To Be Taught, If Fortunate

Ariadne O'Neill is an engineer on the Merian, a spacecraft carrying the four-person Lawki 6 mission through the 22nd century. Her crewmates are Elena, Jack and Chikondi. Their job is to study habitable worlds that lie light-years from Earth.

The crew sleeps through the long crossings between planets. On arrival they rely on somaforming, which reshapes the body so a person can live on an alien world, with no need for the heavy equipment that colonization usually demands.

The novella is epistolary. Ariadne narrates in the first person, writing a transmission home that reports what the crew found on each planet and what the work has cost the four of them. It is a quiet, humane science fiction story driven by curiosity rather than action. It was a finalist for the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novella.

Then contact with Earth grows uncertain. The crew must weigh their debt to the mission, to the people who sent them out, and to each other, while Ariadne keeps writing to whoever might still be listening.