The novella “A Psalm for the Wild-Built” by Becky Chambers was published for the first time in 2021. It’s the first book in the Monk & Robot series. It won the Hugo Award for best novella of the year.
Sibling Dex is a tea monk who sought a spiritual life. They still feel a certain dissatisfaction but can’t understand what they need. They decide to change their travel routine by venturing on paths different from the ones they usually take, where humans let nature grow wild again.
During their new journey, Sibling Dex comes across a robot who tells them its name is Splendid Speckled Mosscap. Despite its completely friendly attitude, Dex remains dumbfounded because generations have passed since robots decided to live on their own. Splendid Speckled Mosscap has a very simple and yet damned complex question: “What do people need?”
Becky Chambers rose to fame with the Wayfarers series, in which she imagined a large interstellar civilization made up of different species coexisting peacefully. The underlying optimism and positive feelings that form one of the foundations of this series are also present in “A Psalm for the Wild-Built”, set on an unidentified world called Panga.
When Panga’s robots become sentient and decide to no longer work for humans, no war breaks out and humans find a way to use technology in harmony with nature and move beyond the Factory Age. This is probably the most science fiction idea in this novella.
Life on Panga seems utopian, at least judging by the limited information provided by Becky Chambers. Dex, who is a non-binary person, is a monk who leads a life they find comfortable and yet they feel that something is missing and one day they decide that they can’t take it anymore and need to change their daily routine. The encounter with a robot brings out all the emotions linked to their dissatisfaction.
Dex’s journey is a sort of quest, a journey that is above all an inner journey in which they hope to find the part of themselves they never seem to be able to grasp. This philosophical-existential theme will certainly resonate strongly with all readers who find themselves in this type of situation.
The meeting with the robot and the conversations between the two protagonists highlight all of Dex’s frustration with their situation. The robot is in some ways a mirror for Dex since robots were developed by humans and reproduce their mental processes. Those similarities and some differences lead to a comparison of ideas, desires, and attitudes.
“A Psalm for the Wild-Built” offers a science fiction interpretation of a type of story that is certainly not new. It has a sequel but it can be read as a self-contained work. For the underlying optimism, it was labeled as solarpunk and cozypunk (or cosypunk) but honestly, I’m starting to find these definitions of subgenres irritating because they are becoming really limiting. For this reason, I recommend this novella to readers who appreciate this type of introspective story without thinking about genre and subgenre labels. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
