A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a 2021 solarpunk novella written by Becky Chambers. On a habitable moon called Panga, AI and robots used to have a central role in the urbanized, industrialized society. However, several hundred years ago, the robots left human society and disappeared to the wilderness. Without their AI and robot workers and high-tech automated factories, the humans switch to a sustainable solarpunk lifestyle, with farms and small communities.
Dex, a gender non-binary tea-serving monk who uses they/them pronouns, is traveling around the human-populated areas of their moon, going from one community to another. One day, Dex, seeking a change in their routine, travels far beyond the agrarian communities into the unsettled wilderness. They are shocked to encounter a robot, as humans have not seen robots for centuries, ever since the robots left for the wild.
