Book 1: A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
Imagine a lit candle. It's a tiny monument of wax. The wick is short and the glow is soft. Sometimes it flickers fast. Sometimes it meanders slow. Every time it moves, your heart leaps a little - is it going to go off? Should you plug the draft? But mostly it is a soothing, mundane, ordinary, paceless thing to behold. Much like the book by Becky Chambers, 'A Psalm for the Wild Built'.
It's a story of a road trip involving a tea-monk called Sibling Dex and a robot called Splendid Speckled Mosscap. The book is situated somewhere in the future in a fictional place called Panga. Panga is earth atrophied in many ways but also sheltered by the naivete of human beings. There's a monastery, there are trails and interesting cities where homes are built as hanging lanterns from trees. But the book begins on a very relatable longing of being fed up with the city and missing the sound of the familiar. In Dex's case, it was crickets.
Dex leaves the monastery to travel through Panga. He wants to go to a certain hermitage that has deep significance for him. One day, as he is washing himself near his trailer, he comes across a robot. There was some kind of a robot 'awakening' at one point when robots decided to become sentient (and embrace mortality). Humans and robots brokered a non-intrusion treaty. That was that for a millennia or so.
The robot named himself after the first element he spotted after his awakening, a mushroom that's called 'Splendid Speckled Mosscap'. He wants to learn a few things about human beings and is looking for a tutor. One thing leads to another and very quickly the two of them set out on a journey to the hermitage together. The book is about a short trip but a longer travel- from self to self.
I did not find this book to be a quick read, despite it's slight volume. There are places where the analogy to infiniteness, man's greed, and technology's dominion are oft-used tropes. But there are paragraphs of silences - of a meal being cooked and served, of a robot holding hands with a human, of a loneliness that gets transcribed across existences that uplift this work. You may find your eyes welling up when both the human and robot wonder what to do with 'Remnants' (or memories) of worlds they lost long ago.
The last few pages when the robot and Dex finally reach the hermitage and share a cup of tea in the evening is the sort of thing one can expect in a dulcet dystopia.
If we retain the ability to collect our ruins and brew something comforting, we could build ourselves a home.
Wherever, whenever, forever.