Record of a Spaceborn Few

We get to follow members of various (unrelated) families and their somewhat restless struggles during a short period of their lives, all played out on a space ship that's part of Earth's final generation fleet.

It was hard keeping track of all members and their individual relations for the first half of the book (and then some more), but once their stories and certain events got going I started to finally figure them out and could appreciate the overall story.

The story itself had a soft and lazy, space-utopian vibe to it, sort of, and the people were showing the nice kind of togetherness, the kind that makes you feel warm and fuzzy just reading about it. It was also a bit rambling a couple of times, with long winded monologues that never stuck with me but, as I mentioned before, I liked the book and it's warm story in the end anyway.

Record of a Spaceborn Few is something of an anthropological study of the humans of the Exodus fleet. The humans who have lived in these generational ships have beautiful, egalitarian cultures and traditions which the book views from the inside and from the outside (alien and non-fleet human eyes) during a series of events which challenge their perceptions of themselves. 

It parallels somewhat a small self-contained rural community which has long past the reason for its founding. Continuing on regardless to preserve their way of life. Children are seduced by the excitement of planet-side civilizations while others return seeking a quieter life, albeit clueless about their customs. It’s a beautiful exploration of community. 

The third book of the Wayfarers series, if series is the right word for these losely connected books happening in the same universe, again focusses on a different kind of normal life: it felt the most human-centred so far as it mostly takes places on the Exodus Fleet, the conglomeration of enormous habitat ships, Homesteaders, which a big part of the human race used to leave their dying planet with.

On the one hand, the basic idea of this kind of emergency take-off is quite frightening as we are working hard on a future where we might have to do exactly that, or die out on poisoned Earth, if terraforming Mars doesn't work out as people seem to hope. On the other hand, the thought is hopeful - especially as Chambers outlines a new human society where many of the evils which now work towards us destroying our own home have been expelled by necessity and community.
Of course, not everything is fine on the Exodus Fleet - the contact with other races has made space for new desires and dreams, many of the traditions of the Exodans seem obsolete, and many young people wish to leave.
The reader learns about all this from various points of view: that of a teenager wishing to leave, that of a young man wishing to join, of a family (Ashby's family, by the way) who is faced with big changes, that of a highly esteemed Archivist who believes in the Fleet and her visiting Harmagian friend who is ever so fascinated by this way of life, and that of a "caretaker" who struggles with the difficulties her honoured profession brings.
Ghuh'loloan, the visiting Harmagian ethnologist, is as "alien" as they come, and thus makes the contrast between insiders and outsiders very stark. Their contact, in parts, resembles that of and explorer and a very interesting indigenous tribe - and this is caused equally by both sides of the exchange. Amazingly, Sawyer, the young man who would want to join the Fleet, is treated no less as an outsider despite being of Exodan descent - which those he meets only realise when it is too late.

The themes here are those of belonging, tradition and change, of "them" and "us". And as usually with the author, there is hurt, tremendous and deep, but in the end, there is a spark of hope that the things struggled with can be overcome, that there is a way.