spacetime is powered by "ambi", harvested from near black holes and a far denser and more valuable fuel source. Kizzy mentions that the ship couldn't even hold the amount of algae you'd need to switch the bore on, let alone build a whole tunnel. Where they get the energy from to grow the algae (the job of algaeists like Corbin) is not mentioned.
  • Likewise, in A Closed and Common Orbit, Sidra's android body is recharged by its own motion. If this was a supplement to electrical charging, like regenerative brakes, it would make sense. If it's the only method, as implied by Sidra's description of how her body kit works, then it's a form of perpetual motion and impossible under the laws of thermodynamics.
  • In Spaceborn Few, the Exodus Fleet ships are likewise powered by movement of the crew inside them. Again, this is extremely unlikely to provide the required power for a massive Generation Ship.
• Bizarre Alien Senses: Inverted by the Aeluon, who evolved without hearing and communicate using colours on their cheek patches. After contact with aliens who used sound to communicate, they had to invent implants which give them a sense of hearing and the ability to process and produce audible speech. As a result, there is no native Aeluon spoken language.
• Bizarre Alien Sexes:
  • The Aeluon have four genders — female, male, shon (who switch back and forth between male and female), and those who are neither.
  • Similarly, all Grum start life as a female, reproduce asexually, transition to male once they're past childbearing age, and then end life as nonbinary.
  • Laru are born as nonbinary and reveal their gender when they reach maturity.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • The Akarak, a race of bird-like aliens, believe strongly in only taking what they need. They didn't even have a concept of taking more than that before a different species, the Harmagians, colonised their homeworld and introduced it to them. The Akarak pirates who attack the Wayfarer end up negotiating what they will and won't take despite having the entire crew at their mercy, because that's how Akarak culture works (and Human Rosemary figuring this out is what defuses the whole situation).
  • The Harmagians are mostly similar to Humans, except for their species' emphasis on manners, especially when it comes to the relationship between hosts and guests. Guests who do not behave properly are considered as bad as criminals.
  • Most Sianat live in Pairs, and Sianat Pairs are referred to with plural pronouns (we/us, they/them) at all times. One member of the Pair is the physical Sianat creature, the other is a virus which affects the creature's brain (called the Whisperer). The virus gives them the ability to see through space-time, making them the best navigators of wormholes in the galaxy, but it slowly kills them. Sharing this navigational skill with other species (even through software) is considered heresy by the Sianat, and to actually attempt to cure the virus is murder.
    • The minority of Solitary Sianats—those who either cured themselves of the Whisperer, or refused to be infected with it and become a Pair in the first place—are expected to live out their lives in a colony for "Heretics" like them, separate from the rest of the Sianat race. Solitaries are also, accordingly, referred to with singular pronouns (I/me, he/him, she/her, or xe/xyr).
  • The most notable case, however, is the Toremi, who no-one else in the galaxy can figure out. They process the entire universe in terms of patterns, and view conformity as so intrinsically good that when Toremi dispute their particular subgroup's orthodoxy, they will swiftly form a new subgroup, hostile to their former one, in which to insist upon their new orthodoxy, an approach that has left them with many factions engaged in a constant war with every other faction.
• Colonized Solar System: When Earth suffered "The Collapse" the wealthy followed Elon Musk's lead and claimed Mars, moving out through the Solar System from there, though most other bodies seem to be just mining bases or research posts. While the less fortunate masses built improvised Generation Ships and left Sol entirely.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The fate of anyone who gets targeted by gene-cutters, which essentially mutilate their target from the inside-out. Grum doctors learned pretty quickly that it was easier to Mercy Kill the victims than try to save them.
• Cuddle Bug: Aandrisk are very touch oriented and can spend hours cuddling, and do so at the drop of a hat. When Aandrisk are separated from others of their species, they often get touch starved, with Sissix considering it almost painful that she has to hold back from cuddling with others when it wouldn't be considered appropriate.
• Designer Babies:
  • Genetic engineering and the eugenics that follow is a recurring subject with a variety of laws intersecting it across species, with the most universal laws being allowing prenatal gene therapy in the case of extreme disability and banning cloning.
  • Pepper is a member of a large group of genetically-engineered children meant to serve as slave labor.
• Dying Race: The Grum. There are only about three hundred of them left in the whole galaxy, none of them female. Given how they reduced themselves to this state by fighting a terrible war among themselves, these few survivors have collectively decided that the fact they can have no more children is ultimately for the best, and let their species quietly go extinct.
• Earth That Was: Earth suffered through "The Collapse" which was apparently an environmental disaster that made the ecosystem uninhabitable by humans. Humanity evacuated in Generation Ships or settled on Mars. By the start of the story, the GC has helped restore the environment so that parts are inhabitable again, making it Earth That Used to Be Better.
• The Empire: Harmagians used to enslave other species to enrich their vast empire. Ironic considering their body are so fragile outside water that they rely on motorized carts for movement and have to regularly moisturize their skin so they can breathe, they even prefer laboriously move through a path from bottled water when the cart breaks since other species lifting them can risk poisoning through the trace of soap and fragrance.
• Eternal English: Averted; though obviously the books are written in modern English, this is a Translation Convention and the main 'Human' language is called Ensk, implied to be a future mutation of English nigh-incomprehensible to present-day speakers.^note 'Ensk' is Icelandic for 'English'.
• Exposed Extraterrestrials:
  • Aandrisks have no nudity taboo, but wear clothes while off-world to accommodate other species. In the first book, when Rosemary, Ashby, and Sissix visit Hashkath, one of the first things Sissix does is take off her pants and throw them back into the shuttle.
  • In The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, an Aeluon wears clothes and shoes, while a Laru, a Quelin and an Akarak all say they can't imagine wanting to wear them. (The Akarak are, however, stuck in a mecha suit when not on their own vessels. The cockpit of the mecha suit is reasonably roomy for the Akarak, with the suit itself being a similar size to other sapient species, so it certainly doesn't fit like clothing.)
• Fantastic Drug: "Smash" which is vaguely analogous to marijuana, being a plant which is technically illegal and provides a mild high. Kizzy also mentions "daffy", a type of illegal hallucinogen, when she tries to describe what it's like being inside a tunnel-in-progress, as well as "sophro", a legal version which you have to take before certain exams when studying for a tunnelling license. Jenks is shown to be fond of smoking redreed, which is like tobacco but without the risk of cancer or black lung (although Aeluons are allergic to it).
• Fantastic Racism:
  • The Quelin despise clones, no thanks to a brutal interplanetary war involving cloning and eugenics, and openly refer to Corbin as an abomination. If their representative is anything to go by, they don't think too highly of humans, either.
  • Some of the Toremi (such a Toum, a POV character shown near the end) hate the other GC species, mainly because they don't follow the same beliefs as the Toremi — namely that everyone must think the exact same way, with dissenters getting torn apart.
  • Exodans despise Martian values and cultures, as they're descended from the rich people who abandoned them to die on Earth until they built the Fleet and their lifestyle contrasts with the Exodans' views on No Poverty and refusing violence. The slow introduction of Martian and alien culture is thus a contested one, with one character bemoaning that her children are learning more Klip than Ensk. They sometimes extend this to aliens as well, with a drunken Exodan yelling at Gluh'loloan that she has nothing to teach them.
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: It exists in this universe, but has been banned due to the problems of temporal disruption vastly outweighing the gains. Wormholes and pinhole drive avoid it by taking an Extra-Dimensional Shortcut.
• The Federation: The Galactic Commons, a galaxy-spanning union of sentient species founded after the Aeulons managed to defeat Harmagians empire with Aandrisk brokering the peace. Humans have only recently become members, less than a century after their encounter with GC. Every member species gets the technology they need regardless of what they can provide to GC (acknowledged matter-of-factly by humans and non-humans regarding human meager contribution to GC), and refugees managing to reach GC jurisdiction get all the help they need to be self-sufficient, even if they might not be eligible for citizenship.
  
  On the other hand, the Akarasks bitterly withdrew their application to GC which went nowhere after nearly two centuries of bureaucracy due to their short lifespan (diplomats keep dying before reaching an agreement) and unique non-oxygen-breathing nature (even well-traveled GC citizens though sapience is impossible without oxygen), their homeworld is no longer habitable due to Hamargian colonization, yet GC's own regulation prevents them from terraforming another planet for the Akarasks. The GC is also willing to turn a blind eye to Quelin's use of penal labor and tried to open contact with violent aliens in return for precious resources though they later abandon the approach after violent skirmishes.
• Generation Ships: The Exodus Fleet that set out from Earth during The Collapse. Many of the ships are still inhabited after they made contact with aliens and gained access to their wormholes, but their populations have declined as people settled on exoplanets.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: Aeluons (such as Pei, Ashby's girlfriend) as a whole are mentioned as being found extremely attractive by a variety of species (excluding the Toremi and perhaps the Harmagians as well). They're described as hairless, having silver scaly skin, large eyes, small mouths and being very graceful.
• Hair Substitute Feature: The reptilian Aandrisk have very long feathers where a human would hair.
• Humanoid Aliens: Aeluon and Aandrisk are four-limbed and walk with two feet. However, Aeluons naturally communicate through colors on their fine-scale skin and have to install a voice emulator on their throat to communicate with other species. Aandrisks are covered in scales, regularly molt, and their adults have feathers on their heads.
• Humans Are White: Zigzagged. Ashby notes in Small, Angry Planet that the majority of humans outside of Sol are dark-skinned, with Corbin's light skin indicating he's from the Sol system. It's also mentioned that almost all humans on the Exodus fleet are lactose intolerant, indicating they're mostly of non-European origin.
• Lizard Folk: The Aandrisk look like giant bipedal lizards with multicolored feathers on their heads. Sissix jokingly tells Rosemary in Small, Angry Planet that they have no proof her species isn't descended from dinosaurs. Calling them "lizards", however, is considered a speciest slur.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Almost always explicitly true, with an in-fiction article even dedicated to various official theories about why all known sentient species can share air and sustenance with each other. There are some species-based allergic reactions, though. The Akarak are an exception, having evolved in a methane atmosphere.
• No-Paper Future: When Ashby gets an actual letter from his love interest, some of the crew have to have the very idea of "paper" explained to them.
• No Sense of Personal Space: The Aandrisks have this reputation, since their normal mode of showing personal affection in public would count as foreplay in many other cultures.
• No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture: Averted; alien pop culture is shown or mentioned many times throughout the books, such as alien sports teams/games and music bands.
• Nuclear Family: Completely averted by some non-human sapient races.
  • Aandrisk have three families, all as important as each other: the family they're born into (egg family), the family they choose (feather family) and the family they settle down and create, by adopting other Aandrisks' children, when they're old (house family). The adults bond through casual sex, and don't consider their young to be people until they're fully-grown adults. Even then, an Aandrisk doesn't have children until they get old and start an adopted family: if they happen to lay eggs before then, they give them to a house family to raise and don't maintain strong connections with them.
  • Aeluon women, during their brief fertile periods, stay with groups of highly-trained parents, having sex with the males multiple times a day to maximise her chance of conception. If she bears a child, the parents will raise it so she can get back to her career. Aeluon fertility is low, and they don't want to miss any chance someone has to bear children. They also consider raising children to be far too important a job to leave to people who aren't specially trained.
  • The Laru have no word for "family" - the closest analogy they have is "Laru". In other words, they consider all other members of their species to be family; other sapient species are considered as friends. A Laru dwelling is usually a communal building where no place belongs to any individual Laru.
• Polyamory: Favoured by the Aandrisks. Aeluons also take an arrangement similar to this while breeding, with a female or shon-female spending the two or three periods of her fertile life living with a group of parent-trained Aeluons, and having sex with the group's males and shon-males multiple times in a day to maximise her chance of bearing a child. The professional parents will then raise the child, and the mother can return to her career. Aeluons cannot afford to lose any opportunity to bear children, as most Aeluons will only "shimmer" (ie, grow an egg) once or twice in their lives.
• Portal Network: The primary means of interstellar travel is a network of wormholes. Each wormhole is a permanent structure that only goes to one destination so tunneling ships like the Wayfarer are used to construct new wormholes between out-of-the-way systems and major trade centers.
• Punny Name: Port Coriol, a play on "corporeal". Changes to a Meaningful Name in the second book, which tells the story of two artificial humans, one a clone, the other an AI, living at the port who make new lives for themselves.
• Science Is Bad: The belief of the more hardcore Gaiists, like the Survivalists, is that since technology is what caused the Collapse to begin with, humans should go back to the way things were before. Way, way before. Jenks' mom used to be a Survivalist, up until she gave birth to him and her fellow cultists started discussing whether they should kill him because of his dwarfism. This is not a widely held view, as the only reason anybody can live on Earth at all is thanks to advanced GC technology.
• Smoking Is Cool: Several characters smoke "redreed" and its only negative effect is that it's described as mildly irritating to some aliens.
• Space Nomads: The Akaraks, due to catch-22 of GC bureaucracy and their unique non-oxygen breathing. Harmagians' colonization destroyed their homeworld, yet GC refused to terraform any existing planet for their home. Exodan humans count too since even though the Aandrisks gave them a star to orbit around, there's no planet or anything large enough to settle in the system.
• Standard Time Units: The Galactic Commons has its own timekeeping system:
  • A standard day is slightly longer than a day in Sol system time (it's unclear which solar planet they're talking about - a Sol day could well be a Martian day, which is 40 minutes longer than an Earth day.)
  • Instead of weeks, the term tenday is used - meaning 10 standard days.
  • Instead of years, there are standards. One character mentions that 5 years is between 3 and 4 standards. If we assume they meant Earth years, a standard is then about 500 Earth days long.
• Starfish Aliens: Most of the encountered species. Akaraks can't even survive on oxygen, unlike others, while Harmagian looks like a small blob. Both of them are far smaller than other species and rely on technology to move around and survive in environments not designed for them. Quelins have exoskeletons and walk on their many legs, while the Toremi walk on four legs and have thin heads. Laru are covered in thick fur, have long neck, and can easily walk on all four limbs or two as needed.
• Translation Convention: The wide variety of sapients and species means an equally wide variety of languages and dialects. As such, all dialogue and signage is directly "translated" as it were with the narration noting any language changes. The exceptions to this is when someone inquires about a specific word or phrase or when a word is nigh untranslatable.
• Weird World, Weird Food:
  • Reversed when Sissix, an Aandrisk, is disgusted that a Solan human like Rosemary has eaten mammals.
  • The five people at the Five-Hop are happy to share their food with each other. The one thing that really squicks them out is when Pei explains the concept of cheese.
    [Humans] take the milk, they add some ingredients - don't ask me, I have no idea what - and then pour the mess into a... a thing. I don't know. A container. And then... They leave it out until bacteria colonise it to the point of solidifying. (...) Oh no, I - stars, I forgot the worst part. They don't make cheese with their own milk. They make it from other animals.
  • Exodan humans have arthropod-heavy diets due to space limitations on the generation ships. When the people of one ship found "Red coast bugs", originally pests living in one of Aeulon's colonies, they quickly became a staple of Exodan cuisine due to their size and similarity to crab meat. Pei and other Aeulons were a bit weirded out when Dr. Chef served it but eventually can eat it too.
• We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: Downplayed; perfect health hasn't been achieved, but certain diseases and conditions are far less common. For one, people are baffled by Jenks' dwarfism, since his mother comes from an isolated survivalist cult on Earth that shuns technology, including modern medicine.
• We Will Spend Credits in the Future: Money is known as "creds" and exists digitally in a patch embedded underneath the wrist.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • Sentient AIs for ships are common but they're considered property, not a being that can think and feel for themselves. Much of the plot of Common Orbit concerns two AIs, one illegally transferred into a humanoid body and another who was confiscated by the government because the shuttle the AI's housed in was condemned, and nobody considered the AI worth anything.
  • Clones aren't considered citizens of the GC, with some species like the Quelin considering their very existence illegal.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

• Accidental Unfortunate Gesture: While being attacked by alien Space Pirates, Ashby rubs his hands over his eyes to wipe sweat from his forehead. The pirates take this gesture to mean "I'd rather rub shit in my eyes than keep talking to you", and react accordingly.
• Ace Pilot: Sissix, the ship's pilot, who is very good at her job. She also serves as Ashby's Number Two.
• Actually Pretty Funny: At some point before Rosemary was hired, Jenks stole Corbin's scrib and replaced his lab notes with over three hundred pictures of Jenks posing while completely naked. He didn't say it to Corbin's face, but Ashby thought it was really funny (especially the one with the flag).
• The Alliance: A major recurring plot point in the book is that the Galactic Commons has formed an alliance with a Toremi clan, the Toremi Ka. The Wayfarer crew is hired to create a wormhole between Hedra Ka, the clan's home planet, and a more central location of the Galactic Commons to connect them to their allies more easily. At the climax of the book, Toum, a Toremi Ka member who hates other species and greatly disapproves of the alliance, goes rogue and attacks the Wayfarer as they attempt to make the punch to create the wormhole, very nearly killing them all and resulting in Lovey's death. He, possibly along with other rebels as well, also attacks the other Galactic Commons ships around Hedra Ka, resulting in mass casualties. This leads the GC to dissolve the alliance with the Toremi Ka by the end of the book.
• Benevolent A.I.: All of the different AI programs of the Wayfarer:
  • Lovelace, a.k.a. "Lovey", has as much personality as any other member of the crew, and she and Jenks are even in love with each other. When the crew is forced to perform a hard reset on her, which wipes her memory banks clean and resets her to factory default, essentially "killing" her original personality, they deeply mourn her loss.
  • The second, factory-reset version of Lovelace as well, who is acknowledged as being a different person from Lovey. After learning that Jenks was in love with and the entire crew is mourning her previous iteration, she decides to take Pepper up on her offer to transfer her consciousness into the android body and leave the crew so they can grieve the original Lovey and move on properly.
  • Tycho, the new AI who replaces the reset Lovelace after she leaves. Ashby notices that he sounds a bit nervous around his new crew because he knows what happened to Lovey and that he can't replace her but still wants to please them, but his few appearances show him to be perfectly nice, and he's stated to get along well with Jenks.
• Bothering by the Book: Rosemary saves the crew's ass at least twice by being a superior bookkeeper and Rules Lawyer.
• But Now I Must Go: When Lovey's memory is totally wiped in the hard reset, causing her to undergo a Death of Personality and be reset to her original factory-build of Lovelace, Jenks's mechanic friend Pepper offers her the chance to transfer her mind into the new synthetic body Jenks had ordered for her and leave the ship. When Lovelace learns that Jenks was in love with her previous iteration and it will be difficult for him (and the rest of the crew to a lesser extent) to move on from her if this new iteration of her is still present, she decides, out of compassion for them, to take Pepper up on this offer, which sets up the events of the sequel. She's replaced by a different, male AI named Tycho.
• The Captain: Ashby Santoso, who is also the Team Dad and A Father to His Men and a Reasonable Authority Figure.
• Character Focus: Though Rosemary Harper is the main character and gets the narrative POV most often, everyone on the Wayfarer gets POV screentime at some point, giving all of them fleshed out personalities and motivations. Besides Rosemary, crew members Ashby, Kizzy, Jenks, and Sissix get the most focus.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The cure to the Whisperer, which Corbin uses on Ohan after the failed punch.
  • Kizzy's pack of fixbots.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Kizzy is a competent ship's tech and modder, but she has a very unique outlook on life. The author describes her as "the last person you would ever want in charge of a spaceship".
• Communications Officer: Lovelace, a.k.a. "Lovey", the ship's AI who can monitor what's happening at all times and alert the rest of the crew. She also acts as The Heart, and the crew is suitably devastated by her "death".
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Quentin Harris, Rosemary's father, who sold gene targeting weapons to both sides of a civil war, even though he was already fabulously rich through a legitimate business.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Poor Dr. Chef. When he was female, his whole world took part in a civil war that destroyed their race, leaving only a few hundred to slowly die out. While he's made peace with his past and built a new, happy life for himself (following his dreams of both being a cook and being a doctor), it's clear that he's still bothered by it from time to time.
  • Rosemary had a reason for wanting to start a new life. Before she changed her last name, she was Rosemary Harris, the daughter of a corporate shark who was arrested for selling weapons to Toremi clans and leading to thousands of deaths. While she had nothing to do with his crimes, her reputation on Mars was ruined forever. Thus she changed her last name and took a job as far away from Mars as she could.
• Death of Personality: Of the Blank Slate variety. After the Wayfarer escapes from the sabotaged wormhole, they are forced to hard reset Lovey because she's too far gone to save as is. Unfortunately, this also wipes out her accumulated databases, essentially resetting her to factory standards and making her a different person with no memory of her previous time with the crew or her love for Jenks.
• Defrosting Ice King: Corbin is a Jerkass for most of the book, but starts mellowing out towards them after they save him when he's been arrested by the Quelin, for which he is very grateful. By the end, he outright admits he cares about them, and is more social with his crewmates.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The Toremi kill each other over disagreements that would seem extremely minor to any other species. Pei mentions that a few literally tore each other apart over an argument about whether Harmagians were sentient, and representatives who don't agree with the higher-ups are known to vanish.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Ashby, because of his Exodan background, refuses to have guns on the Wayfarer, even after the ship gets boarded by Akarak scavengers.
• Dramatic Irony: Near the climax of the book, Nib forwards Rosemary some information from the Galactic Commons warning that the Toremi have Super-Hearing, so GC citizens should not say anything controversial or offensive while in the same room as them. However, this message fails to send, meaning that Rosemary never receives it and never learns this; thus, during the crew's meeting with other GC members that includes a few of the Toremi Ka, the reader knows it's a bad thing when she, Kizzy, and Dr. Chef talk in the corner and express their doubts about the alliance, but these characters do not. Toum, a highly speciest Toremi Ka member who secretly resents the alliance with the Galactic Commons, does indeed overhear this, and it ends up giving him the final push he needs to rebel from his clan and attack the Wayfarer.
• Drill Tank: IN SPACE!! The Wayfarer has a space/time bore mounted on its belly to dig wormholes.
• Family of Choice:
  • Aandrisk are this on a species wide level, since they create "feather families" when they reach adulthood and sometimes a group will stay together to become a house family. There are problems with this, one of which being incest (which is avoided by keeping an extensive database), and another of which is the ostracization of rashek, Aandrisk with a disorder that makes socializing difficult, who are effectively left without any support system once they outgrow their hatch family.
  • While Aandrisk family structures are already fairly complicated and, in some cases, voluntary, it doesn't detract from the revelation that Sissix chose the otherwise-non-Aandrisk crew of the Wayfarer as her feather family.
  • A major theme of the crew as a whole, and grows into it more and more over the course of the story. Some of them do have families living elsewhere, and others don't, but they do consider each other to be family all the same. Rosemary, who had to leave her entire previous life behind, comes to see the crew this way more and more; Kizzy confesses to Jenks near the end that he's the brother she always wanted growing up; several crewmembers admit after discovering Ohan can be cured of their virus that, even though they don't know them very well, they can't bear to see them die because they're one of them; Corbin admits to Ohan that, even though he doesn't understand his crewmates very well, he cares about their happiness; and Ohan, despite the fact that him becoming Solitary at the end means that he should stay in the exile colony for Heretics, realizes he doesn't want to, and chooses to stay with the Wayfarer crew.
• Fantastic Slur: Corbin insults Sissix at several different points by calling her a "lizard"; despite the Aandrisks actually being lizard-like creatures, using this word to describe them is considered racist (or rather, speciest). He stops doing this after he takes a few levels in kindness.
• Fold the Page, Fold the Space: A necessary staple in a story where the main characters' jobs are wormhole construction. Kizzy does this when explaining to Rosemary how tunnelling works. She attempts at using her breakfast as a representation of the ship and the space around it, but belatedly realizes that she "can't fold porridge". Dr Chef hands her two napkins, one for cleaning her hands and one for the scientific demonstration.
  Kizzy: (Holds up clean napkin, gripping the two opposite corners) Okay. You know the big grid-like spheres surrounding tunnel openings? [...] Those are containment cages. They keep space from ripping open any farther than we want to. You have to have one cage on each end of the tunnel. (Gestures with the corners of the napkin) So if we've got one cage at this end, and another cage at this end, we've got to construct a tunnel that effectively makes it so that this - (Stretches the corners far apart from one another) - is the same thing as this. (Brings the corners together)
  Rosemary: (Frowns) Okay, so, the cages are light-years apart. They're not in the same place. But...they behave as if they were in the same space?
  Kizzy: Pretty much. It's like a doorway connecting two rooms, only the rooms are on opposite sides of town.
  Rosemary: So the only place the distance between those two points has been changed is...within the tunnel?
  Kizzy: (grins) Physics is a bitch, right?
• For Your Own Good: How Corbin justifies curing Ohan of their Whisperer virus despite the latter explicitly not wanting this, since it saves his life. It also doubles as "for the crew's own good", since they're already grieving the loss of Lovey and Corbin doesn't want them to lose another member of the crew on top of this. Ohan seems to have at least partially forgiven him by the end.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Everybody else on the crew finds Artis Corbin to be unpleasant, but as he's an algaeist whose work provides the Wayfarer with vital fuel, they need him and thus are forced to put up with him. Ashby privately notes that, during Corbin's often-vicious arguments with Sissix, it's hard to maintain the neutrality necessary in his role as captain, because he doesn't much like Corbin either while Sissix is his best friend. This is still the case by the end, but it's lessened a bit after Corbin receives some character development.
• Fumbling the Gauntlet: When Ashby is trying to negotiate with the Akarak scavengers, he wipes some sweat away from his face. Unfortunately for him, in the Harmagian language (which the Akarak language is related to), that gesture essentially means that one would rather rub shit in their eyes than talk to them. This earns him a rifle butt to the face.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Kizzy Shao, the resident Wrench Wench mech tech, and Jenks, their Mr. Fixit comp tech, who serve as the two engineers and technicians of the crew.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: As close to it as an odd-numbered crew can get; the Wayfarer crew has five male members (Ashby, Jenks, Dr. Chef, Ohan, and Corbin) and, once Rosemary joins, four female members (Rosemary herself, Kizzy, Sissix, and Lovey). The male and female supporting characters are about equal in number as well. This is averted, though, by the end of the book; the original Lovey dies and her Lovelace reboot leaves the ship and is replaced with a male AI named Tycho, leaving the count at six men and three women.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: The Toremi. As noted, they'll immediately rip into each other (and outsiders) if the wrong button gets pushed; one Toremi even wonders what's wrong with himself when he doesn't tear out the throat of another Toremi who is deliberately antagonizing him. This trait contributes to the Galactic Commons finally pulling out of its treaty with one of the Toremi clans.
• Heel Realization: Dr. Chef realized how badly things had gone for the Grum and their war after two things — finding out that his side had come up with the gene cutters that the enemy was using, and having to Mercy Kill his last daughter.
• Hope Spot: Jenks and Kizzy have performed the hard reset on Lovey, which will either bring back Lovey as she is or reset her back to factory standards. Ten minutes pass, Jenks starts her back up... and Lovey has been reset to Lovelace.
• Humans Are Smelly: Sissix and Dr. Chef, who both have more powerful senses of smell than humans, have a rather giggly conversation in which they agree on this; Dr Chef admits he's been secretly adding powerful anti-odor powders to the soap dispensers on the Wayfarer to make their human crewmates smell less bad than most other humans. (They never noticed.)
• Humans Through Alien Eyes:
  • The non-Human characters—primarily Sissix and Dr. Chef, but some others as well—will frequently think or talk about the many things about Humans that flummox them, such as their behavior or brain chemistry or extremely poor sense of smell, or even disgust them, like their scents or diets. That said, they also express things that they love about humanity, such as their tradition of eating meals together in big groups.
  • Also inverted quite a bit; since several main characters are Human, and The Protagonist, Rosemary, is a fairly sheltered Human who's had very little prior interaction with non-Human species, the Human characters note either to themselves or out loud the many things that frighten, puzzle, or fascinate them about other species.
• I Choose to Stay: In the denouement, Corbin has forcibly cured Ohan of the Whisperer, meaning that the latter is no longer a Pair. Ohan states that, according to the customs and beliefs of the Sianat, he should go to the Heretics' colony, where Solitaries (Sianats who refused or have been cured of the Whisperer) are expected to live out the rest of their days. However, that isn't what he wants, so he decides to remain on the Wayfarer to continue to be with his friends as their Navigator, to their happiness.
• Innocent Innuendo: When the Wayfarer stops by the Solitary colony to ask for an emergency piece of tech (a piece to fix the refrigerator), the Sianat they talk to says they may have to bang something together to make it work, leading to this exchange:
  Sianat: We may have to bang something together, but techs like to bang things, yes?
  Kizzy: (laughing) Yes, yes we do!
• Interspecies Friendship: Everyone on the Wayfarer (at least by the end) are friends, but there are a few standouts:
  • Sissix and Ashby had been friends for years before they started working as tunnelers.
  • Dr. Chef has a best friend outside the crew, a Human named Drave who lives on Port Coriol.
  • By the end, it seems like Ohan and Corbin have formed this.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Ashby, an Exodan Human, and Pei, an Aeluon. Since this trope is considered taboo for Aeluons, it doubles as a Secret Relationship.
  • Though Lovey is an AI rather than a different species, her relationship with Jenks, an Earth Human, counts.
  • Starting about two-thirds of the way into the book, we get Rosemary, a Martian Human, and Sissix, an Aandrisk. Since Aandrisk relationships are very much not monogamous, Rosemary clarifies that she's perfectly happy for it to be an open relationship on both sides; she herself won't partake in Aandrisk "tets" (orgies) that are common among their species, but is totally fine with Sissix doing so.
• Jerkass: Artis Corbin spends most of the book as this, making speciest remarks towards Sissix (whom he greatly dislikes) and reams Rosemary out over an incorrect order she placed for him, only to not bother apologizing even after he learns she did order the right thing after all. Late in the book, however, once the crew rescues him from the Quelin, he starts to defrost.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • When the Wayfarer finds itself docked to a ship sabotaged with time bombs, Corbin points out that they should undock immediately and just let it blow; it sounds cold, but it is legitimately the safest option for the members of both crews, and the owner's insurance would cover it.
  • The Quelin GC Council member who keeps pushing Ashby about whether one of his crew said something unintentionally triggering around the sharp-eared and hot-tempered Toremi, which is in fact exactly what happened, though only the Toremi know this.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Corbin seems to have become this by the end of the story, still with plenty of emphasis on "jerk". He's pretty self-aware about it, too; he admits he doesn't understand his crewmates, finds Lovey's loss to be an inconvenience rather than a tragedy and Jenks's romantic love for her to be ridiculous, and forcibly cures Ohan's virus despite them explicitly not wanting this. However, he is genuinely grateful to the crew for saving him from the Quelin (and gives a sincere thank-you to Sissix, who came for him despite their incredibly antagonistic relationship). He becomes more generous with favors to them afterwards, and outright admits that, contrary to what everyone thinks, he does care about his crewmates' grief; he cures Ohan to save his life so that the rest of the Wayfarer crew don't have to lose another crewmate so soon after losing Lovey. He even physically helps Ohan into the kitchen at the end and makes small talk with Ashby, asking him how Pei is doing.
• Kill the Cutie: The only major character death in the story is the consistently sweet and kind Benevolent A.I. Lovey.
• Killed Off for Real: After the Toremi attack, Lovey is badly damaged and the only option is a hard reset, which has a fifty-fifty chance of wiping her personality back to day one with no memory of the crew or her time with them. Sadly, this is indeed what happens.
• Last-Name Basis: Unlike everyone else on the ship, who go by a First-Name Basis (and a few of them don't even have surnames at all), Artis Corbin is only ever called "Corbin" by his crewmates.
• Like Brother and Sister: The relationship between several members of the crew, who are not romantically involved (except for Rosemary and Sissix, two women):
  • Kizzy and Jenks, and Sissix and Ashby are a literal examples in that they see each other as actual family members, but overall, their relationships are closer to Platonic Life-Partners.
  • Rosemary seems to develop this relationship with Jenks. He's the first person whom Rosemary tells the truth about her father.
• Loophole Abuse: When Corbin is put under arrest by the Quelin for being a clone, Rosemary finds out that they can rescue him if they have someone stand in as his legal guardian while he goes through the application process for non-GC species. However, said guardian has to come from a species that doesn't ban cloning...meaning it'll have to be Sissix, who shares a mutual loathing with Corbin. The fact that she does this for him despite their hatred of each other is a major factor in spurring his Character Development.
• Meaningful Name: Dr. Chef, whose real name is The Unpronounceable for other species, chose this nickname for himself because he serves as both medic and cook for the Wayfarer's crew.
• Mondegreen Gag: Kizzy sings along to some alien punk rock without knowing the language that it's in, leading to her yelling "Socks! Match - my hat!" When Jenks informs her it's actually about banging the Harmagian royal family and is banned in a large swathe of space, she says:
  "Huh. Well, if this band hates the establishment that much, then I doubt they’ll care about me making up my own words. They can’t oppress me with their ‘correct lyrics.’ Fuck the system."
• The Navigator: Ohan, who, as a Sianat Pair, has the ability to visualize space-time, a vital role for any tunneling crew; in fact, Sianats are by far the best Navigators in the galaxy thanks to this skill. Even after he has been cured at the end and become a Solitary, he still retains this ability, allowing him to continue Navigating the crew.
• No One Gets Left Behind: Corbin is very much The Friend Nobody Likes, but after he gets captured by the Quelins, the crew nonetheless goes the full mile to rescue him, despite Corbin himself having some doubts that they would. Sissix, who especially hates Corbin, has to play the biggest role in rescuing him by becoming his legal guardian for a standard until he re-gains his GC citizenship (which is taken away from him because he's a clone); she's very frustrated by this, but never even considers refusing to go along with it.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Ohan is usually pretty calm and laid back, with Rosemary comparing them to a stoned college student. This makes it all the more striking when the Wayfarer stops off at a colony of Sianat Heretics (Sianat who have refused the Whisperer, or who have been cured of it), and Ohan gets pissed off, believing that the Heretics will contaminate the crew with "lies".
  • When Pepper shows up at the Wayfarer following the failed punch, she is genuinely surprised to learn that Kizzy is now using the fixbots that she'd earlier derided as "boring".
• Our Clones Are Different: The Quelin consider being a clone to be illegal. Unfortunately, Corbin unknowingly is a clone and is arrested and thrown into a hellish prison.
• Out of Focus: Artis Corbin and Ohan for most of the book, but they start to receive more characterization later:
  • Once Ohan is revealed to be dying, there's more focus on the crew's increasing dread of their impending loss, especially once it's revealed that it's possible to cure them of the Whisperer without the Sianat losing their ability to Navigate, but that Ohan does not want to do this. At the end of the book, once he has been forcibly cured by Corbin and is no longer a Pair, he begins to spend more time with his crewmates.
  • After Corbin is revealed to be a clone, something even he did not know, he gets some particular Character Focus as he learns his backstory from his father, and generally begins to become more involved in the crew's affairs aftward.
• Platonic Life-Partners:
  • Ashby and Sissix. Sissix chose the Wayfarer crew as her feather family originally because of Ashby, whom she considers the best friend she ever had, and she's certainly the crewmember that he's closest to.
  • Kizzy and Jenks spend most of their time together and are each other's "best friends in the whole galaxy". Kizzy is the person who best comforts Jenks after the death of Lovey, and outright states that she loves him like the brother she always wanted, and that they'll be close forever.
• Police Brutality: While in Quelin custody, the enforcers respond to Corbin's protests by ramming him in the chest with their armored heads hard enough to break ribs.
• The Quiet One: Ohan for most of the story; they are polite and considerate to their crewmates and genuinely care about them, but like most Pairs, mostly keep to themself. After he is cured of the virus near the end of the story and becomes a Solitary, he is stated to still be pretty quiet, but chooses to remain with the crew and begins to open up to them more.
• Replacement Goldfish: Marcus's wife and unborn child were killed in a ship accident. To replace the child he'd lost, he created a clone of himself and raised him as his own son, who grew up to become Artis Corbin.
• Robosexual: Jenks's relationship with Lovelace, the Wayfarer's AI.
• Rules Lawyer: Rosemary Harper, the new girl on the crew. She's officially hired as the crew's bookkeeper and receptionist of sorts, but her linguistic abilities and skills with paperwork save the crew from hot water multiple times.
• Secret-Keeper: For a while, Ashby and Dr. Chef towards Ohan, regarding their looming death, though Dr. Chef is eventually forced to reveal the secret to prevent Space Pirates from abducting Ohan.
• Secret Relationship:
  • Ashby and Pei have to deal with their relationship this way, because they both know that Pei would end up in serious trouble if anyone found out due to Interspecies Romance being taboo amoung Aeluons. After the failed punch, Pei decides that she doesn't care who finds out anymore.
  • Rosemary's and Sissix's open relationship starts off this way, though not due to any kind of taboo and more just because of the former's desire for privacy to start out. She doesn't plan for it to stay this way forever, though, and before too long, Ashby figures it out. It's implied by the end of the novel that the whole crew is aware of it at that point.
• Secretly Dying: The Wayfarer's Navigator, Ohan, has a virus called the Whisperer, which grants them the ability to easily visualize multidimensional space, but which also significantly cuts down their lifespan. When Small, Angry Planet begins, they are going through the later stages, called the Wane, which only Dr. Chef and Ashby know about. Then scavengers try to kidnap them in order to sell them, and Dr. Chef is forced to blow the "secretly" part out of the water in order to put a stop to it.
• Shed the Family Name: Rosemary changed her last name from Harris to Harper after the fallout from her father's arrest as part of her plan to get away from it and start a new life.
• Sins of the Father: When Rosemary tells Jenks about her true identity and why she changed it, she explains that, after her father was exposed, nobody wanted anything to do with her—her friends stopped talking to her and no company would hire her for a job—even though she'd never been a part of his schemes at all, simply because they felt associating with someone from the Harris family would tarnish their reputations.
• The Smart Guy: Artis Corbin, the scientist of the crew, who, as an algaeist, produces the ship's fuel.
• Space Pirates: The Wayfarer is attacked by some unusually reasonable, but still extremely dangerous, space pirates. They pistol-whip Ashby, but only because he accidentally insults them in their language, and otherwise don't physically harm the crew. They consider kidnapping Ohan to sell them, but are talked down from this when Dr. Chef reveals that they're Secretly Dying, and just settle for stealing some of the crew's supplies, which the GC reimburses them for.
• Star-Crossed Lovers:
  • Corbin's father Marcus and his wife, Sita. The latter died in a spaceship accident caused by faulty equipment when she was pregnant with Marcus's child. This is ultimately the reason he decided to clone himself despite it being illegal, so he could have a child in some form.
  • Jenks and Lovey; after the Wayfarer is attacked by rogue Toremi, Lovey is so badly damaged that the crew's only recourse is a hard reset. Sadly, her memory and personality do not survive it and she essentially gets a factory reset, returning her to her original Lovelace personality.
• The Stoner: Rosemary notes that the Whisperer's effects on Ohan make them look like a "stoned college student". Still, she reminds herself that they are also one of the galaxy's best Navigators because of it.
• Super-Hearing: The Toremi have excellent hearing, being able to pinpoint an individual's voice in a crowd ...or Rosemary's offhand comments at the diplomatic dinner.
• Tastes Better Than It Looks: Rosemary's reaction to the traditionally Exodan delicacy of Red Coast Bugs.
• Team Chef: Dr. Chef acts as both the doctor and cook for the crew. He is also the Team Mom, and shares the role of The Heart with Lovey.
• Team Dad: The Captain Ashby Santoso, who is very much A Father to His Men and looks after the safety and well-being of his whole crew, which functions like a family.
• Team Mom: Dr. Chef, as The Medic and the cook for the crew, who is not afraid to be emotional and gives very good advice, especially to the crew's younger members. It makes sense when you remember that, due to how Grums work, he used to be female and was once an actual mother himself.
• Title Drop: the narration describes Hedra Ka as "A small, angry planet, surrounded by the warships of people who wanted to control it."
• Token Non-Human: Averted. Of the nine members of the crew, five of them—Rosemary, Ashby, Kizzy, Jenks, and Corbin—are Humans, while four are not: Sissix (Aandrisk), Dr. Chef (Grum), Ohan (Sianat Pair), and Lovey (AI).
• Took a Level in Kindness: He never becomes a Nice Guy, but Artis Corbin does defrost from a Jerkass into a still-abrasive Jerk with a Heart of Gold after the rest of the crew saves him from the Quelin.
• True Companions: The Wayfarer crew is very much a tightly-knit Family of Choice. It doesn't take long for the crew to welcome Rosemary into the fold. This companionship extends to the reclusive Ohan, the cantankerous Corbin, and even their ship's AI Lovey; once you're a member of the Wayfearer, you're family and each member will stick by you through thick and thin.
• The Unpronounceable: Dr. Chef's real name utilizes all six of his independent sets of vocal cords simultaneaously, thus rendering his actual name unpronounceable to anyone who isn't a Grum.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Rosemary's comments to her shipmates at the Toremi diplomatic function- which the Toremi are able to hear from across the room- led to the attack on the Wayfarer and eventually the collapse of the GC/Toremi treaty.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Corbin forcibly cures Ohan of the Whisperer virus despite Ohan previously having made it clear that they do not want this. Corbin does it to save Ohan's life so the crew won't have to suffer the loss of another member soon after losing Lovey, and he steadfastly believes that he did the right thing. Ashby is furious with Corbin at first, but begins to forgive him by the end when Ashby sees that Ohan already has.
• What the Hell, Hero?: During the inquiry with the GC, Ashby reads them the riot act for trying to pursue an alliance with the Toremi Ka, telling them just how bad it would be to have a species that considers death a reasonable punishment for disagreement. Ultimately, the majority of the GC feels the same way, as they vote to dissolve the treaty.

A Closed and Common Orbit

• And Now for Someone Completely Different: After most of the book is told from the perspective of Sidra and Jane/Pepper, the final chapter is narrated by Owl.
• Androids Are People, Too: Sidra is definitely a person, but has problems with being an android. Most of her conflict revolves around trying to adapt to being a ship's AI in an android body, which from her perspective is horribly limiting and unnatural. Played straight with her friends who try help her, to her increasing dismay. Eventually she transfers her consciousness to a fixed mainframe inside a shop, using her old android body and several other remote units to give her the multiple perspectives and larger memory she's designed for.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: A huge problem for Sidra, as it's part of her programming as a Lovelace unit that she must answer direct questions honestly and must obey direct commands, which makes her wary of becoming too close to sapient lifeforms for fear that they'll find out the truth about her, and forces her to become very good at utilizing Exact Words. About 80% of the way through the book, she finally learns how to remove this thanks to a programming class she takes, and with Tak's help, successfully gets rid of it. In the ending, she's removed it from Owl as well.
• *Click* Hello: How Pepper and Blue first met. Jane raids a factory for supplies so she can escape the planet in Owl's shuttle, and ambushes one of the employees, who turns out to be Laurian, at gunpoint...only to learn that his life sucks just as much as hers and decide to let him escape Earth with her.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • Pepper, who spent almost a decade hiding in the remains of a disabled ship, painstakingly learning how to fix it to escape, with only Owl, the ship's AI, and the characters in a children's VR game for company. And she starts this ordeal when she's ten. And then by the end, she has Owl back, meaning that the "family" she formed with her and Laurian/Blue has been restored, with the addition of Sidra and Tak as well.
  • Sidra, after spending the entire novel torn between frustration with how limiting her kit-body is for her but growing increasingly fond of the sensations it allows her to experience and share with other sapients, and being unsure of what she wants, is finally able to Take a Third Option and find a happy medium for herself, and opens (and lives in) a bar on Port Coriol, with Pepper, Blue, Tak, and Owl by her side for support.
• Gender Bender: Sidra's friend Tak is a shon Aeluon, and at different times throughout the book, uses he/him or she/her pronouns to indicate xyr current gender, and occasionally actually uses xe/xyr when in the process of transitioning.
• How We Got Here: At the end of the first chapter, Pepper admits to Sidra that part of the reason she's helping Sidra is because she was raised by an AI herself. Most of the rest of the book then alternates between Sidra's current present and Pepper's childhood past, showing how she met Owl and Blue, until Pepper's story concludes in one of Sidra's chapters near the end.
• Immediate Sequel: This book begins with Lovelace and Pepper leaving the Wayfarer and traveling to Port Coriol.
• I Will Find You: Pepper has been searching for Owl for a decade, and the last third of the book is dedicated to recovering her from a museum.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • Pepper, a clone who was originally named Jane 23, discovered love of food seasonings following her escape from her homeworld and chose this name as her new name.
  • Most likely the case for Blue, whose original name was Laurian, as well, since he likewise chose a new name for himself that is an actual word, but we're never given an explanation for what it is. It may have something to do with him becoming a painter and particularly liking the color blue.
  • When Lovelace uploads herself into a synthetic body, Pepper tells her that she needs to choose a new name (of Earth origin, since the body is Human-based) because, since "Lovelace" is a computer AI program of which other models exist, it won't be too hard for someone to figure out that she's an AI illegally loaded into an android body. She chooses "Sidra" as her new name simply because she likes the sound of it.
• Robinsonade: Pepper's story amounts to this. Cut off from human contact for nearly a decade, living in a disabled starship in the middle of continent wide junkyard, and reduced to eating wild mutated dogs for food.
• Secret-Keeper: Tak towards Sidra after xyr inkbots causes her kit body to malfunction. Tak is at first uncomfortable with it (since Sidra's existence is illegal and highly unordinary), but after talking with and learning more about her, comes to see Sidra as a person as much as Pepper and Blue do, and becomes her close friend.
• Show Within a Show: Pepper is a huge fan of The Big Bug Crew, a long-running interactive children's show that she credits with helping foster the tolerance between various species that makes the current civilization possible. It helps that she grew up alone with an AI and watched the single episode of Big Bug available to her literally thousands of times.
• Speech Impediment: Pepper's partner, Blue, has a minor one. Her "Jane" flashback chapters show that it was much, much worse when she met him as "Laurian", to the point that he barely spoke at all at the time. It's possible that living a happier life with Pepper gave him the confidence to improve it, and also possible that learning Klip from her (where he initially only spoke Sko-Ensk) and lots of practice over the years made speech easier.
• Switching P.O.V.: As with the previous book, the third-person POV character swaps each chapter. Most of the novel alternates between Lovelace/Sidra's narration in the present day and Jane's in the past, showing her backstory. However, Pepper concludes her story as "Jane" in one of Sidra's chapters in conversation with Sidra and Tak, and from them on, her chapters take place in the present day as well (and are accordingly labeled "Pepper" instead of "Jane"). Then the final chapter provides a third POV character: Owl.
• Take a Third Option: Sidra, who was designed to be a ship's AI unit with multiple perspectives and regular Linking access, spends most of the book incredibly frustrated by being stuck in a synthetic body; however, there are some things about the experience that she genuinely grows to love, such as sensations like taste, and it changes her enough that when she finally does get the chance to upload herself into a ship, this doesn't feel right either, and she no longer is sure of what she wants. At the end, she opens a bar with memory banks in the basement, using her android body as her "main core" and six petbots as additional cameras/perspectives for herself, one of which is permanently connected to a Linking hub to give her regular access; however, it's stated that she can switch into her robot body if she ever does want to leave the bar and do things like go out dancing, giving her the best of both worlds.
• Taught by Television: Pepper was raised alone by an AI from age 10 to 19, and all she knows of other people comes from a small selection of interactive films the previous owners forgot to delete from the AI's memory. Not that she had a lot to work with when she started - up to the age of 10 she was raised by a group of robot "mothers" programmed to teach her and her clones to sort, clean and fix discarded technology.
• Time Skip: The final chapter takes place one standard later after the ending of the previous one.
• Translation Convention: Pepper's chapters from when she's 10 years old indicate that she and her fellow factory girls speak Sko-Ensk, a dialect of Ensk that appears to be prominent in the slum parts of the Earth. When she first starts learning Klip from Owl, a few words of it are shown in how they'd actually sound instead of being directly "translated." Once Pepper becomes more fluent, though, her dialogue is written in English with the narration indicating which language she's using at any particular moment.
• Unknowingly in Love: Despite being 19 years old and there being some hints that she's subconsciously attracted to Laurian (Blue), Jane (Pepper) reacts with genuine shock when someone else asks if they're coupling. Because she was raised alone by an AI before reaching puberty and had no human contact for nine years, she's never seen or experienced any sort of romance at all. (She knew about the existence of both, but that's very different from experiencing it oneself). Laurian being the first human she met as an adult just felt more weird to her than anything, and she never considered that her feelings toward him might be more than platonic until it was pointed out. However, her subsequent thoughts on everything she liked about Laurian and how he's "different than a bunkmate" make it pretty obvious that she has fallen in love with him.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Mothers who oversee the factory clones have no qualms about hurting their charges for stepping out of line, or even killing them for daring to discover the truth about the outside world. This is the fate that befalls Jane 64, Pepper's childhood bunkmate.
• You Are Number 6: Clones in the junk-sorting factory are identified by a name and a number with new batches being given different names. Pepper was originally called Jane 23, and there are mentions of groups of clones named Lucy and Sarah.

Record of a Spaceborn Few

• Appeal to Tradition: The central conflict of the book is the tradition minded Exodans vs those who are more eager to branch out. As Isabel eventually tells Kip, the answer is that both tradition and innovation are necessary and everyone needs to find their own path, but never lose sight of the validity of those that choose differently.
• Book Ends: After the prologue, Isabel's first chapter is a party to celebrate the introduction of a new baby to the fleet. In her last chapter, A now twenty year old Kip provides the ceremony for the first time.
• Character Filibuster: Isabel gets one towards Kip near the end of the book, when she's explaining the importance of the Archives and the Fleet, and offering him an apprenticeship, but only if he goes off and learns more about others first to decide if it's what he truly wants.
• Cultural Posturing: A major theme. Thanks to their lowly origins, the rest of the galaxy looking down on humans, and their practice of nonviolence and No Poverty, Exodans have become increasingly insular and distrustful towards outsiders, seeing them as snobs at best and morally inferior at worst. When Sawyer first joins the fleet, he's near universally rejected by the Exodans, who insult and demean him for not knowing their ways. This attitude leads to his death when he's tricked into going on a salvage crew because no Exodan would help him immigrate. Eyas is horrified when she realizes this (and how she unknowingly participated in it), and decides to start dismantling this attitude, starting with setting up an immigration center so no one is rejected as he was.
• Developing Doomed Characters: One of the six POV characters dies in a decompression accident mid-book. The second half of the story deals with the aftermath.
• Dying Town: Played with. The Exodus Fleet is far from dead, but many Exodans are worried that it'll become this, now that its original purpose is over and more Exodans leave every year for the colonies or space. Eyas eventually realizes that a key part of this is that the Fleet isn't welcoming to newcomers, and sets up to correct this.
• Embarrassing First Name: Eyas isn't hugely fond of her name, explaining that her parents picked it thinking it means 'hawk' but didn't know it specifically means a baby hawk. There's also mention of a man named Walrus; his parents were thinking of 'Wolf' but didn't get it quite right.
• Friends with Benefits: Eyas and Sunny, the sex worker she meets at a tryst club. There's no romance between them, but their friendship eventually grows to the point where she feels comfortable meeting him outside the club, and he helps her with her immigration resources project.
• Human Resources: Part of life on a generation ship; dead bodies are turned into fertilizer. Naïve Newcomer Sawyer is a bit puzzled by the reverence shown towards Eyas, who he assumes to be a gardener, until this clicks for him.
• Lonely Funeral: The only ones present at Sawyer's funeral who don't legally have to be there are Tamsin, who's there to support Isabel, and Kip, who provided the tipoff that allowed the authorities to find the body. As Eyas is used to family at the funerals and the sense that someone is loved and will be missed, she's very distressed by it. The other morticians join in to make it less lonely.
• Must Make Amends: Eyas' dismissal of Sawyer leads to his death. When she realizes this, she decides to set up resources for Fleet immigrants so that something like that never happens again.
• No Poverty:
  • On the Exodus fleet, resources are distributed equally and everyone has enough food, clean air and water, and free medical treatment. Opening up to the rest of the GC has given them arti-grav technology, all kinds of medical advances, solar energy panels, and a sun to orbit, which has increased their collective prosperity. However, their trade-based economy has been disrupted by creds and the fact that goods can now leave their closed system.
    Isabel, during a naming ceremony: "If we have food, she will eat. If we have air, she will breathe. If we have fuel, she will fly."
  • While no one in the Fleet goes hungry or without a home, they don't have the luxuries and cutting edge technology available to people who have money on other worlds. This includes artificial eyes; examinations and surgery using commonly available technology are free, but replacements require credits.
• Perfect Pacifist People: Downplayed. The fleet isn't free of violence or crime, but Exodan culture relies heavily on discouraging violence in any form, a relic of their days as wanderers when they just couldn't afford to fight. When Sawyer is found supposedly murdered by an Exodan, the whole fleet is badly shaken by it, and even then it isn't actually a murder but a salvage crew trying to cover up a fatal accident.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: All the ships in the Exodus Fleet are named after gods of the night or stars from various Earth cultures. Examples include the Oxomoco (Aztec), the Asteria (Greek), and the Al-Qaum (Nabataean).
• Same Race Means Related: In the Distant Finale, Kip and his university classmate, Viola, jokingly call each other "cousin" because their alien classmates assumed they were related as they're both Human. In fact, Viola is Solan from Mars while Kip is Exodan from the Fleet; you'd have to go back centuries for a common ancestor to even be possible.
• Small Town Boredom: Kip feels as though nothing happens on the Asteria. To relieve his boredom, he partakes in some teenage rebellious activity (sneaking into a tryst club, smoking redreed, etc.) in the hopes it'll spruce up his life. His character arc is about him learning that he might not actually want the kind of adventure he craves, and that home has its own advantages.
• Unproblematic Prostitution: The tryst clubs found on the Exodus Fleet are technically part of Health and Wellness. As a result, they're well-funded with free services, eliminating the need to compete or exploit. Consent can be withdrawn by either party (be they sex worker or client) at any time and there are strict rules about client privacy. Sunny has spent time as a musician and training to be a doctor, but was intrigued by a friend's explanation of what working in a tryst club was like. As a sex worker, he performs, gets to help people, and often has a good time while doing it.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within

• Badass Bureaucrat: Roveg is late and would have miss his appointment, but Pei pulled strings and have Kalsu officially hire Roveg to not just have the short-term permission, but long-term one to visit his planet under the excuse of creating sims.
• Cellphones Are Useless: Due to the satellite system cascading crash, at most everyone on Gora can only receive daily situation updates. There's not even a direct line of communication to a nearby dome aside from manually sending a drone. The satellites are usually so reliable when the residents figure they can turn on and off their lights to give a simple signal of "yes I see you" to nearby domes Ouloo mused they never even think about establishing a signal for declaring an emergency.
• Chekhov's Gun: Tupo mentioned to Roveg that xyr museum also holds a node storing local Linking data, (think of it like storing Wikipedia locally so people nearby can just download from you). Ends up saving xyr life as Roveg remembers this so he can lookup the first aid procedure to save Tupo.
• Chekhov's Skill: Speaker trust that eventually Tracker will find a way to secure a signal. Eventually she did, just in time to call emergency service for Tupo
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Pei deciding what to do about her egg sounds very similar to deciding whether she's going to get an abortion. She doesn't really want to have kids, but she feels like she should and like she doesn't have a good enough reason not to get her egg fertilized, not helped by the fact there are lots of negative stereotypes about Aeluons in interspecies relationships "wasting" their eggs.
• Domed Hometown: All bases on Gora are this, since it's essentially a blackrock that just happens to be in a spot that makes it perfect as a waystation for interplanetary travel.
• First Time Feeling: Roveg designs a vacation sim for Speaker, the first ever made for an Akarak (the development tools don't offer an option to target Akarak's brain since nobody expects Akarak to buy sims, so Roveg adapt GC medical brain map of Akarak). At first, she's completely overwhelmed since, with their home planet long destroyed, she's the first member of her species in centuries to be able to experience a world through her own senses.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Speaker's name in her native language turns out to be "Speaker": Akarak are so short-lived that they only have time to learn and perfect one skill in life, and hers is speaking fluent Klip.
• Locked in a Room: Three complete strangers from different species and lives- and their two hosts- are essentially trapped together for a number of days after the planet's satellite system suffers a complete breakdown.
• Mini-Mecha: Akarak need to wear these in common space, partly because they're so much smaller than most other sentients, but also since they cannot breathe oxygen.
• Museum of Boredom: Tupo has built the only natural history museum of Gora... consisting of rocks, rocks, rocks, more rocks, and a few items that travellers have left behind. Xe insists it's not a geological museum since there is life on Gora, it just arrived there from somewhere else.
• Rest-and-Resupply Stop: The entirety of Gora and its surrounding station, providing travelers a place to rest and refuel while waiting for their queue before continuing to another wormhole.
• Token Human: Only one human makes a short visit near the final act.

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