“When people talk about humans taking responsibility, they always seem to mean somebody else,” the narrator remarks in Ursula Whitcher’s North Continent Ribbon. Whitcher’s commitment to developing our ideas of responsibility, more than any specific reference to the world of bone-spun spaceships and ribbons tokening contracts, form this anthology’s vignettes into a digestible and intriguing novella. These stories use the backdrop of a planet amid an automation boom to examine our obligations and how we shape them.

The thread that binds North Continent Ribbon is the development of automated vehicle technology and its human oversight on the north continent of the fictitious alien planet Nakharat. The story proceeds chronologically over the span of centuries, starting with an assassin grappling with her directive to kill her starship’s captain (“Closer Than Your Kidneys”), proceeding through such figures as a sex worker investigating a client’s fatal car crash (“The Association of Twelve Thousand Flowers”) and a teenager surveilling their own tutor for rebel activity (“The Last Tutor”), before concluding with another starship debating the rights of their kind with their makers (“A Fisher of Stars”). Named characters are contained to their stories but connected by their choices to take responsibility for their movement through the world.

Whitcher’s focus throughout lies on ordinary people in extraordinary times, deftly threading the science fiction needle of presenting people like us in a world of paradigm-shifting technological change. While she provides a distinct voice in each story, sliding between first, second, and third person with grace, each story revolves around the bond between one person and someone they love. Humanity comes first; healing acceleration machines, omnipresent contract-ribbons, and glowing swords come second. Indeed, Nakharat’s north continent resembles our societies in many ways: corporate power drives each story, and while queer relationships are notably normalized throughout, the nonbinary protagonist of “The Last Tutor” finds their tutors stereotype them as “obsessed with fucking mysticism” and wanting “to spend all their time reading poetry about the ineffable oneness of the universe.” Even the automated vehicle technology of North Continent Ribbon, tremendously fast and widespread, resembles our own in problematic safety mechanisms: Nakharat’s solution to the problem of responsibility for vehicular injury involves horrifying punishment and dehumanization all-too-reminiscent of existing methods of prison labor in our world.

By uniting humanity with the automated travel of space opera in this way, Whitcher builds a thoughtful conclusion about what we owe to each other. With the first few stories in the collection inhabiting similar patterns, it can seem at first that Nakharat might not have much going on. Yet the beginning story of North Continent Ribbon, “Closer Than Your Kidneys,” at once provides an example of a smartly-twisted story within thirteen pages and a gentle signpost that commitment takes precedence over any single flash in the pan: “the strength of a braid,” the protagonist tells their apologizing lover, “is not in its first crossing.” And indeed, each story contributes to the ringing conclusion of "A Fisher of Stars," which left me energized and hoping for more Nakharat. Whitcher’s crossings build a fine braid of collective care indeed.