They have the most believably awkward first attempt at giving tea and comfort to someone who’s having the worst day ever and who was really expecting someone who, y’know, knew what they were doing. Dex gets buckets of support for their decision, a going-away party, and a pedal-powered double-level beautifully crafted cedar wagon for their travels, with lots of windows and a wind-turbine and a miniature loft designed by monks who write treatises on how to make the the most comfortable bed for any situation.ĭex has the best send-off possible, and embraces their new duty with enthusiasm (said duty being providing a restful space and a listening ear).

They started as a garden monk in the City (no other name, Panga only has the one), but acting on unexplained dissatisfaction and a desire to hear cricket song they impulsively decide to switch vocation and become a tea monk instead. Sibling Dex is the monk who begins our story.

This is the kind of soothing, heartwarming people that Chambers’s books are filled with, so is it any surprise that the people of Panga evolved a beautiful civilization with a plant-filled city and tree-hanging villages and a whole pantheon of benevolent gods, one of which being a god of comfort who’s monks’ only duty is traveling the countryside and giving people cups of tea?Įndless electronic ink had been spilled over the old tradition, but all of it could be boiled down to listen to people, give tea. Wished them well, sent them on their way, and promised that the only way they’d reestablish contact was if the robots themselves made the decision to do so. Their first decision as a new species was to stop working for humanity, to walk into the wilderness and figure out who they were without any interference.Īnd how did humanity react all those years ago to their entire workforce deciding to quit? They let them go.

The genesis of this change was the birth of AI, when all of the robots that had been created to do humanity’s dirty work became self-aware.

From the very first page the reader is dropped into Panga, a world that used to have all the issues that come with industrialization, but centuries ago they managed to leave the Factory Age behind, and now poverty, violence, and climate destruction are a thing of the past. And yes I know I just did a review of another Becky Chambers Hugo-nominated story, but with *gestures around wildly* everything that’s going on lately I figured we could all use another optimistic sci-fi fantasy where humanity has learned to give a damn about their fellow humans and actually managed to fix most of the problems that we’re currently drowning in. This polite question is the core theme of a series of novellas by Becky Chambers. “What do you need, and how might I help?”

A monk and robot book