Perhaps, like me, you’ve encountered people who dismiss solarpunk as unrealistic, sappy, or fairy-tale thinking. Enter TechnoShaman and Black anarchist Elijah Claude’s excellent response.
When I saw his rant on Bluesky recently in response to those who criticize solarpunk without understanding it, I screamed, “Yes!”
So did other solarpunks who I admire–view the thread in Bluesky and you’ll notice responses from authors Susan Kaye Quinn and Christopher R Muscato, for instance.
(The doodle is my rendition of someone bursting with frustration.)
So I invited Elijah to guest blog.
Below, he embeds the Bluesky thread and elaborates on his comments. It is, as he says, a rant. A long one—with excellent points and full of links to great resources.
I hope you’ll read the full article, including the info about the thread he next posted. In case you don’t have the time, we highlighted some key points in bold. Then, I suggest you take a look at the final headings where Elijah talks about his own work and quotes some great replies.
The following is all from him. Thank you, Elijah!
Elijah’s words
I like solarpunk. I think it’s a pretty cool genre with a lot of potential, great vibes, and even better thought put into it. Not to mention some incredibly practical philosophies that inspire real-life behavioral change.
But something I’ve noticed, mostly over the past few months, is that as it’s gotten more popular, it has also gotten more attention from people who fundamentally don’t understand what solarpunk is all about.
Every other week or so, I see a post or two on the Solarpunk feed in BlueSky talking about how solarpunk is bad because it is ‘pastoralist’ or ‘cottage core’ or some other drivel…
I usually don’t engage because I know a lot of these people are just looking for a reason to be mad about something. But this week… so was I. My cat just died, and if we lived in a better world, his death probably could have been avoided. My partner is facing healthcare issues. And I’ve just got my job back from a sudden furlough… not to mention it’s been a year since my grandfather passed… whose death could also have been avoided (at least from this specific thing) if we lived in a better world.
On top of all that personal stuff are all the wider geopolitical issues, of course; what with the mess-in-office and international genocides across multiple continents, the AI bubble, and so much more …. there’s a lot to be mad about.
So when I saw yet another example of people shitting on a good thing… who don’t even have the decency of having a good, useful critique, I took it as an opportunity to vent a little steam.
“I would like to see more solarpunk movies and more normalization of normal people in media of all shapes and colors making hard but environmentally responsible decisions, and then realizing they also benefit from it.”
This was leading into a nice thread where they were noting how sustainable tech could and should be more of a focus in popular media.
For whatever reason, a person quoted and responded with this:
“Solarpunk broadly sucks because so little of it is actually concerned even slightly with either solar or punk, so much of it is really just arcology pastoralism.”
Somebody else then followed up with:
“The fundamental problem with solarpunk is that ‘solar’ is aspirational and that immediately clashes with ‘punk’. E.g., in ‘cyberpunk‘ the cyber systems are antagonists, and in ‘steampunk’ the industrialists are enemies. You can’t have utopiapunk.”
Before we get into my rant, just take a second and observe that exchange. BlueSky is often seen as a more wholesome (and somewhat open source) alternative to Twitter. But it’s still a social media platform where these sorts of bad-faith “arguments” happen. [See bottom of post where I urge Elijah to join us on Mastodon! ~BF]
What really grinds my gears about this sort of interaction is that if someone IRL made a comment about a fairly innocuous thing with a pretty straightforward and balanced critique—What kind of person then responds with a comment that is only tangentially related to the original idea just to complain and dunk on their own strawman idea?
So not only were these comments rude, in my mind, but also ignorant and exceedingly arrogant about their views. The way they speak so confidently and make such generalizations further ticked me off.
A Snippy Rant
All that said, here’s my multi-post reply (SOOOO grateful for this feature):
I’m so sick of this. If you don’t understand it, just say that.
Solarpunk is barely ~10 years old. Meaning we can still decide what it is, and isn’t.
The idea is meant to shift focus from what can go (more) wrong with the world, towards a focus on what can go right, and how to get there.
It’s a response to the fact that most people didn’t understand the point of cyberpunk or steampunk, or any other punk because they were just glorifying the aesthetics with no thought to what they were fighting.
And no, they weren’t fighting the ‘cyber systems’. It’s fckn capitalism that’s the antagonist.
Punks used cyber/steam technology to wrestle control of technology from capitalists/industrialists towards the needs of the people.
But since people IRL largely just saw the cool tech and the doomerist outcomes, folks focused on the aesthetics instead of the conflict.
Thus the need and desire for Solarpunk. To show how we can use technology to create the world we Actually want to live in rather than putting so much energy into world building the shitty worlds we’re already stuck with. It’s to inspire people to fight FOR something rather than just Against.
Finally, it’s not romanticizing pastoralism. It’s recognizing that we absolutely cannot keep pretending that industrial-scale agriculture is sustainable. It’s recognizing that we’re going to need to grow food locally. In our cities, our neighborhoods, and our small towns in new and old ways.
Same for energy production, water management, manufacturing, and so on.
Obviously we will need new and old tech to do so. Thus the solar, mills, etc.
Further, we will need to rewild some of our cities and other land use for biodiversity, thus the prevalence of nature in the landscapes.
We don’t know exactly how to get there though. Or what that will look like. Thus people are exploring various ideas and methods and technology to see what that may be like.
People are also building real life examples now to practice these alternatives.
Obviously Solarpunk has its issues since there’s always people who don’t get it. Plus not enough media exploring it.
Critique is important. But at least understand wtf you’re talking about when you do critique.
And please offer some alternatives because we need more options these days, not less.
I don’t like folks who use AI to create visuals. I don’t like when people slap the name Solarpunk on anything greenwashy. I don’t like when people don’t consider the inherent incompatibility of capitalism and statism with Solarpunk.
But I think those are outliers. The good stuff goes beyond that.
And sorry I’m probably coming off snippy here. I have other issues in my life and I’ve seen one too many of these types of posts to let it slide again.
I’m just tired of being here and am trying to do all I can to create something better.
But we have to believe better is possible.
So as you see, I was attempting to do several things here:
Define solarpunk (or at least give its origin story)
Address the misunderstanding of steampunk and cyberpunk that seemed to lead to this categorically bad idea of what solarpunk is. It seemed the 2nd commenter didn’t even understand the prior genres so I felt it was important to address that first since it establishes the ‘ground’ for this entire argument.
Address the ‘arcology pastoralism’ comment not by refuting those observations, but attempting to challenge their assumption that such a thing is bad. People really seem to have a hate-on for pastoralism, which is silly because that is one of the main ways that humans have survived for thousands of years. I didn’t even go into how arcology itself can and should be made more sustainable and even regenerative or the distinctions between permaculture and pastoralism…
The Exchange Continues
One of them replied:
“I’m sorry for whatever you’re dealing with here, but while ‘solarpunk’ is young, *punk isn’t, and ‘punk’ is about rebellion against oppression. Utopian fiction just can’t be punk, punk doesn’t just mean ‘tech with this kind of flavor’.”
After this reply, I was seriously questioning the ability of this person to even think critically about what they were saying, much less what I presented to them. If you’re reading this, PLEASE tell me how anything I said could have possibly lead this person to this conclusion, because I’m still scratching my head about this.
My reply:
So you went through that entire rant and got nothing? Solarpunk is still rebellion against oppression, just shifts the focus Towards what we’re fighting For, ie a world without oppression. Showing what that world can look like. That such a world can exist.
Why is that so hard to understand?
Their reply:
“Again, because that’s the part that’s not punk. Punk isn’t just a suffix that means ‘technology’, if you create fiction that envisions a bright ecosocialist future, it’s not punk. It’s perfectly fine to write about! But it’s a different thing.
No one misunderstood you at all here, people just disagree with you.”
My reply:
You clearly misunderstood if you think I think punk = technology.
I’m trying to understand Why you misunderstood.
I literally said Solarpunk is still about people fighting against oppression. Technology just being one of the many tools used in that fight.
I don’t care if you disagree. I just think you should disagree about what Solarpunk actually IS rather than some straw man that you made up because you don’t understand what it is all about.
Their reply:
“What is being said at the very beginning of the whole thread that just broke your brain is that ‘Solarpunk broadly sucks because so little of it is actually concerned even slightly with either solar or punk’. The complaint is precisely that a lot of actual, extant solarpunk isn’t as you describe.”
At this point, I was teetering on just calling this person some bad words and letting my dark side take over. Because not only is this reply rude af in terms of the “broke your brain” thing, but it also attempts to rewrite their OWN COMMENT! Seeing that THEY made a completely different argument against solarpunk than the comment they are quoting.
I understood these two comments to be saying:
Solarpunk sucks because it romanticizes an idyllic past and does not feature any sustainable tech (’solar’) or any fight against oppression (’punk’)
Solarpunk doesn’t make sense as a genre because it is focused on describing ‘utopian’ worlds with no conflict, thus there’s no one to fight (ie no ‘punk’) in said utopian ‘solar’ worlds.
So I figured let me take a step back and get out of the world of theory and work through some “real-world” examples.
Taking a Step Back
My reply:
Okay then let’s be specific. What works of solarpunk are not solar or punk?
Actually, I’ll say ‘A Psalm for the Wild-Built’ may not be solarpunk because I don’t think the author intended it to be, and because it takes place after all the fighting while the other two are in the midst of it.
I’d consider it still because I do think its punk to show what happens after you win against oppression, but I’m willing to put that in a gray area.
I’m not going to lie, I was shooting them some bail here, because I do think Psalm for the Wild-Built could very much still be considered solarpunk even though it takes place ‘after the fighting’ for a reason I only hinted at later on, which in essence comes down to this: Solarpunk is powerful on multiple levels, because it seeks to allow us to construct not only different kinds of stories and worlds, but also different kinds of narratives, thus giving it a metacognitive approach. Therefore it elevates itself beyond the aesthetic into the practical. It inspires people to want to change their life in order to live in such a world! More on this later.
Their reply:
“I mean, this may be the root of the disagreement then, because I find that most things labeled ‘solarpunk’ are more like a sort of post-punk world, where they already had their dystopian phase, and I think that’s fine but it’s not ‘punk’.”
My reply, again, trying to steel-man their own argument:
I think there’s some important distinctions here, not trying to be pedantic, but this is important.
I agree post-apoc is not solarpunk. As someone else said, solarpunk is an attempt to avoid the dystopia, not to just rebuild afterwards. It’s the alternative route, not just picking up the pieces.
I’d put Psalm in a grey area because I’m not sure if they avoided the dystopia or if they survived an apocalypse. Furthermore, idk if they actually fought against oppressors or just kind of had to build better after the AI robots left.
I love the series, but yeah they may be post-punk rather than solarpunk. But I don’t think thats indicative of the genre. Many other examples are focused on the actual fight (and what it looks like to win).
While Psalm asks ‘we did the solarpunk thing, now what?’
Their reply:
Maybe I just need to see more works in the genre? I think a lot of what I’ve seen is more fairly described as a sort of scifi pastoralism than any sort of punk, others a sort of post-apocalypse with sustainable tech. I think I also see The Dispossessed come up a lot, which I think we’d both agree isn’t solarpunk (maybe not). This is why I keep saying that people use “-punk” to mean “tech with this aesthetic” rather than “punk stories set in this world”?
I don’t know your examples well so maybe I’ll go read them, despite this argument you seem like you’d have similar taste.*
But yeah just heading over to r/solarpunk you immediately see examples of basically arcologycore, or just like green tech. Fine things! I like these just fine. I just think it’s weird to call them “punk”.
Image may be from the ‘Dear Alice’ Decommodified Edition | Solarpunk anime ambiance “with no ads” from r/solarpunk
[Source unknown for the Mexico City and far-future double images. Windmill scene by ‘spikingsart.’]
Maybe you don’t think r/solarpunk is representative of solarpunk, and that’s probably fair! Maybe “ecofuturist” is better or something, but I’m making a point not about things that are true to the genre in some sense, but about what is actually called “solarpunk” in the wild.
I’m glad I asked for examples, because it really began to clarify for me where exactly the issue was. I began to explain here:
Yeah I agree about The Dispossessed. Not only because it predates the genre, but also because the focus of the novels is not at all solarpunk.
As a rule, reddit is often not the place to go to find good examples of anything, much less solarpunk, lol.
In general, I don’t think one should accept whatever is being called something in the ‘wild’ as that thing, because you’re just leaving it up to ignorant people, to indoctrination, and even psyops mixed in to determine what something is or isn’t.
It’s the same reason why I don’t accept the ‘common’ idea of anarchism or communism and the like.
Reddit or ‘the wild’ will have you thinking anarchism is just capitalism with no regulations and that communism is when states control everything.
Both are obviously wrong. Unfortunately those have decades of propaganda against them while solarpunk is fresh. Like, I have critiques of communism, but I critique the actual concept (or rather how marxists think we can get there) rather than the straw man idea of it.
*The fact that people can make these wrong assumptions of solarpunk (or any other concept) is problematic. But that’s a problem that Every concept faces.
Once again, look at how cyberpunk and steampunk got completely watered down to just being cool tech in a dystopian world. Is that really punk?*
But the solution, in my mind, is to do things like this where we attempt to steer clear of the misconceptions and surface-level aesthetics rather than just throw up our hands and complain about the surface level with no acknowledgement of the stuff that goes more into depth.
I really felt like I drove the point home very strongly here. Because I realized this person couldn’t even maintain their initial stance about what they thought solarpunk was… they shifted their argument from what Solarpunk IS to what random people assume solarpunk is. Which to me is a completely different argument and issue. As I stated in my reply, this is a problem that happens ALL THE TIME, especially with generally leftist-aligned ideas in a world that is demonstrably hierarchical.
So to pick on solarpunk as if its unique felt like not only an admission that they indeed misunderstood the original concept (since they’ve shown here that they’re going off of supposed reddit posts rather than any real works); but also that they’re willing to accept whatever is served to them rather than engaging in critical thought about the practical and theoretical reality of solarpunk ideology.
This gets confirmed for me in their next comment:
“I guess! But solarpunk, as you say, it still nascent. If it’s in this early stage and yet a good solid chunk of it isn’t what you’d call “true” solarpunk, where is that true core? What does it come from, if it’s not emergent from the works that use the label?”
Sounds to me like they’re on the backfoot here… but again, I rather lean into the educational, steel-man approach rather than the diatribe approach, especially since now I’m just intrigued rather than angry.
The reply/not-really-thread feature of BlueSky broke down here, but somewhere in here they posted this comment as well:
“I don’t think we actually disagree? I used “clashes” rather than “contradicts” on purpose. I don’t think solarpunk is self-contradictory, but I think “solar” lends itself to utopian thinking and to the creation of not-punk things and that’s why a lot of (self-labeled) solarpunk leans away from punk.”
I pretty much never use reddit these days, so I was intending to go over to reddit myself and figure out what context those images he shared had. I wanted to see if the folks on reddit actually shared those images as ideals of solarpunk, or if they were also just trying to slam dunk on how ‘bad’ the concept is (which is my experience with reddit). Or, if they were calling this solarpunk, what stood out to them about these images? Because far be it to me to decide for other people what this genre means to them.
If people like something about the genre, and I consider that wrong, I may just let them be, or decide to softly encourage them to analyze what they like a little more critically in hopes of deepening their understanding. It’s people that shit on a concept while speaking in generalizations with little to no evidence that they even gave it an honest shot that pisses me off.
Catching Them Cherry Picking
Here’s how I responded after my brief scan:
This is where we differ. Ever since I found out about solarpunk like 5 years ago, I’ve mostly been seeing good stuff! Like the people I tagged earlier on.
That’s why I asked for examples. What are you looking at?
I just went to /r solarpunk and I was surprised to see some good stuff there?!
[Screenshots of posts from r/solarpunk including examples like someone’s one-litre shower, link to storyseedlibrary.org, link to restorative agriculture video, and list of concrete examples of solarpunk.]
So now I have to wonder if you’re just cherrypicking stuff you don’t like??
Obviously not every instance of a thing will be good, but I have seen a majority of great, in-depth, actionable solarpunk ideas for years.
Thus I’m always unsure what people are seeing to lead them to these conclusions.
As you can see in my screenshots, the reddit actually seemed to contain a lot of sober, practical examples of solarpunk concepts in action. People actually attempting to build sustainable alternatives to the current market and state-controlled systems of power.
So now I’m even doubting this person’s intentions and integrity. Maybe I just don’t know how to use reddit, but for the life of me I could not find any of those images they provided on that subreddit.
Please, go to /r solarpunk and let me know what you see! Maybe I’m trippin’.
But it seems that my initial assumption of redditors was wrong! Maybe there’s hope for us after all 😛
Anyways, I was being generous there at the end, because I realized something crucial… which I honestly expected at the beginning… they haven’t actually read or seen much solarpunk at all!! The very examples they gave are probably just random images they found on google (since I couldn’t actually find them on reddit, which I hold is not always a great curator for anything).
This is why, at the end of the day, even amidst my anger and frustration… I do have empathy for people who don’t understand solarpunk. Because they are falling prey to the actual critique I have of the genre. That we simply need more of it. That there’s not enough out there that really delves into the nuts and seeds. At least not enough to overpower the AI slop and greenwashing and capitalization of these concepts. But more on this later.
The thread broke down here as I soon after spun out this whole other thread trying to directly address their issue with their being surface level stuff that they think puts this bad light on the genre:
I don’t think this issue is unique to solarpunk.
People are going to have bad, surface-level ideas of ANY concept. Doesnt matter what it is or what you call it. Anarchism, democracy, communism, star trek, intersectionality, woke, whatever…
Because we live in a world where the worst version of ideas are popularized, where critical thought and media literacy is nigh non-existent…
Where there is a vested interest in strip mining hope and selling it as a neat product you can mass produce.
I think a few of those images you posted probably came from this:
To me, this is solarpunk cuz it takes what was meant to be a consumerist message and strips out the corporatism to uncover the human desire for sustainable community underneath.
Its not a romance of pastoralism, since it clearly has both rural and urban elements coexisting together.
It uses advanced technologies, but nothing here is unrealistic or unsustainable.
The focus is not the tech but the people in community living an honest and happy life.
This is a tongue in cheek, tip-of-the-iceberg intro to solarpunk. This video is more an example of what can be achieved via a solarpunk path.
Meaning what makes it solarpunk is not just the imagery, its the soft rebellion and repurposing of an advertisement; its seeing the underlying humanity.
This was NOT intended to be ‘solarpunk’ [*** see note at bottom] but people saw this and found elements of what could be achieved through solarpunk and thereby turned it into an ‘advertisement’ for solarpunk rather than the original product.
Are there problems here? Certainly! But folks made it work anyways.
The entire idea of solarpunk is that hope itself can be punk. That in a world where you are constantly being ground down to depression and anxiety and nihilism and pessimism and apathy and doomerism… that actually believing that we can do better and then DOING that is punk af.
It’s a meta commentary in addition to a genre.
It’s the idea that giving people something to fight for… something to build towards, is just as, if not more, powerful than just giving them something to fight against.
Where steam/cyberpunk utilized steam/cyber tech as their tools to fight the power; solarpunk utilizes solar and other renewable resources. Thae0d0de focus is not necessarily the tech here though, the focus is actually the method of fighting. Its an ideological war of sustainability vs consumerism.
The tech is just one of the tools to fight that war. Things like recycling, degrowth, rewilding, biodiversity, cultural diversity, intersectionality, community, anarchy, etc are all in there too… much of that is just harder to depict through imagery alone.
Of course steam/cyberpunk had their own meta commentaries like industrialization, corporatism, and transhumanism but solarpunk incorporates much of that while focusing on the positive rather than the negative.
In fact, the entire reason why I advocate so much for solarpunk is because I do think that its more capable of being useful even when fans don’t fully understand it.
When people don’t get cyberpunk but like the vibes, they become crypto bros and ancaps and e-accs or whatever.
When people don’t fully get solarpunk, they go off-grid or rewild their lawn. If all you know about solarpunk is that they use solar panels, but you like the vibes, than at the very least you’re going to do something sustainable.
Thus why the solar (ie sustainable living) IS punk. Because you’re actively fighting against an unsustainable, commodified, and increasingly dystopian world through the use and creation of regenerative tech, communal living, anarchic practices, and so on.
Do we need to do a better job at creating/spreading the stuff that goes more indepth? Certainly!! But I don’t see that as a demerit or ‘clash’ in the genre.
And like I said, there are still a LOT of people doing good work. I just think the surface level stuff is probably easier to spot/cherry pick.
I know I’m writing a lot here lol, I like longform content myself (thus why I can’t point to all the short stories out there). I’m probably going to turn all of this into an article or something eventually.
TL;DR: Solarpunk is cool because even if you only get the vibes, you still can grasp what makes it punk (ie sustainable living).
But there is a vast depth underneath the vibes to dive into.
If you want to critique it, you probably should actually understand what it is you don’t like about it.
This is where I really started to get into long-form writing bag lol… probably to the detriment of the conversation, because their next reply sure seems like they didn’t even bother to read all that (even though I gave a TL;DR!)
Unmasking the Cop
Here is their last comment bowing out of this whole ‘conversation’:
“I can’t be cherrypicking when the point is that the examples exist.
At this point, I’m done. All I can tell you now, buddy, is that if you don’t want people to have this impression of your favorite genre fiction then you need to police your genre better.”
So not only did they backtrack once again by now saying that ANY instance of a bad example of a genre/idea somehow defines the entire genre… but they finally said what they wanted: police.
They want us to “police the genre better” smdh….
This thread is already too long to get into another (and truly angry) diatribe about the problems of policing both as a concept and as a real phenomena so I’ll just say this is why its INCREDIBLY important to ‘kill the cop in your head’. Especially when you’re advocating for punks!
What kinda punk wants ANY sort of policing??
The unmitigated gall of this person.
It’s FUCK THE POLICE. ALWAYS.
ALL COPS ARE BAD. Including the one in your head.
ABOLISH POLICE. Including thought cops.
I do think there’s something to be said for curation. For filters. Even for some kinds of ‘gatekeeping’ in the communal aspect (though applied very carefully and conscientiously to root out actual abusers)… but there is no place for ‘police’ of any kind in my future.
The point of this entire argument is not to be some kind of authority on the subject who gets to decide what is and is not solarpunk. Its to simply share my own perspective on what I think makes for solarpunk as I see it.
I’m always open and willing to see other people’s view of this genre, and anything else. But just because I’m open to other perspectives doesn’t mean I’m going to tolerate arrogant ignorance! Just because I have an open mind doesn’t mean I’m not going to question your perspective!
Because I believe that is what we truly need in a better future. A world where anyone and everyone can actually engage in challenging each other’s perspectives, can help each other grow, and can set boundaries all without running roughshod over one another. All without trying to shut down other voices. All without trying to control, punish, or manipulate others into doing what we want.
I fully understand that people will have this impression of this awesome genre. Because it has a draw to it. Because its something that inherently speaks to people of all walks of life. Because it is indeed a young and powerful concept that has the ability to change things. People see that… but that’s also why I know that there will therefore be people who seek to control, obfuscate, and/or just exploit the movement with little to no care about what it’s actually trying to do. It’s a story as old as language and storytelling…
So, as I said in the beginning, if you have issues with this genre (and anything else) I think it should be presented with knowledge of what you’re critiquing, and if at all possible, it should be presented with alternatives as well.
I think as general ‘leftists’ that is something that I see all too often; people critiquing something but not having the imagination to offer alternatives. I believe if you don’t give people something else to consider, then any and all critiques you offer end up being moot or even turned against you.
Hence my next threadI posted right after all of this calling for even more diverse voices in the genre. I’ve read some great stuff from queer folks, and we can always have more. I have not had the pleasure of any solarpunk stories from black folks, indigenous folks, or differently abled folks. I think each of those backgrounds can help identify unique issues to solve through the solarpunk movement.
Furthermore, I called for longer stories!! As someone who almost exclusively reads web serials, short stories just don’t do it for me. I need and want something meatier. Though many people may not read longer stories, at least having indie movies, shows, and games could fill that need.
Finally, I called for more tools and platforms where people can actually build towards these solarpunk futures in the real world! Because solarpunk really is more than just a literary genre, it truly is a movement inspiring people to not just think, but also live more sustainably.
A Little Self-Promotion/Call to Arms
I didn’t want to turn this whole thing into a promotion for my own work (but maybe I should have with all the attention it got!). Nonetheless, the ‘alternatives’ I’ve been working on is my very own ‘Building Better Futures’ series that Ive been planning and working on.
And if you’re really down with it, feel free to subscribe to theyoutube channel as I work my way there too! This way, once I finally get some videos up, people will be there waiting! (Also accepting help to produce these things!!)
But in short, I am endeavoring to reclaim the idea of ‘utopia’ and provide richly detailed worldbuilding for solarpunk (and any other related genres) to inspire more stories that I want to see in the world and especially more real-world projects too!
I want to write my own stories, create my own shows/movies, produce my own games, and do it all (and so much more) through a co-operative as well! But I’m not quite there yet with my skills (or resources). So this is a way for me to create the foundations by utilizing the skillset and resources I do have at hand.
I also came onto BlueSky with a call to community for solarpunk folks with this post:
Where my #Solarpunk folks at? I've been wanting to create some sort of Solarpunk software that allows people to reimagine their city as a walkable, sustainable, post capitalist utopia. Then provide resources and ideas on how they may be able to get there. Any takers?
It unfortunately has been a tumultuous year for me, so I have not been able to follow up as I wanted to, but I’m trying to remedy that now! Please reach out if you’d like to work on some solarpunk projects! You can check out my public design doc here:
“I’ve had a fair amount of luck framing solarpunk as the counter to dystopian. I know that’s not an entirely accurate, but it often helps steer the conversation to deeper questioning.”
“Solarpunk allows people to envision a different future than the dystopia that is typically sold to us. It’s a way to recapture the imagination and the narrative.
This was a really great and insightful post they linked. I do not agree with them on their use of AI, which I said as much in their comments section, but I think there’s a lot to discuss there and hopefully that conversation will indeed happen. But the ideas they put forth in this article was not about that and IMO serves as a great thesis for the need and power of solarpunk.
“This entire thread about #Solarpunk is really great and I think needs a lot more eyes on it. It’s also sad that people are falling into the trap of just seeing Solarpunk as an aesthetic rather than a political movement.”
Tragic indeed! Maybe folks don’t want to admit this, but the fact that many people are actually applying solarpunk principles in their everyday lives, and demanding more from their local governments, shows to me that this goes beyond the aesthetics. Its driving people to be real life punks!
My take is that solarpunk paints an aspirational/perhaps utopian view of the future, yes, but the “punk” part is how we get there. Solarpunk is cyberpunk if the punks won, right? Cyberpunk is about fighting oppression, but it’s also largely hopeless.
Solarpunk acknowledges firstly that the fight is not something that will come in a distant future, it’s already started now, but also that there is a chance that the outcome is not that the punks lose. I think a lot of the artwork seems utopian, but I see it more as just hopeful.
I think all of this is a practical way for science fiction to explore genuine possible strategies for reaching that hopeful future. Cyberpunk is a warning, and to me Solarpunk is a guide for how not to get there.
Indeed! And this assumption that “utopian” means perfect or secretly dystopian or unobtainable is exactly why I started my own series mentioned above. In terms of this take though, they get it! Solarpunk is a direct counter and/or response to the inherently pessimistic view of cyberpunk. Put another way, it seeks to provide the ‘carrot’ to the cyberpunk ‘stick’.
We’re going to fight either way! But we’d like that fight to avoid the cyberpunk world altogether.
Yeah, #solarpunk must be welcoming of all people but not all ideas, or it will be co-opted and hollowed out by capitalism.
Exactly so! This is not about policing, its about protecting the community. The distinction being that its not some authority that gets to decide who can enforce or punish people, its the community itself realizing we have the ability to associate or dissociate with people (and ideas) that don’t care about the community.
Such an incredible quote!! I highly recommend reading the article they linked to! It’s a short but powerful explanation of how this genre seeks to bring together the ‘solar’ and the ‘punk’ to create something that seeks change on a systemic level… or better yet, that Demands we change the system to create a better world.
You tell me, dear reader… What’s more punk than that?
Back to BrightFlame
Much gratitude to Elijah for giving voice to what many of us solarpunks feel about unfounded critiques of solarpunk. Still, a reminder that the above is solely his opinion and voice.
Friends, I encourage you to join conversations with us on Bluesky (< links to me) and Elijah on Bluesky—or, better yet, on Mastodon where there’s much richer connections. (Hoping Elijah will join us over there.)
Mastodon is the fediverse, which is an antidote to technofascist platforms. You sign up for the fediverse through an instance. I’m on the SciFi/Fantasy writers instance, wandering.shop. Other solarpunk-aligned instances include: kolektiva.social, spore.social, and sunbeam.city. (Stay clear of mastodon.social.)
Follow #solarpunk on Bluesky or Mastodon.
Finally, Elijah’s bio:
“I’m a TechnoShaman, black anarchist, and afrofuturist obsessed with changing the world through empowering, inclusive, and magical technology. By day, I design immersive safety training simulations; by night, when I’m not spreading protopian propaganda, I spend time with my partner and cats, or can be found trying to play more indie games than I watch. I love learning and sharing anarchic history, philosophy, science, and spirituality that inspires more actionable optimism!”
*** Update: Above, Elijah refers to the artwork for the Decommodified version of the “Dear Alice” Chobani commercial, saying that it was never intended to be solarpunk; that folx stripped the ads to turn it into solarpunk. Author and editor Sarena Ulibarri whose contributions are core to solarpunk pointed out that the artist might well take exception to this. Jessica Woulfe (in collaboration with Daniel Clarke) created “backgrounds and concept art for The Line’s commercial for Chobani yogurt.” Jessica was the grand winner of Atomhawk’s Solarpunk 2019 art competition. Thus, we should not assume the art for the ad wasn’t intended as solarpunk.
