Imaginary Worlds - Becky Chambers Goes Wayfaring

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

Becky Chambers’ latest novel, “The Galaxy and The Ground Within,” is the final book in her Wayfarer series, which is about aliens, humans and AI trying to make their way through the galaxy and find common ground. Some of the characters in her books may seem fantastical and strange, but the conversations between them often revolve around familiar issues like identity, gender, family structure, and politics. We talk about why she’s closing this chapter in her writing career, even though the Wayfarer series could’ve gone on indefinitely, and what she has planned next. Today's episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Want to advertise/sponsor our show? We have partnered with AdvertiseCast to handle our advertising/sponsorship requests. They’re great to work with and will help you advertise on our show. Please email [e-mail] or click the link below to get started. Imaginary Worlds AdvertiseCast Listing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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When I read a novel by Becky Chambers, there's something very familiar about the characters. They talk like people I know as they're navigating issues of diversity, inclusion, or politics with a light touch and a sense of humor. But these characters aren't people, or most of them aren't. They're aliens, outlandish aliens, or artificial intelligence. And if they are human, they're from a distant future when the earth is not really habitable. Becky Chambers is best known for writing the Wayfarer series, which is a really beloved and popular series. Each novel is a self-contained story in the same universe, and there's really only kind of a loose narrative thread between the books. Her universe is so densely populated, the only way she's been able to keep track of all her

different alien civilizations is to build a personal wiki on her computer. So I was surprised to learn that she is ending the Wayfarer series after four novels. The final book, The Galaxy and the Ground Within, just came out. And to understand why she's moving on, we have to go back to the initial spark she had 15 years ago, the moment of inspiration that led to the Wayfarer series. Becky's family is full of aerospace scientists. Growing up, she just thought space was awesome. And then she got to college and she was talking with another student who was really negative about the space program, saying it was a waste of money and that those billions of dollars should be spent trying to solve problems on Earth.

People have been making arguments like that since the early 70s, but Becky had never heard them before. Yeah, it really just kind of like knocked me off my track for a minute there. I was really taken aback by that question of why should we care, because to me it was just obvious why we would. But I really took it to heart and, you know, like any good scientist you you should interrogate the things that you take for granted right so i i really thought about that why like let's strip it all the way down let's take away everything i you know let's pretend i don't care about this at all why you know i came at it from a lot of different angles and and you read a lot of you know critiques of of the space program and you know a lot of critiques of the space program,

a lot of the viewpoints of people who maybe aren't on board with it or don't understand. And I really tried to wrap my brain around it. And I went, you know what, I do care about this and I do think it's worthwhile. I do think there are problems in the way that we pursue it, but I think it is something good. And what I wanted to do from that point

was share that with people. Like, here's why. You know, like, if you've never encountered this before, if you think you don't care about space, whether it be in the real world or in the fictional one, if you think you don't like science fiction, I'm going to try to sell you on why. And maybe I won't succeed, but I'm really going to try. Yeah. Well, it's also interesting, too, because I mean, I know you've said that, like, what you started to think about is like, well, who do we ever see that gets to go into space?

Either these astronauts that have the right stuff that are math geniuses and super brave and, you know, super calm under pressure or somebody really, really rich or the military. And like, you know, who else gets to go into space? Right, right. Yeah. I mean, that's that's my whole soapbox right there is that, you know, I adhere very strongly to, you know, who else gets to go into space? Right, right. Yeah, I mean, that's my whole soapbox right there is that, you know, I adhere very strongly to, you know, that whole Carl Sagan idea of, you know, we're all star stuff and we are all equally, you know, entitled to the wrong world,

but we're all equally in part of this universe. You know, this belongs to all of us. And yet that's not how we approach it in the real world you know like as you just described there are a lot of barriers to entry there have been very few people who have actually been to space who have actually seen our world in its proper context and we tell science fiction stories in largely the same way i mean and there's a reason for that right we're compelled by the hero's journey. We're compelled by the chosen ones.

You know, we like to read and watch stories about extraordinary people, but I think it furthers the same idea of space only belongs to people who are special in some way. And to me, that's just antithetical to the reality of the universe and of the human experience. So it's interesting because I know you're a big Star Trek fan, and I've talked to a lot of writers over the years that were inspired by Star Trek when they were younger.

And many of them have said, like, when they started creating their own worlds, they thought, you know, OK, so I love Star Trek, but I've always wondered if Star Trek had gone in this other direction, what would that be like? So did you did you have a little bit of that too yeah definitely i think um i mean star trek is a huge route for me creatively and personally like i'm i'm i cannot remember life before star trek next generation aired when i was three years old and i was watching it you know so it's just it's just in my marrow at this point um and you know i met my wife through Trek fandom as well. So like, it's a huge part of me. But yeah, there are a lot of things that went into Wayfarers at the start where I was like, I like this, but what if?

And I think one of those is framing humanity as sort of the end all be all ideal of what we could be. as sort of the end-all be-all ideal of what we could be. You know, obviously, you know, a lot of Trek likes to dig into that. What makes us human? I mean, it's the best of Trek, right? You know, what is it that defines humanity? What is it that's special?

What about us is flawed? You know, all that kind of stuff. But ultimately, you know, the Federation, even though it is, you know, ostensibly a multi-species organization is extremely human centric. Its headquarters is on earth. We mostly see humans and that's for obvious casting and budget reasons, but like, you know, but still that is the narrative that's being portrayed. And so I wanted, one of the things I wanted to do in Wayfarers was to be like, we're the,

we're the bottom rung of this ladder. The humans, you know, humans are not the default experience of the universe. What works for us does not work for everybody else, be it, you know, just on a very practical physical level or, you know, in a societal structural sort of way. I wanted to make it clear that we are not exceptional. We're just sharing, we're sharing the galaxy with everybody else. And we have to learn to accommodate them just as much as they have to figure out how to accommodate us.

Yeah. The latest novel is so alien-centric. What was your thinking in terms of that? To the point where every so often when humans come up, people are like, what do you think about humans? Why did you really want to go even further in that direction this time that the the initial inspiration was was very simple in that the third book in the series uh record of a space-born few is entirely focused on a particular human society

there are alien characters in the book but they are not point of view characters and they're they don't take up a lot of screen time quote unquote you know it was a it was a heavily heavily human book and so for the galaxy and the ground within the latest one i wanted to go in the opposite direction i was like i really miss writing exoskeletons and scales and weird bodies like i want to get back to that um but also because I knew it was going to be the last book in the series, I did want to cover some of the ground that I had been wanting to explore. There were a lot of species that I had touched on in other books that I'm like, I never really got a chance to dig into that. Let's use this opportunity to do so. It just felt like because I had swung the pendulum so far with the previous book, I wanted to go back in the other direction. And what is that process like for you? Because I mean, you can literally in terms of making up aliens, you could literally do anything you want.

Like what is that? What is that creative Zeno or astrobiology process like for you? It usually starts from a place of biology. I am endlessly fascinated by the incredibly diverse array of bodies and adaptations we see here in the real world. And I pull a lot of inspiration from that. So usually what I do is I pick a particular trait. Let's say it's chromatophores, for example. So the cells that make squid and octopus change color. And I'll take that and I'll say, okay, let's blow that up to civilization level. So if we start there,

if you use color to communicate, you don't use sound, you don't have vocal cords, you use color, you, you, you use the look of your face to, to communicate with others. How does that affect really basic things? How does that affect architecture and the way you light a room? How does that affect architecture and the way you light a room? How does that affect the kind of technology you use? How does that affect your system of writing? If you even have one, what about art or what about your clothing or, you know, how do you go about communicating with other species? If somebody walks into the room and

they're very brightly colored, do you take, you know, if they're wearing like bright, brightly colored clothing, do you take offense, you know, that sort of thing. Every species just becomes that sort of those kinds of thought experiments where I take this one little thing and then I'll just chase it down the rabbit hole as far as it goes. And I weave it all together and, and ideally make a coherent culture out of it. Are there ever any sort of cliches, sci-fi cliches in terms of aliens that you're always like, well, I always want to avoid this? Using human bodies as a default template is the one I really try to avoid. I obviously take some liberties in that I do have,

you know, other bipedal species and species that are, you know, have bodies that we can very easily relate to. I don't think that's the way it would actually be out in the real world. But, you know, have bodies that we can very easily relate to. I don't think that's the way it would actually be out in the real world. But, you know, you do have to have that kind of conceit in science fiction. If I want to write a scene where a bunch of aliens are sitting at the table, they literally all have to sit at the table, you know. They also all have to breathe oxygen or most of them do. They all have to breathe oxygen or if they don't, I have to give them, you know, technological solutions for that. Yeah, it's avoiding the trap of everything is just like us. It's something I think about constantly, you know, and in that I also do look at the real world, you know, I look at things like mammals are

not common, you know, it seems like it because there are a lot of them up here. And if you actually look at like the biomass on the planet, you know, egg laying is far more common than live birth, for example, just as one. There are a lot more exoskeletons out there than there are actually skeletons, you know, things like that, where I'm constantly trying to challenge my own assumptions about, you know, what the default state of physical life is. Well, you're also one thing you're really known for, too, is when you take these ideas, and you bring them up to a level of a sentient alien civilization, you're talking about identity, family, gender, you know, when you lay eggs, when you have different partners, if you take the animal

kingdom, you know, variety to sentient beings, suddenly you're talking about these issues. Why do you find that aliens are such a good metaphor to kind of dig into those ideas and explore them? I mean, I do think that the physicality of it, that in and of itself, if you're talking about egg laying being a great example, if you reproduce in such a way where you're not physically connected to your offspring, how does that change your definition of family?

You know, I think that there's so much fertile ground in there to really challenge our assumptions of what we think of as just like standard or basic. Because if you look at the animal kingdom, none of that is true. standard or basic because if you look at the animal kingdom none of that is true you know sex is weird and gender is weird and and families look a lot of different ways um and so i think if you boil it down to just pure biology then you can start to ask some really interesting questions about the the the cultural systems we build on top of that so in the Wayfarer series, some of the aliens go by these pronouns that, well, it's spelled X, Y, R, or there's also X, E. Do you pronounce it like Xer? Zezer. Zezer.

So there's Z and Zer. So yeah. So I originally thought that you had made those up, but then I Googled it and you didn't. But tell me, what was your thinking about using those pronouns for like certain aliens? Right. Well, I mean, you know, neutral pronouns are something we just need. It's just something we need in language. When I first started writing Wayfarers, they, them was not in common or it was it was in use, but it was not the commonly accepted or the widely accepted neutral pronoun in English there were other you know I mean and there still are a lot of people do use different neo pronouns such as Caesar or you know there are many others but I wanted to

make it very clear within this setting that there is no default expectation of gender, that it is something deeply, deeply tied to your cultural experience. And because bodies are so different and because the markers of gender vary from culture to culture. I mean, that's true just in our own species, regardless of when you start bringing aliens into it. If someone walks up to you and they're like some big lobster person and they up to you and they, they're, you know, like some big lobster person and they're bright blue and they don't wear clothes, you know, you, you can't put any assumption of gender onto that. You have no idea what their concept of gender is.

And so it just struck me as obvious that it would be polite to not use gendered pronouns, um, if you don't know what they are. use gendered pronouns if you don't know what they are and so Z and Zer are the default within the Galactic Commons it's what people use when as just you know when they haven't met somebody before and you know that the the polite and accepted and just reflexive thing to do is to ask or wait for someone to correct you which is rather how I think it should be out here in the real world too. Yeah. It was interesting too, the new novel in terms of like how much conversation had to happen between all these different species and like, and people

saying like, you know, you're ignorant. You don't even know anything about my speed or like the learning process that went through it. It was like, almost reminded me of like freshman year of college a little bit, you know, it was very diverse kind of communities. I mean, what was it like, you know, to kind of in writing and kind of just to get into those conversations? For me, those conversations come very naturally and they're, they're ones that I really enjoy because I come from an international family and that, and that branches in, in many different directions. You know, I've got, I've got folks all over the place and I always have. And that's another one of those things that I just kind of take for granted and was just

this baked in part of my upbringing that, you know, Christmas happens in a lot of different languages and, you know, you travel around to see your relatives and, you know, that you, all the wonderful little cultural misunderstandings that come up because of that what do we find funny what do we think is normal to eat for breakfast you know what how do we get clean you know just all these like little tiny things change the minute you go elsewhere on a map um and so the the conversations um that i have in all the books but especially in this one between aliens or just, you know, individuals who are from different planets or different, you know, spaceships or what have you.

All of it is pulling from my experiences with that of just the joy and frustration of trying to understand somebody who comes from a different context than you. Yeah. Well, being human-centric, as I am, of course, anytime a human came up, I'm like, it's almost like anytime in a British show they mention anything American. I'm like, that's us. Hey!

But the conversation that I thought was so funny was the one where the aliens were all talking about cheese. Like, it's this totally disgusting thing that humans eat that's made out of like mold and animal milk. What inspired that? Food is something that, you know, we can all relate to and we have extremely emotional connections toward. And I did want to have a conversation in this book,

you know, when they're all sort of getting to know each other, in which, you know, let's lean a little bit on how weird humans are to everybody else. You know, most, I think most cultures here in the real world have, you know, a food that everybody else finds appalling. Everybody else is just like, you know, my wife is Icelandic and their national dish is fermented shark uh I've never been able to get it past my nose it smells like ammonia and death where she thinks that peanut butter is the most disgusting thing oh that's so interesting yeah yeah peanut butter and she really can't understand root beer and that's fine um so I I just I sat and thought about that one for a little bit and I'm like, okay, what would, what would other species think is really weird?

And I don't know, cheese jumped out at me. Cause it is kind of a weird food. If you really sit and think. Well, yeah, I definitely, after I read that,

I was like, I can't believe I like cheese. And I will say, I like, there's a part of me that almost feels bad for that scene because cheese is one of my favorite things in the world. I couldn't do without it. But if you really think about it and what it is it's kind of odd so you don't you don't like start with an outline and the ending and you're you're

heading like you you start with uh conversations out of order right in terms of your writing process how does that work yeah I I am complete chaos mode um I don't outline and I rarely know where it is I'm headed. And often, I also don't write in linear order. The ending is usually the only thing that happens in linear order because it's the last thing I write because I never know what it is I'm going to do. I just start, I start with the characters. I tend to start with dialogue. Like I don't write fully fleshed out prose. At first I'm often just writing dialogue and then I go back in and I block. I'll draw a little set and I'll sketch it out. And then I write the way I would stage it, so to speak.

And a lot of that ends up being scrapped or things that don't work out later. But I'm just doing these little dialogue experiments really until I land on something that I like or I'm like yep that dynamic works this scene works we're keeping that one and I just do that until I reach a critical mass of okay I've got all these bits what order do they go in where am I going with this it's usually somewhere halfway through the process of the book ish where I I step back and finally say, okay, what's the structure here? And then I'm literally just arranging post-its on my wall. So it's almost like you invent the characters, you know,

almost like they're there. You've invented the characters, you've almost cast them in your mind. And then you're like, okay, we're going to workshop this guys. You know, you guys do improv. I want you to improv a lot. Like, you know, it's like a Mike Lee movie. You know, I're going to workshop this, guys. Yes. You know, you guys do improv. I want you to improv a lot. Like, you know, it's like a Mike Lee movie. You know, I want you to improv a lot until, you know, we start, or like a Christopher Guest movie, until we finally start figuring out who our characters are and kind of a story begins to emerge.

And then you're like, keep that, cut that, keep that. You know, that kind of thing. That's a wonderful analogy. Yes, that's exactly it. Cool. So, but why wrap up the Wayfarer series? It could go on indefinitely. You know, it just felt, I just knew it in my gut. It was just the right time. In the same way that I knew, you know, after I wrote the first book, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, you know,

I was asked, would you like to do a sequel? And I said, I'd like to keep in the same universe, but I don't want to write about this crew again it was the same just instinct like I didn't have anything more for those characters and it just felt like I you know I had a lot I had a lot of material for this book but it had reached a point where I'm like I'm ready to do something else you know I I first started working with the glimmer you know the early glimmers of what became Wayfarers when I was 20 years old. And I'm 35 now. That is a long time to sit with one thing, you know. And as fun as it is to be able to build your own sandbox, after that much time, there are things about it that get limiting.

In that, you know, I am creatively interested in different things now at 35 than I was when I was 20. And there are world building things I would have done differently, but that I'm now locked into, right? Because I've already written all these other books. And if I don't follow the same rules, I'll get letters and nobody wants that. So, you know, it just felt, you know, I didn't want to cheapen any future books. I didn't want to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. I didn't want to feel stuck. I just felt like, you know what, this one still is coming from the heart and I want to leave it there. But yeah, I'm looking to just push more boundaries and take off some guardrails and get a little weirder. So what comes next for Becky? We'll find out after the break.

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It was a standalone novella called To Be Taught If Fortunate. The story is about a group of scientists who fly to distant planets to study alien life. And unlike the Wayfarer series, these aliens cannot communicate with humans. They're more like exotic animals. And the scientists are trying really hard not to disturb or contaminate these creatures, which turns out to be difficult. Also, the scientists have tinkered with their biology so they can adapt to these new environments. For instance, when they land on a dark planet, they biohack their bodies so their skin glitters and they can see each other in the dark without

using artificial lights that could disturb the ecosystem. The inspiration for the story came from a conversation that Becky had with a scientist at a conference that was intended for scientists and science fiction writers to mingle. I met a scientist named Lisa Knipp, who's a synthetic biologist.

And she gave this incredible talk on her whole thing is, you know, what if we could genetically adapt ourselves to be better suited for human space flight? Because that's the whole trick with human space flight, right? Is that like, it's very difficult to keep people alive out there. And we come up with all these technological solutions. And her approach is what if we came up with a biological solution? And this is not a new idea in science fiction at all. Like, you know, the sort of transhumanist approach is something that, you know, is very well trod.

But the way she talked about it, I thought was so different because she wasn't talking about these very radical sort of ideas that you typically get in sci-fi where it's like we're gonna make a whole separate species or we're doing this out of you know necessity because like earth is dead and you know our only hope is to like you know sort of re-engineer ourselves so we can live elsewhere she was talking about it in these incredibly subtle terms of just you you know, what if we just make these little tweaks? We're not actually changing anything about, you know, the

core of your humanity. What if we just give you just a little bit so that you can, you know, better survive high levels of radiation or, you know, planets where there's, you know, very intense gravity or cold, you know, what if you could make your own, very intense gravity or, or cold, you know, what if you could make your own antifreeze, just these tiny, tiny little adaptations that wouldn't change us, but would allow us to survive out there. She made it sound so simple. And I found it so beautiful and so incredible. And, and yeah, she was kind enough to consult with me a bit after the conference. You know, we had a few Skype calls and whatnot. And, and, and yeah, she was kind enough to consult with me a bit after the conference. Um, you know, we had a few Skype calls and whatnot.

And, and so that, that whole concept is very much her idea. And I just, I just spitballed from there. Well, it's funny because it's, well, first of all, you mentioned transhumanism because so much of transhumanism is like, I will transform my body and my brain will be part of it. I'll be part robot and I'll live forever, you know, and it's very me centric. Um, uh, and also to a lot of exploration of other planets often is is also like we're gonna bomb mars with nuclear bombs until we create an atmosphere or we're going to colonize this planet and it's like no this is like a less invasive like humbler approach of like you know what if we're visiting

this planet maybe we should terraform ourselves right you know to adapt to the planet you know what if we're visiting this planet maybe we should terraform ourselves right you know to adapt to the planet you know which i'm like it's it feels like like a refreshing way of approaching space travel i mean i mean that was that's the that's the whole crux of the book right is is that we are we are guests out there this is not our territory it does not belong to us and the scientists in the book go to great effort to have this sort of leave no trace approach to the places that they go, you know, and it to me, it just seemed almost seemed polite. I'm, you know, I'm not going to ask this planet to change for me, I'm going to change for the planet. Because I don't want to disturb anything there. It's a it's a matter of respect, I feel. Well, what was it like, given that you've written all these sentient alien civilizations, what was it like to write aliens

being more like these sort of exotic creatures that you can't really communicate with? It was definitely a different muscle. You know, I think that To Be Taunt is a very different flavor of sci-fi than Wayfarers. There's no creatures there that you can sit down and have dinner with. You know, in some ways, it was a little bit of a lonely process because you can't talk to them. But in others, it just, it felt like less of a stretch in some ways because it felt almost like, I don't know, going for a hike and looking at, you know, wildlife or going to a zoo or whatnot. It was something that I could relate to better than sitting down having tea with an alien because it's something I already do. You know, we do that all the time. We can't encounter dozens of different species every day and don't really think about it.

And so it felt in some ways more intimately human. Hmm. Well, I want to go back to the Wayfarer series again for a minute because we've gone in the alien direction. But with the second book in the Wayfarer series, A Closed and Common Orbit, you have an AI story. And actually, one of my favorite subgenres is when an AI is put into a body. And in this case, it's the AI of a ship that's been put into an android body, which is really, really awkward. what was the inspiration behind that character of sidra so with sidra i've always been fascinated by robots and artificial intelligence i think i couldn't tell you why i just think they're neat one of the things though that i've noticed is very common in in stories that focus on artificial intelligence and especially if you're talking about androids or you know any sort of artificial mechanical being is if you're telling a story about you know where you have this very sort of childlike uh robot or android you know that's that's very innocent and sort of approaching the world in a new way they tend to be gendered male um whereas if you have stories about a female android or a female artificial intelligence they get a little weirder um in that you know there's usually um she's some sort of

threat or she's very damsel-y and we have to save her or you know there's some often creepy sexual subjects that gets pinned onto it you know and and and, and, but it's rare. I've, I struggle to think of one where it's told from her point of view. There's also this, the, the, the common trope of she's gotten too smart and we must kill her. And that, that kind of rubs me the wrong way. And so I really wanted to, if I was going to tell a story about an artificial intelligence, I wanted to give her agency. What, what, how do you feel about this body that you didn't have a choice of being put into? How, what do you want from your life? You know, how, how do you approach the world and the fact that you are now living a radically and kind of traumatically different physical experience than you were designed to? I just, I wanted to put the camera

in her head and, you know, get that perspective for once. Yeah, it's like a dysphoria, you know, which is unusual. Exactly. Well, it seems like it's funny because bodies come up also a lot, like even with aliens. It's so like there's so much about them asking each other about their bodies, you know, very frankly about their bodies. Is that something that you think is also just a subject that you find fascinating to explore through science fiction? Yeah, definitely. I think it's, I mean, part of it with aliens is just sort of, you know, there is a very basic politeness there of, you know, can you breathe? Are you comfortable? Can you use this chair? But I mean, I think a lot of it too, for me, comes from a queer experience as well, you

know, in that our bodies and what we do with them are the defining characteristic of how other people see us. It's impossible to have that kind of life experience and not spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about your body and how you relate to it. So in some ways, it's funny because it's obviously something I think about a lot, but it's also not an angle where I ever like consciously sat down and was like, I'm going to tell stories about bodies. You know, it's just, it's something that's been such a big part of the background radiation of my life that it just feels like a

normal thing for me, um, or an obvious thing to want to explore and unpack. I mean, it's so true with so many writers or filmmakers or, you know, they're like, look, I put this out there, you know, you can all notice the themes. But, you know, if I start out, you know, if I put the cart before the horse and say, these are themes I want to explore, it will be incredibly didactic. And right, exactly. I mean, at the end of the day, I just write what I'm feeling. And I think the things that are important to me are the themes that come out in the book,

but they're not something I really consciously think about until after the fact. What she feels like writing these days is solar punk. Solar punk is a genre that imagines a future where we survive climate change, no thanks to governments or corporations. The human race works collectively from the ground up, DIY style, to figure out creative solutions and adaptations. And solarpunk is a really new genre. There's not a lot out there. So when Becky's solarpunk novella has come out, they're going to be a huge contribution to the canon. Now, I did an episode about Solarpunk last year,

and I was amazed by the listener responses. I mean, so many people have been feeling hopeless about climate change. And Solarpunk feels like a breath of fresh air. Solarpunk is inherently utopian. I do think that dystopia is important and really valuable i think

those kinds of stories are good for us being able to sort of vent our spleens and like get our anxiety out about like uh you know this might all go terribly wrong cautionary tales are important and that kind of catharsis is important but i think it's equally important to have stories that that say what if everything went right you know what if what if we fix this? What if we didn't have to face some sort of horrible tragedy? I think those kinds of ideas are really crucial right now. I think they can, if done right, they can be a lifeline to get you out of that place where you read the climate change article and you're super depressed afterwards. You know, I think it sounds incredibly trite, but hope for a better future is, I think, one of the most vital things we can try and foster right now.

So are these stories, are these solar punk stories going to be set on Earth? Are they going to be like intergalactic solar punk? So they're actually they're they're straight up science fantasy in that they take place on a secondary world so they they do not take place in our in our in our universe at all they take place on a moon called pango which is just a thing i made up and it works because i say so and that's where people live and it really is intended as almost more more of a parable than an actual like blueprint. You know, I don't intend it to be like, you know, here, this is just Earth 2 or whatever. It's just it's just this little microcosm. Yeah, because then you're not tied to like, well, what years is supposed to take place?

Right. What countries are supposed to be in? Because that's the thing, especially because they're novellas, because they're so short. I didn't want to have to get into. And here's how we redrew the maps. And here's how we fix these specific ecological problems i could just hand wave that and be like here's what happened here's how it works uh we're gonna go from there are there aliens there are no aliens i know shocking

but but there are robots so oh cool cool well now that you're leaving the wayfairy series behind is there anything that you think you you're gonna miss a particular character species or even aspect of that world the first thing that came to mind is extremely practical in that um it's very nice to have like um all my notes already we have a wiki you have a wiki i do i do i have i have a private wiki that lives on my hard drive and it's it's backed up on in a few different places but yeah it's really nice to not have to go back to the drawing board with everything and i now have to start from scratch and yeah i mean i i obviously i have loved living in that place a lot. I will miss, I will miss the Andrisks and I will miss Port Coriel and I will miss hopping around wormholes. You know, there are a lot of details in there that I am very fond of, obviously.

But I think it's a fond farewell, definitely. I am looking forward to greeting whatever she has planned next that is it for this week thank you for listening and special thanks to Becky Chambers by the way we are still accepting submissions for our episode on guilty pleasures you can learn more about it at the imaginary world site on our contact page my assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweeted emalinski and Imagine Worlds pod. And if you really like the show, please leave a review wherever you get your podcasts or a shout out on social media.

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