Solarpunk Strategies: Robots as Ecologists in Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Abstract

In the field of environmental fiction, Becky Chambers’ novella A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a confident staging of solarpunk strategies. One such strategy is a curious and innovative entity, guiding the reader away from the darkness of eco-anxiety and encouraging a more positive, aspirational mode of thought: the “robot ecologist.” No doubt the term reads like a semantic paradox to the eco-anxious, and yet Chambers’ robot ecologists exist at the emotional and ethical centre of A Psalm for the Wild-Built, in part facilitating the novella’s moral imperatives as they relate to climate change. By examining this creative novelty of robot ecologists (investigating how Chambers reframes technology and AI as elements that nurture rather than hinder the organic natural world), this paper explores the potential transformative impact of solarpunk as a literary mode on climate crisis anxieties, adding to the discourse surrounding the effectiveness of solarpunk strategies.