(2018-01-28) Scifi Doesnt Have To Be Depressing Welcome To Solarpunk

Sci-Fi Doesn't Have to Be Depressing: Welcome to Solarpunk (Optimistic Near Future Vision)

Welcome to solarpunk, a new genre within science fiction that is a reaction against the perceived pessimism of present-day sci-fi and hopes to bring optimistic stories about the future with the aim of encouraging people to change the present

solarpunk combines the punk ethic with an optimistic, climate-friendly future. Its aesthetic is solar panels, windmills and leafy high-tech societies. “Steampunk is to coal as solarpunk is to renewables,” says Flynn.

The genre’s desire for more optimistic stories of the future also intersects with stories that don’t explicitly identify with it. Hugo and Nebula award winner Kim Stanley Robinson’s newest book, New York 2140, is, according to Ulibarri, “hitting all the same buttons” as solarpunk. In the novel, New York has been flooded as a result of climate change, but people still live there because of renewable energy and sustainable technology.

To many, solarpunk represents an ignition for activism.

Yet dystopian fiction can at times also catapult readers into a future of ambition.