Imagining a greener future - Part 2

On the 26th June, Spectrum London Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Group ran a half-day event exploring what solarpunk means to some of the people involved with it, and how speculative fiction writers can write great solarpunk stories themselves. In a previous blogpost, I covered the first session, which explored solarpunk as a creative movement.

The second session of the afternoon, about writing solarpunk, gave tips on transferring that knowledge into great fiction. For that session, we welcomed an incredible panel of five renowned solarpunk writers, anthologists and translators:

Vida Cruz, a multiple-award nominated, longlisted and recommended author from the Philippines whose solarpunk story, Call of the Rimefolk, is available in Philippine Speculative Fiction 11.  Her latest book is Beyond the Line of Trees.

Fabio Fernandes, a Brazilian science fiction author and translator living in Italy, who translated the world's first solarpunk anthology, Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World, into English.

Sarena Ulibarri, the American Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press, which published the English translation of Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories. She also edited or co-edited three English-language solarpunk anthologies: Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers, Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters and Multispecies Cities, which was a collaboration with the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto, Japan. As a writer, she's published several stories, including The Spiral Ranch in DreamForge magazine, and is a reviewer for the Imagine 2200 Climate fiction contest.

Francesco Verso is an award-winning solarpunk writer and editor, with fifteen years' experience, who has collected solarpunk stories from across the world, from multiple countries and in many different languages.

Phoebe Wagner, co-editor of Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk & Eco-Speculation, which was among the earliest solarpunk anthologies to be published in English.

What makes a good solarpunk story?

Solarpunk is:

A movement of artists, authors and activists interested in changing the trajectory of our world for the better. As a genre, solarpunk stories are optimistic science fiction that engages with issues of climate change and social injustice. Solarpunk stories don't always show the specific solutions that lead to a better world, but they always strive to show that better futures are possible. (Sarena Ulibarri)

Solarpunk stories can be of several types, according to the panel. They can be science fantasy that follows Clarkes' Third Law, which have smart solutions to everyday problems a long way into the future. They can also be 'punk' like a guy playing in the garage with three chords, i.e. a solution to a single problem using the tools you have at hand.

In addition, they can use solarpunk as the 'mode' of storytelling, such as a solarpunk mystery, solarpunk romance or fantasy. In this case, the story will adopt solarpunk aesthetics and philosophy, but they're not necessarily its focus. Sarena warned, in this case, that the story needed to avoid 'greenwashing' the core values of solarpunk.

What are the key elements of a good solarpunk story?

The panel identified a good solarpunk story as:

• Presenting sustainable solutions to today's environmental problems;
• Hopeful, with hope built into its DNA;
• Engaged with social justice;
• Counter-cultural - the protagonist is fighting against something, but it's not the same thing as cyberpunk;
• Community-based - the hero isn't a single person and they're fighting for something greater than themselves;
• Innovative, with fresh elements that haven't been seen before, which can be technological, political or anthropological;
• Inherently 'cli-fi' (climate fiction), but focusing more on adapting and thriving in the future than on disasters or dystopias.

Vida and Fabio discussed how solarpunk is a testing ground for telling new types of stories, experimenting with new narratives, and challenging colonialism. For example, Seven Horrors in Fabio's anthology Love. An Archaeology is a non-linear narrative that breaks several rules for sci-fi narratives.

Vida described Call of the Rimefolk as a 'love letter to Pluto' in which a Filipino national gets an art grant on Pluto where there are psychic ice snakes (seriously, folks, this story sounds amazing!) Meanwhile, Manila has become a solarpunk city with backpacks made by indigenous people, skybike lanes and a museum to the first Pluto expedition, and the story is about fighting for the rights of the snakes. There are two storytelling modes in the story: inspiring Filipino readers to imagine an alternative future, and the importance of the museum, which wouldn't exist if the future didn't reach a solarpunk high in Manila.

What challenges does solarpunk need to overcome?

Francesco argued that solarpunk needed to disentangle itself from the 'colonisation of our imaginations', i.e. the feeling that authors needed to gain the approval of the US market. He argued that there were opportunities outside of Anglophone science fiction, and that science fiction had originally been a European literature - published in Russian, French, Italian and Spanish.

The panel discussed whether a network of small presses could overcome the magnetism of the American market. Francesco runs Future Fiction, a micro-press, which publishes translations in a variety of languages. Sarena, who runs World Weaver Press, argued that reaching the right audience can be difficult, especially with the growth of social media algorithms.

Which things do solarpunk writers struggle with?

Grist's climate fiction competition, Imagine 2200, received 1,000 story submissions and Sarena has read 400 of them. Hence, she understands common problems with solarpunk stories:

• Difficulties understanding climate change and its specific local impacts. In particular, the risk of creating a generic post-apocalyptic setting  where climate change is indistinguishable from a nuclear war;
• Tendency to write a 'blank slate story' after a massive die-off or pandemic. She encourages authors to challenge themselves to imagine a trajectory forwards from the modern day where most people/lifeforms survive, rather than building a new world from scratch;
• 'Solar' grafted to fantastic and improbable technologies. She encourages authors to think about what technologies are likely in the near future and to question which 'green' ideas are likely to be inadvertantly harmful;
• Failing to create drama. Authors should let go of the association between solarpunk and utopia. Solarpunk doesn't mean a perfect future - the story can be about personal stakes, even if low key. She recommends reading some existing solarpunk.

The panel had a wide-ranging discussion about 'conflict' in literature, and:

• Focusing too much on conflict. Stories in US literature tend to have an individual hero on a classic hero's journey, Phoebe explained, but that isn't appropriate for solarpunk. Stories with aliens, for example, are usually about invaders, said Fabio, but solarpunk stories are about building things. Vida discussed how the hero's journey is often colonialist, containing ideas of mastership, for example, which aren't appropriate to a community-based and anti-colonialist narrative. She suggested focusing on drama instead of conflict as a way of driving a solarpunk story forward.

What should solarpunk stories do more?

Solarpunk provides a rich landscape for experiments in how to restructure social and economic relationships. Sarena said authors are already doing this, but the sub-genre has a lot of of potential. She's interested in the ideas of philosopher and social ecologist Murray Bookchin as well as anarcho-communist philosopher Peter Kropotkin, and would like to see more stories rooted in anarcho-communist and anarcho-syndicalist ideals.

Her experience is that authors often struggle to set their stories in large cities. Even city stories are often set in rural communities and small towns. As such, she'd like to see more stories about urban spaces tranformed.

Furthermore, she'd like to see more writers of colour writing solarpunk stories. Acknowledging this is a generalisation, she said that writers with white privilege tend to have an easier time being optimistic, as they are less likely to be carrying the burden of ancestral traumas and daily injustices the way many writers of color have to.

In the Philippines, Vida says that there are many grassroots projects designed to give indigenous people just lives. As such, she'd like to see more stories that don't rely on big technology to save us. Referring to the discussion of agriculture during the first solarpunk panel, she said that indigenous people already have solved many problems that face us.

The panel emphasised the importance of stories that are rooted in specific local communities. Talking about Imagine 2200, Phoebe explained that she'd been living in Reno, Nevada, when she wrote her competition story - so, she'd set it there and acknowledged the struggles in that community. Francesco urged authors and editors to collaborate and collect stories from different countries, languages and identities - because solarpunk is against monocultures: what works in Reno may not work in Rome, and what works in Rio may not work in Guadeloupe.

How can you turn solarpunk into action?

Solarpunk stories can't change minds, said Sarena, if people don't want to listen, but it is possible to persuade about environmental issues by creating alternative futures that people want to live in. The onus, however, shouldn't be on individual creators - but, rather, on a creative tension between imagining a future beyond capitalism and working with it. As a solarpunk creator, that might involve guiding major corporations (such as Chobani) in the right direction, helping them to avoid succumbing to greenwashing and performative sustainability.

Phoebe suggested solarpunk creators go to protests and help solve injustices in their local community. Sarena also suggested that writers raise the visibility of solarpunk by submitting stories to big short story magazines, such as Clarkesworld or Uncanny. DreamForge is a magazine that's already published several solarpunk stories. For her press, the better solarpunk anthologies sell, the easier it is to do new ones as she's committed to properly paying authors.

Further Reading

Vida Cruz, Ways to Decolonise your Fiction (Powerpoint slides)

Joseph F. Nacino, Mariposa Awakening, in Multispecies Cities

Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology

Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-speculation

Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World

Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers

Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures

I Camminatori by Francesco Verso, Future Fiction

Solarpunk: Come ho imparato ad amare il futuro, VV.AA, Future Fiction

Solarpunk: Dalla strategia alla disperazione, VV.AA. Future Fiction

Solarpunk: Historia ecological e fantastical em um mundo sustentavel