WWAC’s coverage of the 2022 Hugo Awards continues with a look at the last two contenders for Best Novella: Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built and Aliette de Bodard’s Fireheart Tiger…
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Sibling Dex is a monk who grows dissatisfied with their futuristic metropolis and heads out into the villages on the outskirts. This change of locale brings with it a change of job: Dex goes from a Garden Monk who tends plants to a Tea Monk who serves people. Yet, after two years as a Tea Monk, Dex still yearns for satisfaction. They end up retreating into the wilderness where they meet a robot named Splended Speckled Mosscap.
This is a momentous occasion. Many years ago, humans and robots went their separate ways following the Partition Promise, and since then there has been no verified encounter between members of the two groups. Indeed, so much time has passed that Mosscap does not even belong to the generation of robots that once lived alongside humans. It is a wild-built, constructed by other robots from pieces of their deactivated kindred, and named after the first element of the natural world that it saw upon waking up. Mosscap is deeply curious about its new biological friend – a curiosity that parallels Siblng Dex’s own philosophical quest.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a back-loaded narrative. The full backstory behind the setting – the history of the metropolis and the villages, the humans and the robots – is spelt out in the last of the novella’s eight chapters. This also includes Dex describing formative events from his own history, and (of course) the characters coming as close as they get to a philosophical conclusion.
Until then, the story is content to take its readers on the same sedate, contemplative journey through a picturesque landscape as the monk and robot. The landscape is often precisely what motivates the characters: the lack of crickets in the villages is what inspires Dex to visit the wilderness in the first place; later on, a major dialogue exchange is kicked off by the monk observing a body of water.
The novella’s early stretches are determined to avoid letting the worldbuilding become in any way cluttered. Although we do eventually learn how the setting of Panga came to be after following a trail of hints and small revelations, much of the story carries the feel of taking place in a once-upon-a-time neverland (even the name, a play on Pangaea, adds to the impression of an Edenic world unburdened with history). The character of Mosscap is described in terms that suggest the boxy-headed robots of clockwork toys and children’s drawings – albeit with the unusual addition of a lichen-coated chassis. If fairy tales typically included robots as characters, Mosscap would be the archetype.
The religion followed by Dex has the same pared-down quality as the story, being discussed in just enough detail to be credible and engaging. The faith brings with it an ethical code, as seen when Dex apologises to a mosquito he has swatted, and also a pantheon. The novella opens with excerpted writing that muses over which deity presides over the consciousness of robots: is it Chal, god of constructs? Could it be Bosh, a deity associated with nature, thereby explaining the robots’ eagerness to settle in the wilderness? All of this is sketched in with a few strokes, yet provides ample material for the two characters’ philosophical discussions.
Like Suzanne Palmer’s Best Novelette finalist “Bots of the Lost Ark”, A Psalm for the Wild-Built belongs to the current trend at the Hugos for “cute robot” stories where human and android characters point out each other’s foibles, allowing the human condition to be both celebrated and skewered. In one scene Dex shares a meal with Mosscap, knowing full well that the robot cannot eat; the monk then asks if they can have both helpings. “That’s very silly,” says Mosscap, but Dex insists that good manners demand such an arrangement.
The discussions between Dex and Mosscap take up most of the story’s midsection, between their initial midsection and the final chapter where things get sorted out. There is no need for the novella to force any kind of momentum, as the dialogue is able to convey the worldbuilding and touch upon broader philosophical matters without the two leads slipping out of character. Take, for example, the sequence in which the two discuss their respective non-binary pronouns – apparently a commonplace aspect of both human and robot societies:
“So it is correct, then? You wouldn’t prefer they or—”
“Oh, no, no, no. Those sorts of words are for people. Robots are not people. We’re machines, and machines are objects. Objects are its.”
“I’d say you’re more than just an object,” Dex said.
The robot looked a touch offended. “I would never call you just an animal, Sibling Dex.” It turned its gaze to the road, head held high. “We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.”
A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a quiet story, but this is not for want of anything to say. Rather, just as Dex politely makes space for Mosscap during mealtimes, this novella provides ample space for the reader to bring their own thoughts and interpretations to the contemplative subject matter.
Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard
Thanh is daughter to the empress of Bình Hải, a country that holds an uneasy alliance with the nation of Ephteria. The princess is haunted by a memory of being caught in a burning palace at sixteen, escaping alongside a serving girl named Giang who subsequently vanished. Thanh is then revisited by a figure from her past: Princess Eldris, who had also been in the burning palace and who later gave her a rose in a gesture of romantic affection.
Yet for all of Eldris’ allure, Thanh still yearns for Giang. That is, until Giang herself makes an unexpected return, revealing that she is no ordinary servant but rather a fire elemental. And so, against the backdrop of the power politics of Bình Hải, a most peculiar love triangle is formed.
Fireheart Tiger is a story that manages to be both intricate and straightforward. It is intricate in part because of the central relationship being enmeshed in politics: the fraught negotiations going on in the background mean that Thanh and Eldris, princesses of different nations, may end up as opponents, and so are forced to conduct their affair behind the back of the empress (who is referred to simply as Mother throughout, underlining how the personal is the political in this saga of noble families). Thanh is herself part of these negotiations, and must tread carefully to avoid exposing the secret relationship that influences her decisions.
The novella is also intricate in how it hops back and forth in time, with Thanh’s memory of the traumatic fire repeatedly resurfacing:
If she closes her eyes, she’ll see Yosolis again, smell the snow and ashes on the night the palace burned—when everyone was too busy evacuating the real princesses to give much thought to the dark-skinned one in the attic room, the “guest” from the South who had been little more than a glorified hostage.
Thanh was sixteen then; she’s eight years older now. It should mean eight years wiser, but instead she feels as hollow and as empty as she was at twelve, watching the shores of Ephteria loom into view for the first time, and thinking that alien and cold court would be her life, that the palace in the capital of Yosolis would be the gilded bars of her jail—and, worse, that Mother was the one who had made the choice for her, for the good of Bình Hải, her home country.
Yet, at the same time, it is straightforward. The shortest novella on the Hugo ballot, Fireheart Tiger must establish its love triangle with broad, bold strokes. This is not to say that the central conflict is resolved easily, as each of Thanh’s prospective partners is flawed: Eldris is self-centred and elitist, callously abandoning past lovers and leaving Thanh to fend for herself in the burning palace; the elemental Giang, meanwhile, was responsible for starting the fire in the first place. Despite the confined space in which it develops, the Thanh-Eldris-Giang relationship manages to be thoroughly engaging: a strikingly accessible narrative within the byzantine politics.
Central to Fireheart Tiger’s success as short-form high fantasy is its prose style. Author Aliette de Bodard manages to build each aspect of her story – from the Vietnamese-derived setting to the core relationships – using a brisk series of glimpsed impressions and tactile sensations:
She walks tall and proud, unbowed, but her gaze is fixed straight ahead and doesn’t waver. The sword at her side goes “tap, tap” against the rich weave of her trousers as her legs move. Thanh’s hands itch, remembering how soft her skin was when she ran her fingers over her legs, when her lips grazed the pale skin of her neck, the same neck that’s now hidden behind a high collar and a ruffle, the lips that are closed, the face bare of makeup, her fair skin glowing like white jade.
Eldris. Princess Eldris.
The story also makes effective use of repetition. Thranh’s formative memories – the palace burning, Eldris giving her a rose – are re-staged and re-described, lending the feel of a prose poem. Shades of Catherynne M. Valente’s Best Novelette finalist “The Sin of America”, which uses a similar repetition despite a wildly different story and setting.
Compared to the other Best Novella contenders, Fireheart Tiger may be the smallest trinket in the jewellery box – but the reduced size makes the craft all the easier to appreciate. Even the familiar areas have been polished to sparkle anew.
