Starship Librarians is a recently published collection of short stories where authors explore what the future of librarianship might look like when humans have pursued the stars. Science fiction has long been a genre for exploring contemporary social issues through a futuristic lens, allowing us to examine difficult problems and uncertain futures with enough distance to sidestep our emotional responses to the stresses of the present. So what kinds of issues do these stories explore, how do they reflect current social issues, and how do they imagine humanity might creatively address them? Let’s take a look.
The first major theme in the anthology is stories as culture and identity. Stories of how a person attained personhood by reading stories (Retrofit, Hingston), how people cut off from their culture can carry it with them through stories (The Librarian of Mars, Race-Moore; Librarian’s Assistant, Lauderdale), and how stories can bring people together and give them hope in dark times (How to Save a Life, Wheaton). Even in the far future, with advanced technology and alien cultures, stories are imagined to help anchor people in who they are and provide context to their lives.
The second theme I’d like to mention is one of cross-cultural value. Archived by Lesley Moody tells the story of an alien archivist who encounters human culture and sees the value in it. Synapses by Jennifer Rahn shows how ways of knowing from other cultures can help us in ways we don’t expect, especially when our own way of knowing has fallen short. All That Glitters (Westbrook-Trenholm) and Inscription (J. R. Campbell) both describe far future humanity and how the distance of time can shift culture enough to be examined through this lens.
Third, the theme of information freedom on conflict with privacy. Most of the stories in the anthology describe information as a resource to be shared as widely as possible. Two stories contrasted that idea. The first was Inscription (J. R. Campbell). A small crew is on a long voyage when one member of the crew beings showing signs of depression, and the librarian accesses his reading activity to help the crew help him. The second is Pirate Librarian Wanted by Aggie Novak. “We’re guardians of knowledge. We protect information.” The story focuses on their destruction of an information data node containing details about everyone living in that sector of space. While seemingly at odds with their mission, the information had been collected by corporations in order to best exploit the people living there. Protecting patron privacy is a fundamental ethical responsibility in librarianship, and in the future that may take many forms.
The last theme, and by far the most prevalent in the stories, is information poverty and censorship. Eleven out of nineteen stories include this as their primary focus. Sometimes there’s information scarcity as result of it being lost to time, sometimes it’s banned or destroyed by governments or corporations, sometimes it’s because of lack of communication opportunities. These stories are full of dystopian scenarios where access to information is restricted and books are burned. In the face of these dire circumstances, information workers of all roles and species work to preserve knowledge, keep it safe, and seek ways to share it with others. Librarians are framed as guerilla fighters, heretics, and activists. Many face severe personal repercussions for their efforts, and yet they persist, because that’s what librarians do. “Librarians and other information workers reject the restriction and/or denial of access to ideas and information through censorship by states, governments…” says he Space Librarians’ Code by Lisa Timpf. Schnarr’s story that concludes the anthology is the most focused on this active resistance role of librarianship; as censorship and oppression become more extreme, so does his protagonist’s efforts to disrupt them.
Librarians and information workers in these stories are universally portrayed in a positive light, which isn’t surprising. The ravages of capitalism and the oppression of fascist governments underlie almost every story in the collection, and librarians are the brave heroes standing up to those oppressive forces. Despite the circumstances they face, they all demonstrate the answer to Through Time and Calamity’s (Nocito) question that identified the one attribute required for librarianship. “Determine what will preserve knowledge through time and calamity.”
Nocito’s answer to that is “hope.” And as we information professionals of today face those same threats, that is what these authors would have us hold on to. Personally, I struggle with that sometimes, given waves hands at everything. I’m grateful to these authors for writing these stories and sharing them with me. Each one is its own act of resistance, and each one has given me hope.
Shannon Allen & J. R. Campbell (Eds.). (2025). Starship Librarians. Tyche Books.