“‘Find the strength to do both,’” Mosscap said, quoting the phrase painted on the wagon.
“Exactly,” Dex said.
“But what’s both?”
Dex recited: “‘Without constructs, you will unravel few mysteries. Without knowledge of the mysteries, your constructs will fail. These pursuits are what make us, but without comfort, you will lack the strength to sustain either.‘”
“Is that from your Insights?” Mosscap asked.
“Yeah,” Dex said. “But the thing is, the Child Gods aren’t actively involved in our lives. They’re … not like that. They can’t break the Parent Gods’ laws. They provide inspiration, not intervention. If we want change, or good fortune, or solace, we have to create it for ourselves.
I read this one in a single sitting on a two-hour flight. The world of Psalm is a more advanced version of our own; in most ways you can think of, the book is a softer and more relaxed kind of science fiction. The book’s human society is living on a world known as “Panga”. Perhaps this world is a terraformed planet, or a rechristened Earth, but this is left unsaid. Chambers doesn’t feel the need of elaborating on the planet’s relationship to ours, if there is one. However, a chief distinction of the setting is that human society has witnessed and experienced a genuine revolution.
The book doesn’t need such terminology, but you could say that Panga is “post-singularity”. Centuries before our narrative begins, we’re told of the “the Transition”, in which robots working in human factories spontaneously became sentient. Humanity offers the newly self-aware robots membership (or citizenship) in their society, but the robots decline and depart to the Pangan wilderness. In what I think best exemplifies the book’s fundamentally optimistic orientation and tone, humanity respects this choice, and goes on to reorganize its economy and patterns of settlement. This feature of the world’s history is so different from common tropes concerning encounters between human and machine conciousnesses.
Despite the intriguing world that Chambers weaves in the prologue, its shape is only gradually revealed. Psalm’s narrative focuses on Sibling Dex, a monk whose order is dedicated to Allalae, the child god of small comforts. We learn that Panga has only one city, and that bicycles (Ox engines) are the primary form of transit. All of this is revealed through Dex’s decision to leave the rooftop gardens of their temple to become a traveling tea monk. We’re surrounded by a world that’s vastly different from our own, but its human problems are familiar. Dex is a kindly soul, but they feel restless, unfulfilled, and burnt out.
Over the first and second chapters, we see Dex master the practice of serving tea, building a list of fans that eagerly await Dex’s scheduled visits to their towns. In another small way that Psalm’s world differs from ours, Dex’s character is nonbinary, and we don’t have strong indications of this being unusual or stigmatized in the places that Dex visits. This isn’t a book where a someone’s queerness is treated as a source of conflict, or implicated in why a character feels out of place in the society they live in. But, Dex’s presentation has some continuity with the second principal character: the wild-built robot called Mosscap, an agender being.
Science fiction is maybe uniquely positioned to imagine and examine interactions between humanity and other modes of existence. This is true going all the way back to Shelley; Psalm easily falls into this tradition, but again, it’s constructive and optimistic in the way it does so. An early exchange between the book’s main characters helps illustrate this:
A chatterbird alighted on a nearby branch, singing its famous staccato song. Mosscap smiled and returned the cal, mimicking the sound in near perfection.
Dex looked askance at the robot as they pedaled. “That’s creepily good”, they said.
“Two Foxes taught me,” Mosscap said.
Dex wrinkled their nose in confusion. “Two foxes taught you to— Is that another robot?”
“Yes. Two Foxes is an expert in bird behavior. It loves nothing better than listening to vocalizations.”
Dex took note of Mosscap’s phrasing. “So, it is correct then? You wouldn’t prefer they or—”
“Oh, no, no, no. Those sorts of words are for people. Robots are not people. We’re machines, and machines are objects. Objects are its.”
“I’d say you’re more than just an object,” Dex said.
The robot looked a touch offended. “I would never call you just an animal, Sibling Dex.” It turned its gaze to the road, head held high. “We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.”
As we see above, Mosscap’s presence makes all kinds of small assumptions visible. It’s natural for humans to start with what we know, even with abstract ideas, like a being’s self conception. But Mosscap merely notes that personhood isn’t a prerequisite for consciousness. Further, Mosscap’s ethics don’t seem to consider the presence or nature of consciousness to be important for determining something’s value. These aren’t novel ideas, but it’s thought provoking (and perhaps more effective) to see them articulated by a non-human being. One doesn’t need to be distracted by hypotheticals re: AI and machine-based consciousness. We have all sorts of real (nonfictional) neighbors on our planet that should afford the kinds of consideration modeled by Mosscap.
As a character, Mosscap is fun to read because of how unburdened it is. For robot-kind, young in their arrival to consciousness, there’s no pretense that existence requires anything more than experiencing the world, and respecting one’s fellow inhabitants. This is a gentle, but meaningful critique of humanity’s preoccupation with individual self-worth. It’s relieving to recognize that the quest for “purpose” in one’s life is cultural, and perhaps self-imposed (at least to some degree). As Mosscap later says, it’s enough “to live in the world, and marvel at it.” Personally, I’m not sure if I fully agree with this. One could take cues from Schopenhauer or Freud, and conclude we have to rationalize what is often a frustrating and painful existence. Less pessimistically, meaning-making is a deeply important part of being human— how could we not try to place ourselves into the larger world we exist in? Humanity’s personal longings for purpose doesn’t seem so easily dismissed. Regardless, similar to where Dex lands at the end of the book, what Mosscap argues is nourishing to entertain.
I have a few months left, but I think this was my favorite book I read this year. If you enjoyed Scavengers Reign, particularly the robot Levi’s arc, I think you’ll really like this book.