How much of the planet should we harm for our comfort?
Becky Chambers’ gentle sci-fi on the right amount of carbon, AC, airplanes, and yachts.
ibling Dex is a tea monk, traveling the world by e-bike to sell tea and peace of mind from town to town. They are also looking for their own.
In Becky Chambers’ beautiful novel and masterpiece, A Psalm for the Wild Built, Sibling Dex wants to leave the city behind for the allure of the wilds. Except, by today’s standards, the city already feels like a rewilded paradise.
Chambers’ utopian novel has all the accoutrements of a solarpunk world—a pastoral city with rooftop gardens, no cars—just e-bikes and elevated rail lines—everything is solar-powered, every building 3D printed, or retrofitted, and built to decompose. A Starlink-like network reaches every phone, and “fab shacks” keep devices running for life.
It’s also a post-industrial world.
Once the world was sufficiently automated, humans had little work to do and robots became conscious enough to request their freedom. A pact was struck and they left for the wilderness, never to be seen again. Now everyone seems to work a gig economy job, whether they serve tea or build houses or even fix a neighbor’s gutter, everyone is paid in “pebs” with a balance publicly accessible by everyone.
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