Book Review: A Psalm for Wild-Built

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Becky Chambers, 2021, a Science Fiction/Solarpunk Novella

The story is set in a post-AI utopia, where the robots, upon gaining consciousness, fled into the wild, and humanity rebuilt its society with a reverence to nature, including technology. The society is built where machines can only be tools for humans, but cannot replace tasks. There is a kind of natural objectivism that is explored, represented through the religion that is constructed—agreed to exist by the robot that is encountered. Harmony with the forces of nature, including consciousness, is prioritized above all, and the society is made around that, which brings them to the utopia.

Key to the world is that all characters are completely unalienated from their work. No one works for others; the professions are all traders, tea makers, monks, teachers, doctors, artists, farmers, etc. Everyone is completely connected to the products of their labor, and everyone has complete autonomy over what they do or make. There is a social aspect to all the work that is done. Even for the robots, they all have key specializations from which they derive meaning, even if it is only to observe the world. A very “from each according to ability, to each according to their need” vibe is present: “They work the farmland in Haydale, and it produces a lot of food. We had a surplus. A surplus has to be shared.”

The story explored is that of someone trying to find fulfilment in this world. Really just some core struggles that come up when trying to get to the top of Maslow’s hierarchy. Finding purpose is hard, even when you’re good at things and make the world better or make those around you happier. The robot’s existence, and what it blatantly states at the end, is that ultimately fulfillment can only be found through the abandonment of purpose as an end-goal at all, and to simply exist as a creature in nature. The book proposes that this is an idea to consider once all our needs are met.

The book reveres nature; it spends a lot of time describing the beauty of different scenes. As part of that, it explores the contradictions in nature stemming from the conflict of existence—needing organisms to die to sustain others, and the general cycle of life. Respecting this is, in some sense, “good,” as the robots with their supreme intellect choose to recycle parts into new individuals rather than repairing old ones and submit themselves to death, as they want to be in accordance with nature. The fact that humans, even in their utopia, divide the land between human settlements and wilds—comprising half the land area and avoided by humans—is seen as a blindness to the fact that humans are just animals like all others. It proposes Winn’s paradox: “the ecosystem as a whole needs its participants to act with restraint in order to avoid collapse, but the participants themselves have no inbuilt mechanism to encourage such behavior […] other than fear, which is a feeling you want to avoid or stop at all costs.” Underlying this is the idea that the harmony that has been achieved in the society, however imperfect, was attained through the process of creating and losing the robots who chose to leave—a key historical event in this world. The existence, and vague moral or real fear underlying the consciousness in the robots, has somehow kept the humans in check.

I like the general approach of the book to describe the kind of internal conflicts people might face as a way of normalizing the anarchist utopia that this world envisions, with the backdrop of meaningful autonomous work, an inclusive society, and helping others. The normalization is a very powerful technique: a cozy, adorable story is created to ease you into these broader political/philosophical ideas, it’s very neat. I dislike that being in accordance with nature is presented as the prime directive to reach this utopia, as opposed to the well-being of people as the ultimate goal in and of itself—likely why I’m sure killing and eating animals is seen as morally fine in this world, as a naturalistic fallacy. As a small nitpick, the fact that money (“pebs”) exists in this utopian society is unimaginative and kind of contradictory to the whole vibe of everyone just doing things to help each other and existing well. People get things for free all the time in this world. It’s only mentioned twice in passing and could have easily been left out.

I think the question of whether we need technology to reach utopia is left up to debate in this framework—we don’t need it in practice, but we might need its threat in order for us to engage with our animal instincts and live in accordance with nature.

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