Solarpunk fiction is a form of climate fiction, but by focusing on the changes we could make, it can move us past climate anxiety, says author and editor Sarena Ulibarri. She introduces us to five favourites: ranging from near-future to far-future, they present a collection of thought experiments in the ways humanity might yet choose to live.
Saving, thanks
I’m glad you liked it. I thought it was a great list as it shows the diversity of stories that are possible within Solarpunk. You can follow Sarena Ulibarri on Mastodon or other parts of the Fediverse. Although she didn’t mention Lemmy in the article she is aware of this community. @[email protected] is an active member on this instance, of course and Brightflame stated she is donating all royalties for The Working to climate justice organizations if that’s incentive to read it.
I actually DNF’d A Half Built Garden recently but am excited to try some of the others! If Half Built gets really good after chapter 8 someone give me a shout.
Currently reading Newitz’ The Terraformers which has some solar punk vibes
Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson
That’s an imprtant novel, too. It’s worth noting that Sarena Ulibarri stated on Mastodon :
I’m never so bold as to claim that the things I enjoy are objectively “the best,” but Five Books asked me for a list of #solarpunk books I recommend, so I listed five I think more people should read.
+1 Just finished that book, so good. First half was bleak,
Spoiler
especially that first chaper,
but loved it overall.
If anyone is interested in non-fiction solarpunk, I recommend Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and How to Love a Forest by Ethan Tapper. I feel both are closer to long form poetry than novels. But they very much carry the solarpunk vibe and contain a call to practice.
No mention of anything by Becky Chambers?
I mean, she mostly writes novellas, but her writing practically defines solarpunk/hopepunk.Curiously, all white American authors. I wonder why this keeps happening.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is native american.
Paulo Baciagalupi is also worth looking into, his book The Water Knife is not explicitly solarpunk either but does deal with resource scarcity and the maladaptations a capitalst world will make to it. He has an excellent short story in the book Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology called The Calorie Man which is in the same vein. That is an amazing book on it’s own, there are a number of excellent stories included.
Unfortunately I don’t know if I’ve come across any books with the inherent hopefulness of solarpunk, but I would love to read them.
That’s certainly not ideal. Do you have any recommendations ?
I haven’t read the whole global corpus yet, but two of my favourite authors are Renan Bernardo from Brazil and Wole Talabi from Nigeria (the latter writes more scifi, but has some interesting solarpunk-adjacent stories).
In general, it’s much, much harder to find authors from the Global South because USians have such an easier time not only promoting themselves to editors & publishers, but also reaching their audiences.
