(courtesy IMP Awards)
In our grim present day, it’s near-to-impossible to find anyone who thinks the future might be sunny and bright and that humanity, with its collective back against the wall, might find a way out of certain doom to somewhere sustainable and good for, not just us, but also the world we inhabit.
Thankfully talented sci-fi author Becky Chambers is not one of those people and in the second instalment in her whimsically endearing but existentially and emotionally robust A Monk and Robot series, A Prayer For the Crown-Shy, she makes an uplifting case for a future where lessons have been learnt, changes have been made and people may be better than they were before.
Following from A Monk and a Robot Book #1, A Psalm For the Wild Built, A Prayer For the Crown-Shy finds 7 foot-tall robot Mosscap, on a mission to get to know humanity better after centuries of amicable separation, and tea-serving vocation-questioning monk Sibling Dex on their tour of the villages and the major city of the moon of Panga on which they live.
A master class in how to confront an existential challenge and rise above it and prosper on almost every level, Panga faced two great challenges several hundred centuries back – the departure of its newly-sentient workforce to the wilds of the moon, and the stark reality of an unsustainable industrial base for their economy – and rather than shirking form them, found a highly beneficial way through, both for humanity but the overall environmental good health of their planetary satellite.
Welcome comfort, they reminded themself, rubbing the little pectin-printed bear with their thumb. Without it, you cannot stay strong.
The rested the back of their head against the mossy stone and dozed off in the healing water, listening to the branches above whisper their ageless song.
Chambers rather cleverly doesn’t pretend that the transformation of Panga to a technologically advanced but environmentally sound world was necessarily an easy one, admitting to trauma and mistakes for the people along the way, but she makes it heartwarmingly clear that whatever the birthing pains were, the moon and its people, both biological and not, are all the better for it.
In fact, society is so cosy and happily well-off, that Mosscap’s entreaty to everyone they meet “What do you need?” is almost redundant on an existential level, so much so that in one village when the robot asks the heavily philosophical question, they’re greeted with requests for mundane tasks like repairs and information.
People aren’t exactly blissfully happy since much of Dex’s role as a tea monk is providing a safe and calming place for people to talk about what ails them but they are well looked after and able to tend to their material needs without too much trouble, and it’s the comfort on a physical level that blunts the learning impact of Mosscap’s endearingly and earnestly asked question.
They are wanting to find out what makes humanity tick, and think that it’ll be a simply matter of getting relatively straightforward questions but the truth is the answers they receive often just lead to more questions being posed, which makes for interesting conversations for Mosscap and Dex whose friendship is one borne of a philosophical closeness as much as an enjoyment of each other’s company.
(courtesy official author site)
At the heart of this charmingly thoughtful novella sits the idea that perhaps no one can ever be truly, unchangeable happy nor can they possibly know everything, even if you are a robot and have the capacity for endlessly patient questioning (but not data retention; there’s more than one occasion where Mosscap has to delete photo and text files to make for the storage of incoming experiences and memories).
Case in point is Sibling Dex themself, a tea monk of some renown who finds themself at a fairly profound crossroads, unsure what it is they want from life but reasonably sure it’s not what they’re currently doing.
Fresh from an impelling journey into the wilds of Panga where robots and nature commune, Dex is sure that they don’t want to live rough, happy with the tech-enriched rusticness of a life that is materially comfortable and full of unconditional love thanks to a warm, inclusive polyamorously queer family and a growing friendship with Mosscap.
As Mosscap asks everyone they come into contact with – and it should be noted, a few technophobe villagers aside, they are greeted as rockstars of a sort – what they need, Dex is also querying what it is they really want and need and how to find the doorway to the next part of their life.
All of that existential querying doesn’t weigh them down to a destructive extent, but it doesn’t underline the point that asking people want they want doesn’t always guarantee the sort of straightforward answers Mosscap is initially expecting.
‘You’ll make sure she gets a copy?’ Mosscap confirmed, unbothered by the grubby fingers slamming against its eyes. ‘So that when she starts making memories, she’ll know we’re friends?’
Dex smiled. ‘Yeah,’ they said. They switched on the computer’s camera and aimed. ‘I’ll make sure.’
The great joy of A Prayer For the Crown-Shy is not simply that it gives us a future where hope and possibility have triumphed over oblivion and doom, but the characters of Mosscap and Dex themselves who enjoy a warm and supportive relationship that belies any idea that beings of different provenance can’t get along or bond with each other.
Bond they most certainly do, and their buoyantly alive, though sometimes strained friendship, is a microcosm of what life on Panga is like and what it can be.
Somehow, through this friendship, and the duo’s interactions with a multitude of wildly different people, we are given insight into what is possible in a world where people aren’t perfect but are aiming for as close to that state as they can realistically manage.
Through writing that is richly human and meaningfully sweet, Chambers offers up a muscular optimism that doesn’t exist in the idealistic clouds somewhere around the number nine, but which takes into account the flaws and imperfections that come with being alive and still believes life can be much better than it was before.
This is a future with a decidedly happy but grounded ending, and it imbues the multitudinous delights of A Prayer For the Crown-Shy with so much emotionally weighty and insightfully rich loveliness that your soul is restored and enriched while your mind wrestles with some very fine conundrums indeed, proof that life may have its fair of scary challenges, societal and personal both, it’s also has its fair share of solutions if we only we have the heart and commitment to look for them.