Finished reading: A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot Book 1) by Becky Chambers.
This is the first book on my #TheologyOfRobotics reading list, which is expanding rapidly. A great fiction exploration of planetary stewardship and the relationship between humans and robots. Definitely fantasy, not sci-fi.
Ultimately, the book is about purposeāhaving one, finding one, whether you need one, whether just being is enough.
It’s quite opinionated, as it paints a rosy picture of a post-industrial society that reached an unnamed cataclysm and had to convert the entire civilization to a state of greater harmony with nature. It doesn’t mention any of the violent politics that would have inevitably arisen regarding any undertaking of that kind or magnitude, regardless of its necessity. The humans left alive are depicted as unfailingly virtuous. All this in a quest for answers about stewardship of resources, of place, of planet, of people. The main character begins as a gardener, moves to what passes for a therapist, and finally goes adventuring in search of purpose.
Interestingly for my study, it literally depicts a robot that has theology! The theology is presented as fact by both human and robot. But when you step back, it’s not necessary that the robot be a robot for the story to work. The robot has abandoned everything that would otherwise differentiate it from humans: it has “parents”, it is not immortal, it does not really repair itself. It could easily be a human member of a remote tribe that happened to speak the local language, and I tihnk nothing would actually change. So… good questions, but not specific to robots, I think.
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