Are there good - or any - examples of Solarfiction? It strikes me that Solarpunk is somewhat defined by the lack of material suffering - infinite, clean energy; abundance of food, benign socialist government forms that organize human activity so efficiently that work as we know it barely exists. Because the pillar of fiction is conflict, a universe in which conflict exists is antithetical to the ethos of Solarpunk, and "Utopia as Disguised Welfare-Fascism" is a genre well explored within various -punk genres and of course by L Frank Baum and George Orwell already. It might be a self-defeating genre that can only exist when humans actual lives are defined by lack of conflict. 19th Century British idyll's might be our closest comparison, which is certainly a valid literary genre but.. ultimately this all has to be recognizable by modernes, does it not?
Well, Bacigalupi's fiction probably falls under that rubric, though it's a pessimistic vision of limitations and decline. I'd say we're still waiting for the first great solarpunk novel.
Yesterday I was working on an SF short story which probably falls into the genre of solarpunk, and the conflict comes out of the weather. Climate change still exists, humans have destabilized the climate, megahurricanes still destroy artificial islands, which is the impetus that sets my main character on her journey across the continent of Africa to find a new home. Just because there is bountiful quantities of free energy doesn't mean to say that things like xenophobia, racism, sexism, etc, do not still exist, and cause problems. Not to mention that there will still be bad, exploitative, power-mad individuals, which is another source of major conflict.
I suppose one avenue of conflict would be in a natural vs engineered solarpunk world. Those who want the solarpunk world to consist of humans working with nature, and those who want to engineer nature (genetic engineering, weather alteration, etc) to match their own vision.
I read Ecotopia and honestly thought that it was showing a dystopia. This is not a joke or meant ironically. Young teenage me read the novel and thought that the author intended us to be horrified by the Ecotopian regime. (I'm happy to explain why I thought that. It does not have to do with environmental policy.) In other words, the scenario in that novel provides a conflict between those who believe that totalitarian means are necessary and racism a lesser evil to save the environment and those who (self-servingly!) do not.
There is also the grey-green division in The Third Millenium, by Stableford and Langford.
The one solid example of solarfiction i know of would be the weight of light, https://csi.asu.edu/books/weight/, it's mostly of an exploration of possible tropes and story structures in solarpunk
There's an argument that Star Trek (TNG especially) is solarpunkish, in that resources are basically unlimited, and the conflict is in the process of bringing the abundance to other sentient races around the galaxy. I dunno maybe I'm making the utopianism<->solarpunk comparison too strongly.
What's the "big technology" that would let bio/solarpunk kick off? As you said, steampunk and cyberpunk kicked off because there was a big general-purpose technology (motor power, computer networks) that could be extrapolated to lots of cool story-generating ideas.
For bio/solarpunk, I guess it's ecology - "What if you can control an ecosystem with the same level of precision as a machine?" We can see the first stirrings of this - experiments in polyculture farming, algae and bacteria being engineered to do useful things, etc. And of course, there's animals that are adapting to take advantage of the urban "biome."
So the biosolarpunk future is one where the human city is an essential lynchpin of the ecosystem. A good thing - cities are full of pretty animals and plants and they do something useful instead of knocking over your garbage bins - but also a bad thing, because humans have trouble managing cities even *without* needing to manage an entire ecosystem as well. And it lets you play around with themes of how modern life is increasingly complicated and interconnected.
Interesting! I think northern Europe will turn into the Biosolarpunk/Eco-fascist future. Promoters will see the electrification, clean air, advanced life science, beautiful merger of old buildings and vegetation of Biosolarpunk. Detractors will see the "soft" social control, anti-GMO attitudes, rigid processes and general exclusion of non-members of Eco-Fascism.
I agree that Solarpunk has not been represented much in literature, and I've myself have been planning on building a literary universe because it seems like a new approach to science fiction in direct contrast to the pessimism we have today.
Oh, man! You should read the California trilogy as soon as you can: The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast and Pacific Edge. They're great SF in and of themselves, as well as providing a view into a yesterday's tomorrow. The Gold Coast in particular will make you wonder if modern technology has changed society as much as we might think. But all three are classics and deservedly so.
Since cleaning is hard and the ladscape often gets covered by piles of manhunting squirrel (or any other animal) or raider corpses, and stuff tends to explode or catch fire, I wouldn't say Rimworld generates a lot of SolarPunk narratives. My last colony got completely beat down by a hugh pirate raid that killed a few of my colonists and knocked out and kidnapped everyone else.
I don't know anything about any of the "punk" streams of writing, but I wanted to note that H. G. Wells wasn't that prescient about the future. Read "When the Sleeper Awakes" (published in 1899) and you'll see that his technological predictions were, oh, about a month ahead of his time.
Are there good - or any - examples of Solarfiction? It strikes me that Solarpunk is somewhat defined by the lack of material suffering - infinite, clean energy; abundance of food, benign socialist government forms that organize human activity so efficiently that work as we know it barely exists. Because the pillar of fiction is conflict, a universe in which conflict exists is antithetical to the ethos of Solarpunk, and "Utopia as Disguised Welfare-Fascism" is a genre well explored within various -punk genres and of course by L Frank Baum and George Orwell already. It might be a self-defeating genre that can only exist when humans actual lives are defined by lack of conflict. 19th Century British idyll's might be our closest comparison, which is certainly a valid literary genre but.. ultimately this all has to be recognizable by modernes, does it not?
Well, Bacigalupi's fiction probably falls under that rubric, though it's a pessimistic vision of limitations and decline. I'd say we're still waiting for the first great solarpunk novel.
Yesterday I was working on an SF short story which probably falls into the genre of solarpunk, and the conflict comes out of the weather. Climate change still exists, humans have destabilized the climate, megahurricanes still destroy artificial islands, which is the impetus that sets my main character on her journey across the continent of Africa to find a new home. Just because there is bountiful quantities of free energy doesn't mean to say that things like xenophobia, racism, sexism, etc, do not still exist, and cause problems. Not to mention that there will still be bad, exploitative, power-mad individuals, which is another source of major conflict.
I want to read your story!
Reading your blog post already gave me a boost to want to finish it, I'll email you when I'm done 😉
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Checking in 3.5 years later - did you ever finish/publish?
This sounds terrific! Have you finished it? Can I find it anywhere to read?
I suppose one avenue of conflict would be in a natural vs engineered solarpunk world. Those who want the solarpunk world to consist of humans working with nature, and those who want to engineer nature (genetic engineering, weather alteration, etc) to match their own vision.
Yeah! Or you could have ecofascists who revile all merging of humans with nature and believe the two realms must be kept forever apart.
I read Ecotopia and honestly thought that it was showing a dystopia. This is not a joke or meant ironically. Young teenage me read the novel and thought that the author intended us to be horrified by the Ecotopian regime. (I'm happy to explain why I thought that. It does not have to do with environmental policy.) In other words, the scenario in that novel provides a conflict between those who believe that totalitarian means are necessary and racism a lesser evil to save the environment and those who (self-servingly!) do not.
There is also the grey-green division in The Third Millenium, by Stableford and Langford.
The Iain M. Banks Culture series might be close to what you are looking for. Not very Solar or Punk though.
The one solid example of solarfiction i know of would be the weight of light, https://csi.asu.edu/books/weight/, it's mostly of an exploration of possible tropes and story structures in solarpunk
The conflict would be in the establishment of a solarpunk civilization, despite the best efforts of the authoritarians to maintain top-down control.
There's an argument that Star Trek (TNG especially) is solarpunkish, in that resources are basically unlimited, and the conflict is in the process of bringing the abundance to other sentient races around the galaxy. I dunno maybe I'm making the utopianism<->solarpunk comparison too strongly.
You are. Solarpunk is not utopian. It's better than the status quo, but not utopian.
What's the "big technology" that would let bio/solarpunk kick off? As you said, steampunk and cyberpunk kicked off because there was a big general-purpose technology (motor power, computer networks) that could be extrapolated to lots of cool story-generating ideas.
For bio/solarpunk, I guess it's ecology - "What if you can control an ecosystem with the same level of precision as a machine?" We can see the first stirrings of this - experiments in polyculture farming, algae and bacteria being engineered to do useful things, etc. And of course, there's animals that are adapting to take advantage of the urban "biome."
So the biosolarpunk future is one where the human city is an essential lynchpin of the ecosystem. A good thing - cities are full of pretty animals and plants and they do something useful instead of knocking over your garbage bins - but also a bad thing, because humans have trouble managing cities even *without* needing to manage an entire ecosystem as well. And it lets you play around with themes of how modern life is increasingly complicated and interconnected.
Yeah!
The big technologies are:
1. Solar and batteries (which allow us to build cities that don't pollute nearly as much but which use tons of energy)
2. Crispr and synbio (which allow us to shape life to exist in harmony with us, or to do various other stuff)
I think we have trouble managing cities <i>because</i> the ecosystem is unbalanced.
Interesting! I think northern Europe will turn into the Biosolarpunk/Eco-fascist future. Promoters will see the electrification, clean air, advanced life science, beautiful merger of old buildings and vegetation of Biosolarpunk. Detractors will see the "soft" social control, anti-GMO attitudes, rigid processes and general exclusion of non-members of Eco-Fascism.
So we get all of the futures indeed!
The Wind Up Girl is exceptional. Your piece makes me wonder, is The Water Knife HydroPunk?
I agree that Solarpunk has not been represented much in literature, and I've myself have been planning on building a literary universe because it seems like a new approach to science fiction in direct contrast to the pessimism we have today.
Yeah! The key will be having characters and conflicts that really resonate with the people of 2021...
Would Pacific Edge, by Kim Stanley Robinson, fit into your proposed genre?
Haven't read it!
Oh, man! You should read the California trilogy as soon as you can: The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast and Pacific Edge. They're great SF in and of themselves, as well as providing a view into a yesterday's tomorrow. The Gold Coast in particular will make you wonder if modern technology has changed society as much as we might think. But all three are classics and deservedly so.
where's my Hong Kong in America? I was promised Hong Kong in America
We'll need some serious upzoning
Really interesting article. The "solarpunk" has been developed out by the main creative mind behind the Cyberpunk game, Mike Pondsmith. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybergeneration
I'm pretty blah about solarpunk as an aesthetic sensibility. I can only look at so much brutalist architecture with plants growing on the outside before burning out on it. But it's also a technological ethos -- e.g. this amazing piece by engineer Eric Hunting: https://medium.com/@erichunting/solarpunk-post-industrial-design-and-aesthetics-1ecb350c28b6
You'd probably enjoy this... https://store.mcsweeneys.net/products/mcsweeney-s-issue-58-2040-ad-climate-fiction?taxon_id=5
Personally disappointed legal marijuana and boomers thinking CBD is a miracle medicine hasn't brought back weedpunk.
This is great.
I played a video game call Enslaved: Odyssey to the West solely because it had this art style.
The PC Rimworld has blocky, minimalist graphics, but places huge emphasis on renewable energy, and generates wonderful sci-fi narratives.
Neat!
Since cleaning is hard and the ladscape often gets covered by piles of manhunting squirrel (or any other animal) or raider corpses, and stuff tends to explode or catch fire, I wouldn't say Rimworld generates a lot of SolarPunk narratives. My last colony got completely beat down by a hugh pirate raid that killed a few of my colonists and knocked out and kidnapped everyone else.
Rimworld also lets you eat pirates and enslave traders (or vice versa). After which a random horde of chincillas eats your entire population.
I don't know anything about any of the "punk" streams of writing, but I wanted to note that H. G. Wells wasn't that prescient about the future. Read "When the Sleeper Awakes" (published in 1899) and you'll see that his technological predictions were, oh, about a month ahead of his time.
Tech moves fast!