Becky Chambers at Smith College

Monk + Robot (A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy) by Becky Chambers was the Smith College “Smith Reads” selection for 2026, a fact that would have completely slipped by me if I hadn’t happened to stop into Broadside Bookshop in Northampton a couple days before the event, and happened to buy a copy of Monk + Robot. Serendipitous! So, a friend and I got to see Becky Chambers in conversation with Toby Davis, and it was delightful.

I first read Becky Chambers in 2022, on a friend’s recommendation; The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, the first in the Wayfarers series, is a space opera with an ensemble cast. It reminded me a bit of the TV show Firefly and the middle grade graphic novels Sanity and Tallulah by Molly Brooks. I read A Closed and Common Orbit (the second Wayfarers book) a few months later, but I really fell in love with the Monk + Robot books (recommended to me by the same colleague/friend who accompanied me to the author event!).

Becky’s Wikipedia page says she’s “a pioneer of the hopepunk genre,” and that’s kind of a wonderful description. The Monk + Robot books are set in a future where sentient robots have left humanity to their own devices, and human settlements look very different than our present-day ones; they’re more sustainable, and kinder. Sibling Dex, a tea monk, and Mosscap, a robot, meet and begin to learn about each other and become friends. Like all cross-cultural friendships, theirs has stumbles and hiccups (“I wish I could understand experiences I’m incapable of having”), but the world they inhabit is a beautiful one.

When dystopias crowd the shelves and all the news seems bad, it’s so important to imagine a world worth working toward. (See also: What If We Get It Right? by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson.) Here are my notes from Becky Chambers’ talk to incoming Smith students, all quotes or close paraphrases.

Be open to everything. Interrogate everything, even the familiar. Don’t be afraid of mistakes.
Change isn’t failure, it’s growth.
Challenge your expectations, challenge your biases.
“I put a lot of trust in my readers to be smart and to follow along” without hand-holding.
“There will never be a one-size-fits-all solution for how a community lives sustainably. There are different cultural values, ecosystems, worldviews. But “we all want to live and we all want to thrive.” There needs to be a willingness to cooperate. People can recognize that “what is right for me might not be right for you” but there’s space to compromise. What’s important is all of us working collectively, with a “core ethos” to respect and care for the world. “That’s how we get there.”
“Our survival adaptation is each other.” (This made me think of Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, in which a post-apocalyptic traveling symphony and Shakespeare troupe takes as their motto “Survival is insufficient,” a quote from Star Trek: Voyager.)
We are best when we all bring different skills to the table. Learn how to talk to people, how to work together.
Nature and technology are not fundamentally opposed. Technology is tools. How is it used, who uses it, who benefits? Technology can respect agency, autonomy, and privacy.
“The world is beautiful and worth protecting.” -Mosscap
Writing a book is like cooking dinner out of whatever’s in the fridge.
Q: What inspires/influences you? A: Star Trek Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Carl Sagan, Ursula K. LeGuin
We write things down. Worldbuilding includes written things as well as conversation and dialogue and internal monologue.
The monks in Chambers’ books are “more relaxed.” These books are about false binaries: religion and science (fiction), technology and nature, are not opposites. Hedonistic is not the same as immoral. The most sacred life you can live is enjoying the world.
Q: What do you think humans need? A: Well, it’s been great… [pretends to get up to leave] “We need each other.” We need to talk, listen, find out what other people need.