I just finished listening to a book the other day. It's called Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold. It is listed as the first in her Vorkosigan series but the recommended reading order is to start at book 2, so I initially skipped it. The rest of the series is basically a bunch of action/space opera books following a particular family in their adventures in a sci-fi future involving a planet that does feudalism in space and a boy who is born with a fragile body into a warrior-based society. They're really fun and I recommend them.
But.
Falling Free is about a man whose company sends him to a space station to teach a bunch of people with extra arms where their legs should be how to do space welding. When I first read the summary, I thought it was really weird and figured I wouldn't get around to reading it. I'm so glad I read it after all.
It's not just about a bunch of four-armed freaks learning space welding. It's about recognizing the exploitation of those around you. It's about the dehumanizing nature of bureaucracy. It's about the danger of outsourcing your morality to what's legal. It's about how offloading responsibility onto the next guy results in disaster. It's about learning what kind of labor is needed to make a society. It's about how sometimes you can weaponize bureaucracy against itself for good. It's about how others can weaponize it for evil. It's about understanding the value of women's labor. It's about the value of free will. It's about the importance of taking responsibility for the consequences of your own actions. It's about the dangers of eugenics and it's about the dangers of coorporations and it's about the dangers of personal ambition. It's about standing up for what's right even if it goes against what you always thought was right. It was published in 1988 and it's about four-armed people welding in space.
