Becky Chambers' A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT

Ok, this is probably a sad thing to admit, a commentary on the books I've chosen over the years, as much as it is on the quality of the book at hand, but I don't think I've been as charmed by a novel since I first discovered Nathan Lowell's Solar Clipper series or the work of Walter Moers. Becky Chambers' first Robot and Monk book, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, is a delightful portrait of the kind of future I want and with its dual main characters and the gently hopeful plot they enact, an endlessly engaging read. 

It's just so short, though!

Leave 'em wanting more, the adage goes. And I do want more!

There's something almost cruel, though, in the experience of reading books like this; they show us how perfectly reasonable is the near-utopia they depict, show us all the nice things we could have if enough of us would just do a little bit of work towards trying to make our  world less shitty for more people, but every interruption or sound on the street or twinge in our bodies reminds us of all of the ridiculous and ridiculously powerful forces are pulling in the opposite direction, trying to make the world more shitty for more people all because their imaginary sky daddy or philosophy-that's-more-important-than-actual-people or just shitty personalities (or all three, in the case of who I now insist we have to stop calling The Former Guy and instead refer to as The Indicted Guy. Plus, the abbreviation, TIG rhymes with a word that also describes him) insist that change for the better is Bad and will lead to Oppression of the Minority that has been Oppressing all the Other Minorities for Centuries. Which would apparently be Unjust in a way that all the other oppression has not been?

Anyway. Psalm for the Wild-Built shows us a terraformed (or possibly already life-supporting?) moon orbiting a gas giant, originally settled by human beings who brought advanced robot technology with them when they came but whose robots achieved self awareness -- and the humans who settled this moon were humane humans who understood it was wrong to enslave thinking and feeling beings even if they're ones we created, and gave the robots their liberty. The robots then withdrew completely from human society and went off into the wilderness to explore and witness and enjoy without harming. Meanwhile the humans the robots left behind adapted their culture into a solarpunk utopia, but it's not just the energy and technology they developed and continue to employ that are utopian, but they've developed an easy-going polytheistic religion that doesn't proscribe or prescribe but just functions as a way of understanding the experience of being alive and appreciating the world and each other.

Our point of view character, a non-binary human named Dex, has served in a monastic order within this religion (purely by choice; no economic or social pressures affected their choice, either!) in the capacity of a novice but has, as our story opens, chosen to become only the most delightful religious vocation that has been thought of in the history of ever, a Tea Monk. Whose vocation is to travel the moon by means of a heavy-duty bicycle and camper-trailer combo, stopping at each human settlement and setting up a shrine, not at which to pay or offer sacrifice or take instruction, but at which to set down in a pretty setting among a few choice nice things that have some devotional significance but aren't especially valuable -- they're there to be nice things, not to inspire awe or envy -- and have a cup of tea, provided by the Tea Monk, after he/she/they have greeted you, determined your general physical/emotional state, and decided what blend of botanicals to infuse into a brew that will taste good to you and help you feel better. Once served with a nice cup of tea, you can then relax and enjoy it in silence, make idle chitchat, or pour your heart out to the Tea Monk as you see fit.

A good Tea Monk -- and Dex grows to become one of the best if not the best -- travels on a nearly completely self-sufficient basis thanks to the wonder of modern water filtration/food preservation/hygiene/life-support/comfort technology embodied in the trailer/bicycle rig, but is often offered a nice hot meal or a soak in a devotee's big bathtub or local hot springs or a roll in the hay, etc as thanks for how well he/she/they apply their vocation. Dex has enjoyed this life for a long time, but feels that something is missing and develops a yen to travel off the beaten path a while, into the untouched wilderness that exists off the actual beaten paths between settlements Dex has traveled these years.

Within a patch of actually wild nature, Dex encounters a being no one has in centuries -- a robot! And we learn that the robots, too, have developed a very easy-going and appreciative culture of their own. For instance, their naming convention has drifted far from the alpha-numeric designations of their forebears who wandered out of the Factories so long ago; now when a new robot comes to awareness, it takes its name from the first thing it observes. So this robot is named Splendid Speckled Mosscap, Mosscap for short, after the mushroom that it first saw the day it came to be. And boy, is Mosscap a wonderful character!

Mosscap has a unique mission for which it volunteered; to renew contact with humanity and find out "what humanity needs." Dex persuades Mosscap that it will need to consult someone besides Dex to answer this question; Mosscap in turn persuades Dex to let it accompany them on its travels, to help Dex along and keep them safe. And thus is formed a beautiful and delightfully weird friendship despite a certain degree of mutual unintelligibility.

You're an animal, Sibling Dex. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do it!... You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don't know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don't need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

Mosscap's wisdom is the wisdom that built both the robots' and the humans' societies, only most individuals don't immediately seem to recognize it. Will Dex come truly to understand and embrace this, or will they continue to frustratedly wander the moon seeking this thing called "a purpose"? Or will Dex get eaten by a bear before Mosscap can rescue them?

I'm pretty freaking glad the sequel is already available. I just have to wait for a few dozen library patrons who requested it first to finish it. Meanwhile, it's just wonderful to know that books like this are (still) a thing, and I'll be checking out Becky Chambers' other series... as soon as I get my turn on those, too. The fact that in Wyoming, which to judge by our voting records is mostly full of the kind of people who claim not to want the kind of world that Solarpunk/Hopepunk exists to imagine, so many people are waiting to get a hit of what Chambers is slinging is as comforting as the books themselves.

Ahh!

Now, wait'll you get a load of the non-fiction I've been reading that this was a break from.