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Blue Sky
Meteors, signals, apologies, and that tricky little thing called humanity- four years after the events of Portal II, Wheatley's been handed a second chance, but it's not going to be plain sailing…
- GenresFan Fiction
358 pages, ebook
First published October 3, 2011
12 people are currently reading
91 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 11, 2018
This book was great, a spin-off of Portal, and considering it was done by someone private and not affiliated with Valve makes it even more amazing.
August 22, 2023
portal fic on good reads?!?! Blue Sky Portal 2 in the year 2023?!
April 25, 2020
Oh, the feels! Recently came across this by chance and found it very well done. An excellent portrayal of the characters and great relationship development. While Chell tries to help him fit in, Wheatley, not really knowing how to be human, does tend to make several mistakes which results in a few dramatic scenes. Despite this, they both try their best to make it work. It comes with a very nice surprise at the end. Having read and enjoyed it, I also decided to take it upon myself to make an actual eBook out of it, which I think came out pretty well. (See link in answer to "how do i read it?")
March 18, 2020
This is soooo well written! I want to read it again and again, it’s so good. This book captures the characters perfectly and in my mind at least, it’s cannon.
September 1, 2023
this filled the portal shaped hole in my heart
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February 20, 2025Where do I begin?
I literally just promised myself that I wouldn't be using the rating system this year but I'm having trouble sticking to that with this one. It certainly won't be hard to determine what the rating would have been based on the things I write here. Anyway, this is my third time reading this book (I will be calling it a book for the duration of this review due to its sheer length and cohesive plot development) in two years, and I wanted to note that as well. It takes me a long time to re-read books; usually I'll wait upwards of three years to let myself forget the plot so I can return to it with new eyes. Suffice to say that I found this book worth returning to again and again.
I'll start with the fact that essentially what it is is a fan fiction based on a video game series called Portal, specifically Portal 2. I know, I know. I don't have much to say on this front, except that the author, who is named on this site as Waffles, was careful with the source material, stuck to it in a way that I felt did justice to the original characters. She takes them straight from where we meet them in the game, and asks how they have gotten to be this way. Why doesn't Chell speak at any time in any of the games? Why is GLaDOS so hell-bent on getting her back? Why does Wheatley ramble endlessly as he does? Moreover, why does he act so human? It's also important to note that Waffles references Half-Life and the aftermath of the alien invasion decades after they have been defeated, all while the events in Portal take place in the Aperture facilities, but I am not familiar with that game so I will not be delving too much into that aspect of this novel.
Getting into the biggest dilemma here, Waffles begs the question, if a group of people with the right resources (and dangerously high levels of insanity) work hard enough, just because, just in the name of Science, will technology one day advance to the point of becoming self-reliant, and turn on those who made it autonomous in the first place? Now this might sound blasphemous to some but I believe that the premise of this novel is one that rivals Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Am I crazy? Maybe. Am I reading too much into it? Most definitely.
In this book, the Aperture scientists as a collective, with Cave Johnson at the head of the operation, are presented as a kind of Prometheus. A Post-Post-Modern Prometheus, if you will. They have discovered the secret of life, found a way to break down the human consciousness and cram it into a functioning robot. These robots, stripped of their humanity, dedicate their artificial lives to Science, programmed to forget who they once were and block out any hint of a life before Aperture facilities. We've seen how GLADoS handled this discovery in the games, but Waffles' novel allows us to see Wheatley in a different light, transformed into the human he may very well once have been.
When Chell and Wheatley escape the facility and make it to the small town Eaden, where Chell has been living for the past four years since the events of Portal 2, Wheatley is forced to commune with humans in his seemingly human avatar after roaming the misty chambers of Aperture on his Management Rail for decades, even centuries. It's a shock to him, to be among so many sentient people, and his humanity is questioned countless times in the novel. Is he the human he once was? How much of one's humanity can exist after being forcibly shoved into a small spherical robot and living in those conditions for an unimaginably longer time than one was human? When we meet Wheatley in the beginning, he is more robot than human, or at least claims to be.
Chell makes it her mission to show Wheatley that he is more than the Aperture device that, at first, they believe he has always been, that a person who acts as human as he does must be able to adjust to human society- with some difficulty, yes- but eventually and with some hard work. Even Chell, with her earliest memories of testing inside Aperture against her will, had trouble adjusting to the outside and reckoning with the fact that she was no longer trapped down there with GLaDOS, but free, free to make friends and grow attached and bake bread to her heart's content. (The PTSD she developed due to the trauma she endured in the game is something that Waffles also explores here, and I think it works so well! It must've been a daunting choice, but with a much-earned payoff.)
But Wheatley, unlike Chell, is not used to aspiring to success when presented with a challenge. He recoils from human contact in the beginning, and even when he does make attempts at getting involved, he stumbles, messes up, creates The Worst Loaf of Bread to Have Ever Existed. Still, Chell's efforts are tireless; she doesn't give up on him, no matter how much he wants her to. But it's preferable to Aperture, Wheatley concedes, even though he does find himself missing his solitude there on one occasion.
Now let me talk about the aforementioned small town, Eaden. It's one of the many colonies that have sprung up across America (Michigan specifically) in the post-apocalyptic world following the events of Half-Life. Again, I don't have much to say on that front, but I will say that it is a touching display of humanity- indomitable, persevering- rebuilding itself after almost being wiped off the face of the earth. The townspeople’s homes and buildings have been built out of what seems to be an abandoned lot of factories, and their lives are led in the quiet existence of a world no longer as populated as it was hundreds of years ago.
On one side of the town, Garrett Rickey is hard at work on a communications tower, Foxglove, with a dream to bring smooth signal into the homes of the townspeople, for their TVs, radios, WiFi, what have you, and to get Eaden on the map. What started out as an enthusiastic, collective effort to support Garrett, has degenerated into a shared skepticism that he’ll never get the damn thing to work. Mostly he’s left working on it alone when Wheatley meets him, and the town has given up on his promise of getting them on the grid.
I mention this because it’s another fascinating example of the human spirit, that even if all our major communication systems were wiped out by a global alien invasion, humans all around the world, even in the smallest imaginable towns, with what should be the smallest realistic hope, but still with aspirations audacious enough, would find a way to bring us back to widespread connection with other humans on the other side of the planet. I was having a conversation with my friend, and she was telling me that although most of the population seems to think a return to life before the Industrial Revolution would solve most of our problems, our posterity would hate us for it and find a way to get us back to where we are now, with global communication available at the tips of our fingers. I agree with that sentiment, and this novel explores the idea that we often take our current technological advancements for granted.
That said, Eaden is very much a portrayal of the it-takes-a-village mentality, and it makes me mourn the fact that small towns don’t really exist like this anymore, or it’s rare that they do. Nevertheless, reading Blue Sky, I’m reminded of drinking tea across from my sister at my dad’s place as kids, summer days spent running around splash pads and chlorine-scented pools, stopping by convenience stores for candy and chips, and the end-of-the-school-year excitement in elementary when students and teachers alike seemed to be in a good mood no matter what the day brought. Also, as this novel was written in the early 2010s, I can’t help but draw a connection to the other sci-fi media I was consuming at the time, movies from Dreamworks like Megamind and Monsters vs. Aliens. It makes the story that much more fun and nostalgic for me!
The romance, in this book, is not the central focus either, and I am content with the bits we get. Major spoilers, but yes, Wheatley was once your everyday, fully functional human being, and before being downloaded into his robotic sphere, he had worked in the Aperture offices as a pencil-pusher with big dreams of one day shouldering himself between the people who made major decisions around the place, with an endless supply of (terrible) ideas of his own. Chell was the cute bagel girl who passed out her homemade creations across the way, and before being whisked away by the mad scientists, he’d been building up the courage to ask her out for a drink sometime.
Not only do they reunite hundreds of years later, but they get a second chance as well. It’s a love story that spans centuries, including the concept of refamiliarizing oneself with the feelings reawakened within one’s heart and mind, and the payoff is immense. Human feelings- all at once icky, dangerous, and destructive- rise up and incontrovertibly claw their way out, overriding the programming which tells Wheatley every step of the way that each human impulse he experiences is a bad one and should be resisted. The joy and disappointment, the laughter and tears, feelings of love and hate- nothing is outside of this robot’s purview. It’s like muscle memory, and being back in a human-like avatar makes those memories and feelings more accessible.
I’m not usually into sci-fi, but when it’s written with a genuine appreciation of humanity as viewed by a non-human foreigner, I eat it up. Because, yes a robot/extraterrestrial/artificial lifeform, if ever in close contact with the human race, would realize our worth as humans, appreciating how we go about our lives and the miraculous messes we can make in that short span of time!!!!
I haven't even mentioned the obvious mastery of Waffles' writing, replete with effective figurative language, an airtight plot, well developed characters and dynamics, and rock-solid themes. Even just the writing style I could talk about for days.... My English major heart is beyond happy. Here's one of many snippets I enjoyed:
I have nothing more to say for now, nothing comprehensible anyway. I love this book so much. I can’t wait to read it again.
I literally just promised myself that I wouldn't be using the rating system this year but I'm having trouble sticking to that with this one. It certainly won't be hard to determine what the rating would have been based on the things I write here. Anyway, this is my third time reading this book (I will be calling it a book for the duration of this review due to its sheer length and cohesive plot development) in two years, and I wanted to note that as well. It takes me a long time to re-read books; usually I'll wait upwards of three years to let myself forget the plot so I can return to it with new eyes. Suffice to say that I found this book worth returning to again and again.
I'll start with the fact that essentially what it is is a fan fiction based on a video game series called Portal, specifically Portal 2. I know, I know. I don't have much to say on this front, except that the author, who is named on this site as Waffles, was careful with the source material, stuck to it in a way that I felt did justice to the original characters. She takes them straight from where we meet them in the game, and asks how they have gotten to be this way. Why doesn't Chell speak at any time in any of the games? Why is GLaDOS so hell-bent on getting her back? Why does Wheatley ramble endlessly as he does? Moreover, why does he act so human? It's also important to note that Waffles references Half-Life and the aftermath of the alien invasion decades after they have been defeated, all while the events in Portal take place in the Aperture facilities, but I am not familiar with that game so I will not be delving too much into that aspect of this novel.
Getting into the biggest dilemma here, Waffles begs the question, if a group of people with the right resources (and dangerously high levels of insanity) work hard enough, just because, just in the name of Science, will technology one day advance to the point of becoming self-reliant, and turn on those who made it autonomous in the first place? Now this might sound blasphemous to some but I believe that the premise of this novel is one that rivals Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Am I crazy? Maybe. Am I reading too much into it? Most definitely.
In this book, the Aperture scientists as a collective, with Cave Johnson at the head of the operation, are presented as a kind of Prometheus. A Post-Post-Modern Prometheus, if you will. They have discovered the secret of life, found a way to break down the human consciousness and cram it into a functioning robot. These robots, stripped of their humanity, dedicate their artificial lives to Science, programmed to forget who they once were and block out any hint of a life before Aperture facilities. We've seen how GLADoS handled this discovery in the games, but Waffles' novel allows us to see Wheatley in a different light, transformed into the human he may very well once have been.
When Chell and Wheatley escape the facility and make it to the small town Eaden, where Chell has been living for the past four years since the events of Portal 2, Wheatley is forced to commune with humans in his seemingly human avatar after roaming the misty chambers of Aperture on his Management Rail for decades, even centuries. It's a shock to him, to be among so many sentient people, and his humanity is questioned countless times in the novel. Is he the human he once was? How much of one's humanity can exist after being forcibly shoved into a small spherical robot and living in those conditions for an unimaginably longer time than one was human? When we meet Wheatley in the beginning, he is more robot than human, or at least claims to be.
Chell makes it her mission to show Wheatley that he is more than the Aperture device that, at first, they believe he has always been, that a person who acts as human as he does must be able to adjust to human society- with some difficulty, yes- but eventually and with some hard work. Even Chell, with her earliest memories of testing inside Aperture against her will, had trouble adjusting to the outside and reckoning with the fact that she was no longer trapped down there with GLaDOS, but free, free to make friends and grow attached and bake bread to her heart's content. (The PTSD she developed due to the trauma she endured in the game is something that Waffles also explores here, and I think it works so well! It must've been a daunting choice, but with a much-earned payoff.)
But Wheatley, unlike Chell, is not used to aspiring to success when presented with a challenge. He recoils from human contact in the beginning, and even when he does make attempts at getting involved, he stumbles, messes up, creates The Worst Loaf of Bread to Have Ever Existed. Still, Chell's efforts are tireless; she doesn't give up on him, no matter how much he wants her to. But it's preferable to Aperture, Wheatley concedes, even though he does find himself missing his solitude there on one occasion.
Now let me talk about the aforementioned small town, Eaden. It's one of the many colonies that have sprung up across America (Michigan specifically) in the post-apocalyptic world following the events of Half-Life. Again, I don't have much to say on that front, but I will say that it is a touching display of humanity- indomitable, persevering- rebuilding itself after almost being wiped off the face of the earth. The townspeople’s homes and buildings have been built out of what seems to be an abandoned lot of factories, and their lives are led in the quiet existence of a world no longer as populated as it was hundreds of years ago.
On one side of the town, Garrett Rickey is hard at work on a communications tower, Foxglove, with a dream to bring smooth signal into the homes of the townspeople, for their TVs, radios, WiFi, what have you, and to get Eaden on the map. What started out as an enthusiastic, collective effort to support Garrett, has degenerated into a shared skepticism that he’ll never get the damn thing to work. Mostly he’s left working on it alone when Wheatley meets him, and the town has given up on his promise of getting them on the grid.
I mention this because it’s another fascinating example of the human spirit, that even if all our major communication systems were wiped out by a global alien invasion, humans all around the world, even in the smallest imaginable towns, with what should be the smallest realistic hope, but still with aspirations audacious enough, would find a way to bring us back to widespread connection with other humans on the other side of the planet. I was having a conversation with my friend, and she was telling me that although most of the population seems to think a return to life before the Industrial Revolution would solve most of our problems, our posterity would hate us for it and find a way to get us back to where we are now, with global communication available at the tips of our fingers. I agree with that sentiment, and this novel explores the idea that we often take our current technological advancements for granted.
That said, Eaden is very much a portrayal of the it-takes-a-village mentality, and it makes me mourn the fact that small towns don’t really exist like this anymore, or it’s rare that they do. Nevertheless, reading Blue Sky, I’m reminded of drinking tea across from my sister at my dad’s place as kids, summer days spent running around splash pads and chlorine-scented pools, stopping by convenience stores for candy and chips, and the end-of-the-school-year excitement in elementary when students and teachers alike seemed to be in a good mood no matter what the day brought. Also, as this novel was written in the early 2010s, I can’t help but draw a connection to the other sci-fi media I was consuming at the time, movies from Dreamworks like Megamind and Monsters vs. Aliens. It makes the story that much more fun and nostalgic for me!
The romance, in this book, is not the central focus either, and I am content with the bits we get. Major spoilers, but yes, Wheatley was once your everyday, fully functional human being, and before being downloaded into his robotic sphere, he had worked in the Aperture offices as a pencil-pusher with big dreams of one day shouldering himself between the people who made major decisions around the place, with an endless supply of (terrible) ideas of his own. Chell was the cute bagel girl who passed out her homemade creations across the way, and before being whisked away by the mad scientists, he’d been building up the courage to ask her out for a drink sometime.
Not only do they reunite hundreds of years later, but they get a second chance as well. It’s a love story that spans centuries, including the concept of refamiliarizing oneself with the feelings reawakened within one’s heart and mind, and the payoff is immense. Human feelings- all at once icky, dangerous, and destructive- rise up and incontrovertibly claw their way out, overriding the programming which tells Wheatley every step of the way that each human impulse he experiences is a bad one and should be resisted. The joy and disappointment, the laughter and tears, feelings of love and hate- nothing is outside of this robot’s purview. It’s like muscle memory, and being back in a human-like avatar makes those memories and feelings more accessible.
I’m not usually into sci-fi, but when it’s written with a genuine appreciation of humanity as viewed by a non-human foreigner, I eat it up. Because, yes a robot/extraterrestrial/artificial lifeform, if ever in close contact with the human race, would realize our worth as humans, appreciating how we go about our lives and the miraculous messes we can make in that short span of time!!!!
I haven't even mentioned the obvious mastery of Waffles' writing, replete with effective figurative language, an airtight plot, well developed characters and dynamics, and rock-solid themes. Even just the writing style I could talk about for days.... My English major heart is beyond happy. Here's one of many snippets I enjoyed:
“Wheatley paused. The lights of Foxglove's mind sparked and swirled along their unhurried paths, curling above and around his small, anxious presence. He suddenly found himself thinking of Chell's home, how in the evenings the sleepy pockets of darkness clung to the low whitewashed ceilings and the worn cleanswept corners, pushed back by the mismatched clusters of lights she grouped on tables and shelves and sills, small warm constellations that didn't so much cancel out the shadows as simply make them benign. The thought was sharp and bittersweet, catching him by surprise, making him blink and swallow and stammer back to the task in hand.”
I have nothing more to say for now, nothing comprehensible anyway. I love this book so much. I can’t wait to read it again.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 23, 2019
This was SO well written! I enjoyed every word of it!
I was happy to see the story focus not on the romance, but on the characters themselves. The romance parts were just sprinkles on the top 😆. I was also so so happy to see a redemption arc for Wheatley! He was my favorite character from the games and I thought he deserved a chance to make up for all that he did. And he certainly did! And then some!
I wish I could post pics cause this story got my artistic urge going and I drew a Wheatley and Chell haha!
I cant emphasize how well this story was written! It was so visually pleasing to my minds eye. And a great tug at the heartstrings!
I highly recommend this for any Portal fans!
I was happy to see the story focus not on the romance, but on the characters themselves. The romance parts were just sprinkles on the top 😆. I was also so so happy to see a redemption arc for Wheatley! He was my favorite character from the games and I thought he deserved a chance to make up for all that he did. And he certainly did! And then some!
I wish I could post pics cause this story got my artistic urge going and I drew a Wheatley and Chell haha!
I cant emphasize how well this story was written! It was so visually pleasing to my minds eye. And a great tug at the heartstrings!
I highly recommend this for any Portal fans!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 27, 2020
This was one of the best fanfics I've ever read. No lie. To be honest you don't even really have to know everything about Portal or Portal 2 to enjoy this.
September 22, 2024
I don't know how to explain that a fanfiction for Portal 2 is one of the best things I've ever read in regards to human emotion/emotional maturity.
The way this is written is so well done (with a few forgivable editing needs...I mean it's a fanfiction for goodness sake). The plot is nothing to really write home about--everything is very linear. However, there's nothing wrong with that! The focus of this story is character development, a realistic development of romantic feelings, and the meaning of purpose. Waffles does an amazing job of making everything in this story very tasteful when it comes to knowledge of technical processes and various niche hobbies throughout the book.
If I were to say one thing I love about this story, it would be that the person we're rooting for messes up. Not like the cliche hero trope of "Don't go in there!" and the response of "I must do it to save my village." --No, it's the opposite. Wheatley is terrified of things he has every right to be terrified of. He messes up. He does not want to save the village...what if they hurt him? What if he dies? Wheatley makes bad choices. He says and does mean things.
But he grows! The writing and pacing of this growth is so phenomenal I've been thinking about it all week. I'm writing this review on my third re-read and I just can't stop coming back to this. I hope Waffles knows how much of an impact this has made on my day to day and how much value this little fanfiction has brought to me valuing every day I have and the people I have with me.
The way this is written is so well done (with a few forgivable editing needs...I mean it's a fanfiction for goodness sake). The plot is nothing to really write home about--everything is very linear. However, there's nothing wrong with that! The focus of this story is character development, a realistic development of romantic feelings, and the meaning of purpose. Waffles does an amazing job of making everything in this story very tasteful when it comes to knowledge of technical processes and various niche hobbies throughout the book.
If I were to say one thing I love about this story, it would be that the person we're rooting for messes up. Not like the cliche hero trope of "Don't go in there!" and the response of "I must do it to save my village." --No, it's the opposite. Wheatley is terrified of things he has every right to be terrified of. He messes up. He does not want to save the village...what if they hurt him? What if he dies? Wheatley makes bad choices. He says and does mean things.
But he grows! The writing and pacing of this growth is so phenomenal I've been thinking about it all week. I'm writing this review on my third re-read and I just can't stop coming back to this. I hope Waffles knows how much of an impact this has made on my day to day and how much value this little fanfiction has brought to me valuing every day I have and the people I have with me.
April 4, 2024
I gotta reread this
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