Hope is difficult to maintain in the colony of Fortune, one of the settings of Becky Chambers’ new science-fiction novel, but it’s necessary.

That’s a familiar feeling at The Legendarium in Salt Lake City.

In the four years it has been open, the fantasy and sci-fi bookstore has become a community space for book lovers, role-playing gamers and nerds of all sorts. It’s also become a home to Utah’s transgender community, since the bookstore is entirely trans-owned and operated.

Now, The Legendarium will host sci-fi author Becky Chambers for her first visit to Utah on her upcoming book tour for “As You Wake, Break the Shell” on Oct. 15 at Kingsbury Hall.

Chambers is The Legendarium’s top-selling author for a reason: The message of her “hopepunk” books mirrors the store’s ethos.

“[Chambers] really pioneered and sort of invented the genre of hopepunk. It’s about radical hope in the face of [the] collapse of society, of the environment, of all the things that we hold dear, and the love that is worth fighting for,” Orion Enceladus, one of the owners of The Legendarium, said.

’Hope is necessary’

Chambers said her newest book is “everything I care about.”

“As You Wake, Break the Shell” follows two protagonists in two different timelines and two different colonies. They explore one colony that is harsh and inhospitable while the other is a utopia.

“It is equal parts a space story and a love story. This is science fiction through and through. It’s got rogue botanists, space colonies, space whales [and] big gooey questions about what our purpose is,” Chambers said.

In the earlier timeline, the harsh colony Fortune is “a dangerous place to live,” Chambers said. “I really wanted to be honest about that, sort of in parallel with the difficult times we’re facing out here in the real world, and say, ‘Stuff is hard, and hope is difficult to maintain, and it is a marathon, not a sprint.’”

Chambers said she hopes the message that gets across with her new book is that “hope is necessary.”

Comfort in books and community

For Max Brunt, a fan of both Chambers and the store, which they affectionately refer to as “The Ledge,” the event is a big deal.

The first time Brunt saw non-binary representation in a book was in Chambers’ “A Psalm for the Wild-Built.” For them, reading Chambers’ work is a comfort, just like visiting The Legendarium.

“It’s just a comfort to know that there will always be that community space there,” Brunt said.

Both owners of the store, Enceladus and Raelle Zephyr Westwind, agree that the power of deep relationships — whether it’s found family, a romantic partner, or platonic friends — in Chambers’ work resonates with their business.

“That’s kind of the beautiful part of this book … the present can look so hopeless and so bleak, and it can feel like we need to draw our circles so close … because we don’t have the ability to do anything else,” Westwind said.

In contrast to many other sci-fi and fantasy books, there is no overthrowing of the empire, or killing of the king in Chambers’ books, just a steadfast desire to build a community that can power through the circumstances they are in.

That’s what they do at The Legendarium, too.

“When you read the chapters in this book that are about this future beautiful home they’ve created, it feels like that often coming in [The Legendarium] and seeing friends and a community that I love,” Westwind said.

“We feel very fortunate to have this bookstore and community space, and it really does feel like more than a physical space,” Enceladus said. It’s a community of people trying to figure out how to live in a world that would rather you not exist and that feels very much like this book.”

Shem Greenwood, another Chambers fan, has read all of the author’s books.

“Her stories, even though they often have peril or struggle or challenges, are invariably hopeful, and they’re invariably about people pulling together rather than apart, and they are always about people being allowed to affirm who they are,” Greenwood said. “You couldn’t describe The Legendarium in any more accurate terms than that.”

And, Greenwood adds, “We also really desperately need people like Chambers who are willing to say, ‘Hey, we can get this right. We can solve it. We can pull together. We can take care of one another.’”

Tickets for the author event “Thrive in Daunting Times Through Hopepunk Futures” cost $31 to $70, depending on what tier you choose, and are available for purchase.

The store is partnering with Under the Umbrella, the Queer Student Union of Utah, and the University of Utah Gender Studies Program.