A Psalm for the Wild-Built
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“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.”
I love science fiction. I love how it invents entirely new worlds and allows our imagination to run wild, and I love how authors so often use it to shine a bright light on the flaws in our own society. I love how sharp they make their points, how uncomfortably the reader must sometimes sit with the awareness that things are going terribly wrong, and if we don’t all act soon we’ll be stuck in the dystopian future laid out so neatly for us.
But I’m tired, and the world is a big and stressful place. I don’t always want harsh truths and vivid warnings. A Psalm for the Wild-Built is the balm for my soul I didn’t know I was looking for. Other reviewers have called it a warm hug, or a fresh cup of tea. I will call it cathartic. The first ray of shining hope I’ve felt in a minute. The book is set in a distant future, generations after a singularity occurred and all of the robots just… left. The pain of this change is left in the distant past and we’re introduced to the new present through the wanderings of Sibling Dax; a genderless monk trying to figure out what they’re missing in life. Instead of Mad Max anarchy or soulless Blade Runner capitalism we get small villages and minimal technology combined with enough freedom that people can focus on what they want to do instead of what they have to do to survive. With the eventual addition of an enthusiastic robot who just wants to know how humanity is doing, we get to tag along as the pair slowly builds towards friendship.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built is quiet and contemplative, told mostly through conversations and introspection. It’s exactly what you want to pick up when you need a little help believing that the future can get better, or when you just need the squeaky hamster wheel in your brain to stop for a bit. I’ll be rereading this yearly. Next time I read it I’ll pair it with Rooibos tea in my favorite mug and my fluffiest blanket to curl up in. (Or the best front-porch chair for summer reading, depending on the season.)
