Awwww.

A friend told me that this was feel-good sci-fi, and it really is. Not that it isn't clever, because it is. Not that it doesn't ask the reader to think about things like racism, consensus thinking, cultural differences and gender roles, because it does. Not that horrible things don't happen in it, because they do.

But it's just... if the distinction between hard and soft sci-fi still holds, this definitely falls in the latter camp in more than one way. Chambers is happy to throw some technobabble at the obvious problems ("The ship is powered by algae, OK? Somehow.") so she can get past that to the question of how people (humans and others) relate to each other. It's funny how the real-world baseline of the novel - how the internet and worldwide mass media have become the new normal in how we interact (or don't) with each other and the world - would itself have been hard sci-fi 50-60 years ago. And into this world of multiple alien species and cultures trying to co-operate as well as they can, Chambers throws a plucky little Firefly-esque crew of workers doing their job. And it's all just so damn... optimistic. Not carefree, but caring.

My only real complaint is that it feels too short; there are things here I would have loved to dwell on, characters I would have liked to get to know better.

But still: Awwww.