Becky Chamber’s novel The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is clearly rooted in the tradition of the space opera sub-genre of SF. Set in the far-future, this novel follows the lives of the crew on board the Wayfarer, captained by a human named Ashby in a universe where multiple groups of sentient beings have formed an alliance. The crew builds tunnels (like wormholes) because faster-than-light travel has become outlawed, and the inhabitants of the ship are struggling to make ends meet. The crew receives a government contracted job building a tunnel to provide access to the planet where a species lives that hopes to join the alliance early on in the novel, and the plot follows their journey to complete this contract. However, more interesting are the relationships built between the crew members who, although from different planets and cultures, become a family. Think Firefly, but humans are a very, very small part of a large universe.
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This text is not marketed as young adult science fiction (YASF) and is clearly intended for adult readers. That being said, while this text includes a lot of hard science (the physics behind the tunneling process is explained) and the world building Chambers engages in is both dense and subtle (the inter-species politics supporting the plot relies on the reader to fill in the absent paradigm of the novel themselves), this text would facilitate excellent cross-curricular connections between English and the Health and Physical Education Curriculum should it be used with committed, scaffolded assistance from the teacher.
Given the nature of my research, I kept asking myself: Is this novel appropriate for secondary students? Could it be categorized as YASF? The reflections I engaged in and my responses to these questions while reading this novel are what I want to focus on as I link this text to the Health and Physical Education Curriculum. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet provides multiple examples of appropriate, consensual emotional and sexual relationships that resist seemingly mandatory (and default) heterosexuality seen consistently in much of young adult literature. Relationships in the novel move across species, beyond gender and the female/male binary, and push the boundaries of the idea of love through, for example, the relationship between the Wayfarer’s technical mechanic Jenks and the ship’s artificial intelligence, Lovelace. One interaction in particular between a female human named Rosemary and an Aandrisk woman named Sissix caused me to seriously consider this novel and whether it could be used in a high school classroom. In this scene, Rosemary approaches Sissix about a potential sexual relationship following a visit to Sissix’s home planet where sexuality is an important part of her feeling of family and belonging. Their interaction is an example of thorough confirmation of mutual consent:
Rosemary continued to speak. ‘Sissix, I don’t have any feathers I can give you. I wish I did. You made me feel welcome when I first set foot on this ship. And since then, the kindness you’ve shown – not just to me, but to everyone – has meant more than I can say. You go out of your way to make everybody aboard this ship comfortable, to show us affection in the way that we expect it. I don’t expect to know Aandrisks as well as you know humans, but there are some things I understand. I understand that we’re your family and that for you, not being able to touch us means there’s a vital part missing. I think that feeling hurts you, and I think you’ve buried it deep. I saw the look on your face when your family held you. You may love the Wayfarer, but life here is incomplete.’ She pressed her lips together. They came back wet. ‘I don’t know how you see me, but – but I want you to know that if you should want something more…I’d like to give it to you.’
Sissix cupped her palm, flipped it and spread her claws, even though she knew Rosemary would not understand the gesture. Tresha. It was the thankful, humble, vulnerable feeling that came after someone saw a truth in you, something they had discovered just by watching, something that you did not admit often to yourself. If Rosemary had been an Aandrisk, Sissix would’ve knocked the cups aside and started coupling right then and there, but she remained cautious. Apparently the part of her that understood Humans was still at the helm. (Chambers, 274-5)
This conversation takes eight pages of the novel to complete, where both characters establish ground rules for their emotional and sexual relationship in ways that beautifully model what consent looks like and sounds like. However, in spite of this my initial reaction was that this interaction and the sexual relationship that follows made this text inappropriate for school. This forced me to reflect and ask myself why this healthy representation of sex was where I instinctively drew the line. As a result, this novel forced me to consider my own education and the novels I read. What emerged was a feeling that all the novels I had read in school that contained sex of any kind were usually violent, and none that I could remember contained positive representations of sex. The Kite Runner, The Wars, The Way the Crow Flies – examples of texts where sex is not shown as a consensual, healthy experience but a violent and damaging one. While this blog post is not the place to consider whether this is a defined pattern, it seems to me that more positive representations of sexual relationships must have a space in the classroom, ones that model consent and healthy interpersonal relationships and embody other values outlined in both the English and Health and Physical Education curriculum documents. The new Health and Physical Education curriculum calls for more emphasis on the development of healthy relationships with a focus on consent in sexual encounters:
Human Development and Sexual Health. Human development and sexual health education is more than simply teaching young people about the anatomy and physiology of reproduction. Sexual health, understood in its broadest sense, can include a wide range of topics and concepts, from sexual development, reproductive health, choice and sexual readiness, consent, abstinence, and protection, to interpersonal relationships, sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, affection and pleasure, body image, and gender roles and expectations. (42)
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet seems to me an excellent place to begin exploring the potential SF has in the classroom to envision new possibilities in the above mentioned area, helping model for students the wide range of what healthy relationships can look like through fiction.
Works Cited
Chambers, B. (2015). The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. London: Hodder.
Ontario Ministry of Education. (2015). The Ontario Curriculum: Grades 9-12, Health and Physical Education, 2015 – Revised. Retrieved from: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/secondary/health9to12.pdf
