Without use of constructs, you will unravel few mysteries.

Without knowledge of mysteries, your constructs will fail.

Find the strength to pursue both, for these are our prayers.

And to that end, welcome comfort, for without it, you cannot stay strong.

Becky Chambers has always been known for her political science fiction. Whether it’s criticisms of the overly-bureaucratic and often classist, but ultimately well-meaning, Galactic Commons (read “Space EU”) in her Wayfarers series or the “working class” astronauts of To Be Taught, If Fortunate, the politics are always close to the surface in her stories. Unlike these previous novels which perform the classic sci-fi trick of using the future to reflect on the present, Monk & Robot is her first explicitly solar punk speculative fiction series. Instead of exporting our current society across the galaxy, the Monk & Robot books ask what our current society could become with a prod in the right direction. The only hint we see of the present day are memories of the “factory age”, long ago, and worries about repeating it.

The two novellas, A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy are, like her other novels, unabashedly anarchist and queer. Where they differ from the high-tech, space-opera anarchism of Record of a Spaceborn Few is in the level of technology embraced by the Pangan society. With the notable exception of one of the main characters, the robot Splendid Speckled Mosscap (it/its), we see very little technology beyond what we humans of the 21st century could create. There are no space ships, phasers, or warp drive. Instead, the most advanced pieces of technology we see are mobile phones (albeit repairable ones that are “designed to last a lifetime”, a far cry from the planned obsolescence of today), the mention of communication satellites, and the occasional solar panel or bio-plastic 3D printer. This relative lack of technology, coupled with the way the cities and towns of Panga (the small moon on which the stories are set) live in harmony with the natural world, has led some to use the story as a way to explore ideas of anarcho-primitivism through the lens of Wild-Built. However, with the exception of one seaside community that spurns all technology beyond simple tools, this comparison does not seem apt.

The main character of Wild-Built is the tea monk—a roving therapist with the job description “listen to people, give tea”—Sibling Dex (they/them). Dex finds themself unsatisfied with their work and questioning their value to society. They set out to solve their meaning crisis in the way monks in literature have done for generations: by climbing a mountain (quite literally, in Dex’s case). However, upon returning from the mountain and their low-tech lifestyle with their new friend Mosscap in tow, they make it quite clear that anarco-primitivism does not accurately reflect their views:

The thing about fucking off to the woods is that unless you are a very particular, very rare sort of person, it does not take long to understand why people left said woods in the first place. Houses were invented for excellent reasons, as were shoes, plumbing, pillows, heaters, washing machines, paint, lamps, soap, refrigeration, and all the other countless trappings humans struggle to imagine life without.

The anarcho-primitivist sees technology and industrialization as the cause of our current climate collapse, but Sibling Dex is critical of this view while simultaneously turning a critical eye on the technology itself if it would jeopardize a sustainable world.

the moment they pedaled their wagon out of the wilderness and onto the highway, Dex felt the indescribable relief of switching back to the flip side of that equation—the side in which humans had made existence as comfortable as technology would sustainably allow.

Emphasis mine. This is similar to the view taken by another group over 200 years ago in pre-Industrial England. Becky Chambers’ vision of a de-growth future, and the broader de-growth movement, should instead be seen through the lens of their ideas instead: the 19ᵗʰ century textile workers and followers of General Ludd.

The Luddites are remembered in pop culture only through the capitalist propaganda that sought to discredit their uprising, and this also leads to frequent comparisons with anarco-primitivists or assertions that the Luddites wished to return to a pre-industrial world. But unlike the anarco-primitivists with their critique of civilization and industry, the Luddites—on the whole—weren’t anti-industrialist at all. Quite the contrary, they were often skilled machinists who made improvements and fixes to the engines and frames they would later smash.

In his book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech Brian Merchant describes the source of their ire:

Machinery, or technology, gets painted as the main target of the Luddites’ hatred and attacks, but the ultimate source of their rage was the factory system that those machines made possible. It was not the gig mill alone, nor the wide frames or power looms—it was the specific mode of domination over workers that the factory created that they felt such deep trepidation and anger toward.

This echo’s a quote from A Prayer for the Crown-Shy when Sibling Dex gets into a sectarian debate with Mx. Avery who argues the anarco-primitivist position against Dex’s more mainstream (for the world of Panga) views. Dex says:

“I’d say there’s no harm in any sort of construct so long as said construct has been proven to do no harm.”

Sound familiar? This mirrors the Luddist critique of the industrial revolution in a startlingly succinct manner. It was not civilization, or the machines themselves, which the Luddites eschewed, it was the factory model they enabled. Even the name used for Panga’s troubled past, the “factory age”, seems chosen to reflect the shift in working conditions the Luddites were trying to avert. There is no harm in the robot Mosscap, nor in the power loom, but the use to which they were put by the factories caused great harm never the less (for the workers in both cases, but I doubt the power looms experienced the hardship of robots, even if both are objects according to Mosscap itself). While Mx. Avery, chooses to eschew all post-industrial machines, Dex chooses instead to evaluate each machine based only on whether it is used to do harm.

This is the difference, in essence, between anarco-primitivism and what we might call “new Luddism”. The anarco-primitivist may see the gig economy forcing workers into long hours for little pay that is governed by obtuse algorithms or AI designed to make the company the most money at their expense and say “the cause of this is industrialization and civilization”. Or the casual news consumer may read the headline “The Robots Are Coming For Our Jobs!” and blame the robots. Chambers asserts that neither of these things are the problem. As Merchant put it:

If the Luddites have taught us anything, it’s that robots aren’t taking our jobs. Our bosses are.

Or, as Chambers puts it:

when extractive factories stayed open all twenty hours of the day without a single pair of human hands at work in them—despite the desperate need for those same hands to find some sort, any sort of employment … We had bastardized constructs to the point that it was killing us.

In both cases we are the problem and we should think critically about new technologies based on how they affect people. Do they provide comfort without harm, or harm for the sake of comfort?

It’s a common criticism of Solar Punk as a literary and artistic movement that it does not address the period of change between the future world and today. From the Pangan culture and religion we can infer that technology is embraced only in so far as it serves humanity and the environment, and that this wasn’t always so. What we don’t know is what cultural or political calamity might have happened to change and unify the minds of Panga’s various peoples. Chambers doesn’t tell us how the people of Panga reacted after the Awakening, when the robots woke up and went on strike, or what the path from their factory age to the thoughtful, low-tech world of the novellas was. Perhaps it required something similar to the World War III that sparked the fully automated luxury space Communism of the Star Trek future, or the uninhabitable earth that led to the anarchist Exodan society in Chambers' Wayfarers series, or perhaps it was a peaceful and gradual transition: we just don’t know. Panga’s factory age may or may not have been ended by Enoch’s hammer, but even if their future wasn’t created by the actions of Luddites it is still a reflection of what could be if we embrace Luddist thinking about technology. By contrast the Luddite revolution of 1812, the brutal way the workers were put down, and the resulting society that we’ve inherited today provide us a warning from the past about what can happen if we don’t.

Want to read any of the books in this article? Don’t support the factory owners, support the Luddites and robot workers of the world! Check if your local library has them first, and if not get them on my bookshop to support me and your local bookstore at the same time! The other bookshop.org links in this article are also affiliate links.

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