Review: A Psalm for the Wild-Built
I think is one of the best novellas I’ve read, but I also think it’s got a long fuse. I enjoyed reading it and I’ve continued to marvel at how revolutionary and well written it is. If one doesn’t think deeply about it, I can imagine this being a neat, quick SF read. Kind of like what I thought of The Plot – and I liked The Plot. I definitely think it’s worth the time to chew on this book. Becky Chambers doesn’t need my kudos, what with the Hugo and all, but I was quite blown away as the fuse went off.
If you want the joy of discovering the book yourself, stop reading here. I don’t have any plot spoilers in here, but I am going to talk about other aspects of the work that I think might be more fun to discover unprompted.
As I say, when I first read this it felt enjoyable and low stakes. The setting and characters were charming, there was a quest to go on, a sudden unexpected first contact between civilizations separated for an age (the sentient robots humans built and the humans). The sort of SF tropes you’d expect from a post-apocalyptic SF novella. But, like I say, low stakes: personal rather than galactic. Engaging. Fun.
But the cover mentioned a Hugo. And I had this nagging feeling that something was going on that I was missing. So I ruminated. And then the penny dropped.
This is a post-apocalyptic SF novella in which the concept of violence between sentients is completely absent. It’s not just that there is no fighting. The concept of violence never occurs to the protagonist nor is there any indication it occurs to the robot they encounter. No threats. Not even a violent metaphor or joshing punch on the arm. If these societies know that sentients can be violent with one another, I’m guessing it would be the kind of taboo that would excite fundamental revulsion. And at this point I have to guess.
Once I realized that, I thought about how fundamental violence or the threat thereof is to SF and other genre fiction. I cannot think of another SF story in which the idea of violence is completely absent. Just to make that point more strongly, it took me quite some time to characterize the revulsion in the previous paragraph in some way that captured its scope without using a violent word, and I’m not writing genre fiction.
SF invites writers and readers to consider a world fundamentally different than our own and see what that says about ours. This is a big swing at world building.
Before I read this, I would have assumed that you couldn’t write an engaging work without reference to violence committed by sentients. But, I read this and didn’t notice the absence until I ruminated. It is a huge challenge to set for yourself as a writer. That Chambers succeeded gobsmacks me.
The more I’ve thought about it – and I can’t stop thinking about it – the more fundamental ideas are woven in here. Those ideas are all slipped in quietly. But once I see a fuse, I know they light firecracker strings as well as single bombs.
There is more to come in this series (OK, it’s out but I’m slow) and I’m all in. But just chewing on this is well worth it.
A must.