An Introduction

Hello world, I'm Tomasino.

In this series I'd like to introduce you to Solarpunk, talk a bit about what it is

and why you should care, and empower you with a series of writing prompts so you can lend

your voice to the movement and shape it.

Today I'm going to start with a brief introduction of Solarpunk, talk a bit about why I'm creating

the series and the brilliant people behind the prompts I'm sharing.

In the rest of the series we'll look at one prompt at a time and discuss how it fits

into the Solarpunk genre, share some real world inspirations for the prompt, and some

themes to consider.

So let's dive right in.

The term Solarpunk may be new to some of you, and for many more it'll probably evoke images

but maybe not an explanation you could put into words.

If we pull the definition right from Wikipedia, Solarpunk is a literary, artistic, and activist

movement that envisions and works towards actualizing a sustainable future interconnected

with nature and community.

And boy, that's a lot for a single movement to be doing.

Literary, artistic, and activist movement.

Let me break it down for you another way.

Solarpunk borrows from the vibrant, aesthetic ideas of genres like cyberpunk and steampunk,

but imagines what they would look like in a world that's grown past capitalism and found

some level of harmony with our environment and within our communities.

Now I should pause here and clarify that it's not to say that Solarpunk envisions a world

free of commerce, per se, though some artists and authors may go that route.

Solarpunk is very clearly trying to imagine an end to the global capitalist system and

one that is succeeding.

You see, Solarpunk is generally a more optimistic vision of the future than we encounter with

cyberpunk and dystopian futurism.

Cyberpunk grew from our fears and anxieties of a technological age, progressing faster

than any in history.

Solarpunk, conversely, tries to see past the ends or over the hills of those bad times

in our present and near future, to a place where we come together and begin to heal.

Now I'm talking about it aesthetically here, but remember this is a literary, artistic,

and activist movement.

The importance of aesthetics is fairly intuitive for the art, and somewhat for the literature

as well.

But what about activism?

Well, it turns out it's more important than you might think.

It's incredibly difficult to try and reshape the world into this new, optimistic vision

of the future if the people don't have a clear idea of what that could possibly look like.

We need the pictures and we need the stories to help us imagine.

To give you a metaphor to play with, we needed Star Trek to show us a communicator before

engineers thought to build a cell phone.

And that brings us to this series itself.

I was inspired to make these recordings by a talk from Paavo Negay.

He gave this talk to our local hackerspace here in Reykjavik, but you can also find the

recording from when he gave it at Hope 2020.

I'll include a link in the notes.

The talk is titled Technological Narratives, and I can't recommend it enough.

In about 15 minutes, he does a marvelous job illustrating the limitations of imagination

within our popular genres, the real, tangible need for the creation of more fiction and

art.

During his presentation, he told us, we haven't yet created the great Solarpunk novel, a work

we can point to and say, that, that is Solarpunk.

And that's why I'm here.

And hopefully, while you'll join me in the series.

Without clear examples to point to, the budding genre is at risk of being co-opted by interests

which are directly counter to the movement's goals.

A recent article by Coindesk referred to Solarpunk as a reactionary Web 3 movement against

libertarian Bitcoin.

And Chibani, the Greek yogurt company, recently embraced Solarpunk in one of their ads in a

wonderfully Yeeble-esque animated style.

It's really good, honestly.

I can't even hate on it.

But we'll continue to see more of this until the movement matures with enough significant

works to anchor it in people's minds.

We need more stories, but not just anything.

We need stories that capture the full vision of the movement.

That means the activism too, the punk in Solarpunk, the politics and struggle to see that future

happen.

Thankfully, we have some guidance.

Avo and his colleagues worked for several months to put together a list of writing prompts

that tackle this very idea.

In his introduction to the writing prompts, he says,

All the prompts are set in the years 2030 to 40, with no technologies or scientific

advances beyond what we currently have.

They explore multiple categories of problems, cultural, economical, infrastructural and

political.

Each of the groups consists of a gallery of colorful and varied people whose goals will

often clash with each other, even if they all mean well.

I think this is what's the most important in Solarpunk, a community.

And that's what I want to leave you with today.

When I asked him and others in the Solarpunk community to give me a few guidelines for

what makes a story Solarpunk, it boiled down to three things.

Number one, community as protagonist.

Solarpunk stories may be from any point of view, but they are not inherently hero's

journeys.

A major protagonist should be the community itself.

Conversely, they should avoid tropes like the chosen one.

A superhero isn't what gets us to the brighter future.

Technology to save us doesn't happen in a montage alone in a basement.

It happens through teams of people, engineers, artists, teachers, testers, trials and failures

and ultimately compromise.

Number two, infrastructure is sexy.

It may not be literal infrastructure, but means and manners by which the community functions

is a major part of that aesthetic.

In a science fiction story, you'd talk about the science.

In a Solarpunk story, talk about the windmill or the river travel or the way parkways were

converted into a market.

Make it memorable, make it sexy.

And remember, there are no simple solutions.

This infrastructure came at a cost and through hard work and may still be a struggle to keep

it going.

And number three, the human environmental context.

Just because we're creating stories of an optimistic future, that doesn't mean we're

without conflict.

There's probably plenty of interpersonal conflict, both within and without the community.

What's in harmony, at least for the protagonist community, is the relationship between the

humans and their environment.

And with all guidelines like these, these are here to steer you in the right direction.

They're not hard and fast rules.

Okay, thanks for sticking with me to the end.

I really hope I piqued your interest in Solarpunk and that you'll join me as we explore the

prompts in this series.

Music in this recording is float out how we found it from global patterns compilation

Solarpunk, a brighter perspective.