I was recently in the mood for some unabashed utopian science fiction. I had been saving the second volume of Becky Chambers's Monk and Robot series for the right moment. And I've been meaning to reread all of Iain M. Banks's Culture series ever since I frequently gushed about it so much on this very blog back in the mid-2010's.
I need some time to mull it over, but I think Chambers's Monk and Robot series may be one of my all-time favorites. I’d say I want to give it a million stars if that sort of hyperbole didn’t feel contrary to its entire ethos.
I loved it so much that I couldn't think of how to review it properly. So instead I wrote this weird... review? Or whatever this is...
I also recommend listening to the Philosophers in Space episodes on A Prayer for the Crown-Shy to dig deeper into the philosophies like "anarcho-primitivism" (although it's not 100% clear to me that's the best label for what's going on here).
I love Dex (the monk) and Mosscap (the robot). I hope we have many more adventures with both of them as they explore Panga and themselves.
I love unabashed sci-fi utopias. The Monk and Robot series is now officially one of my favorites in that genre, along with Iain M. Banks's Culture novels. I re-read one of my favorite Culture novels, The Player of Games, right after reading A Prayer for the Crown-Shy for a second, much different utopian experience. I loved it at least as much as I did the first time I read it back in 2013 and decided that the Culture was among the coolest science fiction I had ever read.
Maybe I love The Player of Games even more now because now I understand just how cool the Culture is as a galactic post-scarcity utopia -- think Star Trek only even bigger and more utopian! And with hilarious robots called drones. And enigmatic Minds (benevolent super AIs). And just so much cool SF stuff, not to mention excellent writing on Banks's part. But this is not really a review of Banks, either.
As Mary Midgley has argued, utopias are not meant to literally describe a perfect place. Both Chambers and Banks are careful not to cover up all the complications in their respective utopias. But as Midgley says, utopias are not literal predictions or descriptions of a perfect world.
Rather, they show us possible blueprints, turn us in a new direction, or give glimpses of things so far away we may never get to them, if indeed we knew how--yet these glimpses might change us nonetheless (I'm very loosely paraphrasing Midgley's essay "Practical Utopianism" here).
The pictures that Chambers and Banks draw look very different, but in both taking care of people is the priority of a society. I still love the brash, big galaxy of Banks, but living through the worst of the pandemic and the recalibration of attitudes on life, the universe, and everything that took place, I'm more and more seeing the appeal of something smaller, yet greater in its own way.
The world that Chambers so skillfully depicts here is lovely. Call it "cozy science fiction" if you like, but for me some of my deepest thoughts and most enjoyable pleasures have been in cozy moments, when life is free and open to happen without the confines of plans, goals, or lofty purposes.
To say there are strong Daoist elements of this series is obvious, and even more obvious at the end of this one.
I realize I didn't say much about the plot of either A Prayer for the Crown-Shy or The Player of Games, but that's okay. I'll say this: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is funny. And deep. Just like Banks's Culture. But there's also just something ... nice about Chambers's creations.
Chambers reminds us that sometimes the quiet drama of human (and robot!) life is enough. And maybe that's what we all need right now. Enough.
See also my Goodreads review of A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, which overlaps with a lot of this post. And see my Goodreads review of The Player of Games, which was written long, long ago in a mindset far, far away.
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