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Record of a spaceborn few
by Beck Chambers
The third novel in the Wayfarers series, set just before the first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and therefore before the second novel A closed and common oribt.
The novel describes events on the Asteria, one of the homesteader spaceships in the Exodan fleet, which was the last to leave Earth centuries earlier. It follows the lives of several characters living on the Asteria as they decide whether to stay on the Homsteader or emigrate to live "planetside". A fun read with some interesting ideas of what it would mean to live on a fleet of ships built to evacuate the dying Earth and whether to keep doing so once you have encountered other sapient species who provide highly advanced technology making your way of life obsolete.
From 01.01.2026 to 11.01.2026
A closed and common orbit
by Beck Chambers
A follow up novel to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet tracking the events in the lives of two characters. Firstly the new version of the Lovelace AI from the Wayfarer, now named Sidra and transfered into a human like body. Secondly, the life of Penny who escaped as a slave on a renegade planet of enhanced humans with the help of an AI named Owl trapped inside an immobilised transfer shuttle that had been scrapped on the same planet.
It depicts the struggle an AI can have in adapting to a new environment and is also a very intersting take on the bonds that could form between humans and AIs. Whilst written in 2016, this is quite topical at the moment given the rise in teenagers turning to chatbots for self help with depression.
I finished the last 250 pages of this book in the 2 days before the new year suffering from a bad virus infection.
From 12.12.2025 to 31.12.2025
Enshittification
by Cory Doctorow
An interesting read explaining in detail how the web has become enshittified to serve only the profits of BigTech.
An interesting quotes from the book:
When capitalisms philosopher-theorists lionized free markets they didnt mean markets that were free from regulation, they meant markets that were free from rent.
The chapter on the administrability of legislation is interesting. This shows how it is not enough to have legislation. The legislation needs to actually be enforceable.
For example, a right-to-exit a platform can be easily validated by regulators. Likewise a principle similar to network neutrality whereby intermediaries show you the results you asked for not the ones of the highest bidders can be checked. The business offering the service you asked for should not need to outbid other businesses in order for them to appear at the top of your feed.
An intermediaries job is to faithfully serve the parties it sits between. Facebook's job is to deliver the data you asked for, not the ads they wished you'd asked for. Then all parties using Facebook will be protected from shakedown demands to pay to boost the content to reach their confirmed subscribers.
Overall this is a good book with a clear left of centre lean, demanding better regulation and improved workers rights. It makes the point that this is not something revolutionary, but actually how things were until about 40 years ago.
From 18.11.2025 to 12.12.2025
