First I'm hearing of solarpunk, and what a wonderful rabbit hole it is. Thanks for sharing. :) Interesting bit about solarpunk music. Aurora seems like a good fit, the vast majority of her lyrics...
First I'm hearing of solarpunk, and what a wonderful rabbit hole it is. Thanks for sharing. :)
Interesting bit about solarpunk music. Aurora seems like a good fit, the vast majority of her lyrics dovetails with their ethos. See Daydreamer, The Seed, Apple Tree, Conqueror, Warrior.
YES! Everyone come to Solarpunk >:) /r/solarpunk is one of the few subreddits I still regularly visit (and share content between the two). One thing I'm craving is "traditional-conflict free...
YES! Everyone come to Solarpunk >:) /r/solarpunk is one of the few subreddits I still regularly visit (and share content between the two).
One thing I'm craving is "traditional-conflict free story" and I think Solarpunk is a really really good avenue for that kind of thing. I kind of want to see the exact opposite of a cyberpunk story: Give me a story about a local wanderer finding a Solarpunk society that is either good or a utopic (I don't need it to be a utopia, fuck at this point just give me a world that isn't on fire) and just have the character walk through their society, learning about how they live and how their government works, if one even exists! There is a non-trivial number of people in Solarpunk that are anarchists! An ideology that most everyone has misunderstandings about what it is and/or what an anarchist world/society would look like. Walk me through it! Have the protagonist ask questions and wrestle with the differences between their society and his! What morals and philosophies have gained/lost importance in this new world? If the society has flaws, have the characters talk about them! Leave it open to the reader if this new society is realistic or good. I don't need a society to be fatally flawed, or the government to be covering up some big secret that the protagonist must uncover and attempt to defeat like in Cyberpunk. Maybe the problem they face is passing legislation is incredibly slow, or the government is based on direct democracy which is open for lots of flaws to be explored. How do they vote? FPTP? Ranked Choice? Neither? A voting method that is novel/underexplored? Do some situations use one voting mechanism and anther uses a different one because situationally each one has strengths for that problem, or because of how many people are involved in the decision makes one option better than the other? Look at the cost and benefits of a vertical vs horizontal hierarchy based society. What about societies that are that have a very fluid system of laws that are easy to change quick to be voted on rather than what we have now? Does race exist in the future? Does race exist in the future in the same way we view it now? Do police exist? Prisons? Private property? Capitalism? And this is me just strictly thinking about politics and societal organization. It doesn't even get into new technology, unique cultures, the actual personalities of the individuals, etc. Importantly! In none of these does it have to paint one as good and one as flawed or bad (it can, and on some topics you could argue it should, but not a requirement). There's a world of questions out there that could be written about and I think are super interesting if looked at from a solarpunk lens.
Just give me some hopeful books that talk about a better future. I feel like there is a wealth of questions and interesting stories if people were interested in telling happy stories instead of depressing/negative ones. We know from the success of Amelie that there is a market and people will watch and enjoy movies with low-to-no stakes in the story and tells a happy story with ultimately a happy ending. I'm thinking of something like World Without End except
Spoilers for 1956 World Without End
maybe the soldiers learn a fucking lesson and don't restart the society that caused an apocalypse because you don't like their morals
For a good more in-depth look at the movie I'd suggest Jack Saint's Apocalypse Video. The whole thing is really good, and I think gets at the underlying ideas of what about solarpunk appeals to me. The talk about World Without End specifically is at timestamp 1:05:30.
EDIT: Wanted to come and add a new thought my partner had. I think a very good example of what I'm looking for is fanfic. As usual, I am going to be doing a fair bit of generalization so this isn't about all fanfic, more that it is significantly easier to find these types of stories in fanfic. But yeah, fanfic is a great example of this. A lot of fanfic is either fleshing out a world they find interesting, or wish fulfillment. You can often tell by looking at the tags if a fanfic is going to have a high or low stakes conflict, and in a lot of them the are "low stakes". Sometimes the "low-stakes" thing is something normally high-stakes but the characters don't react to it like it is high stakes. Or information is given to us the reader to know that the stakes aren't actually as high as they may seem. Or, in a good amount of cases the whole point of the story is "fuck it, I just want to explore this world more so I'm just going to write characters going through their day-to-day life so I can describe the world and how it works". I don't have to worry about the world ending, or major tragedy happening unexpectedly, or a depressing ending (other than an abandoned fic :P nothing worse than that). I know that I'm in for a pretty low-stakes ride where not much depressing or stressful is going to happen and I can just enjoy the world and the characters. I don't want it to come off as I don't think tragedy or darkness or stressful situations have a place in media, I think they do; horror is by far my favorite genre. Moreso I think that media overly-leans into those types of stories and under-value the ability to tell a compelling and interesting low-stakes story, and I think that embrace of "dark gritty antihero" or "What if <superhero, scientific discovery, other good thing> but actually its bad". I'm just tired man. The whole world is a dark and depressing hellscape that is likely going to destroy itself in a horrible fireball. I don't need all my media to be depressing too.
Story kinda has to have conflict, even if it's as simple as "where can I have a bite to eat?" Character wants a thing, and doesn't have a thing, and has to go through an ordeal to get a thing. Now...
Story kinda has to have conflict, even if it's as simple as "where can I have a bite to eat?" Character wants a thing, and doesn't have a thing, and has to go through an ordeal to get a thing. Now the conflict can be internal, as in this person happens across this society, and is wondering whether they should give up the life to have to join the commune, or what happens when another society wants their macguffin device, or why the crops aren't coming in.
That's why I tried to say 'traditional conflict'. I guess another or better way to say it would be "no high-stakes conflicts". I actively don't want a story where the sorts of things the average...
That's why I tried to say 'traditional conflict'. I guess another or better way to say it would be "no high-stakes conflicts". I actively don't want a story where the sorts of things the average person thinks of as a conflict is existent or a driving force in the story. I don't want a bad/morally gray antagonist trying to thwart or subvert society, I don't want there to be issues with the crops that they have to solve, I don't want there to be a society trying to steal the macguffin device (shit I'd prefer there wasn't one). Those are all things that can be in a story, and in a solarpunk story, and in general I have no problem with those stories. I just personally find them to be less interesting and not what I want in a story at this moment and would prefer to see stories that just... investigate a lifestyle. I will read captains logs about a random month in the life of a person in the society where nothing abnormal or bad or interesting happens. Just gets up, goes to do whatever it is they do all day, interact with their peers, do whatever it is they do in their free time, and then go to bed. Preferably, since we're in a solarpunk future, this tone would mostly be happy/optimistic. There doesn't have to be any more conflict than "I exist in a society that meets my needs and so I will interact with my society to make sure my needs are met. This is how I do that"
Man, maybe that story I'm working on is perfectly timed. I'm well ahead of you. ;)
Give me a story about a local wanderer finding a Solarpunk society that is either good or a utopic (I don't need it to be a utopia, fuck at this point just give me a world that isn't on fire) and just have the character walk through their society, learning about how they live and how their government works, if one even exists!
Man, maybe that story I'm working on is perfectly timed. I'm well ahead of you. ;)
I almost posted the first segment here on Christmas eve (as that's when the story starts). Not quite finished cooking it yet, though. I'm still collating the effects of the next 200 years of...
I almost posted the first segment here on Christmas eve (as that's when the story starts). Not quite finished cooking it yet, though. I'm still collating the effects of the next 200 years of projected scientific progress (futuretimeline.net is very helpful). Once you realize that self-assembling/replicating robot swarms, designer evolution, designer matter (programmable, of course), 10 terabit wifi (orbital), and machine-human teams for everything is the shape of it, things get really wierd. No way in hell my guesses will get it right, but right isn't the goal - fun and thought provoking is.
I will share it in ~creative once I'm off and running. I'll need the feedback. :)
I think calling it 'conflict' might be missing the scope. It's 'happenings' a story needs, and those don't have to be conflict necessarily. Conflict is more of a spice than the pudding to me....
I think calling it 'conflict' might be missing the scope. It's 'happenings' a story needs, and those don't have to be conflict necessarily. Conflict is more of a spice than the pudding to me. Watching your characters come out on top is very satisfying but as in life, it'll be better if they stumble and faceplant occasionally. How they pick back up is great for character development.
I think we rely far too much on the conflict, it's not a good crutch.
Thank you!! You just elegantly and concisely stated my thoughts and stance perfectly. Really feels like you're inside my head. I'm not a writer, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I could...
Thank you!! You just elegantly and concisely stated my thoughts and stance perfectly.
I think we rely far too much on the conflict, it's not a good crutch.
Really feels like you're inside my head. I'm not a writer, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I could go out and write the kinds of books I'm describing. I think conflict makes it easier to write an interesting story and gives clear ways for the story to move forward and to follow the plot (assuming the book is well-written or the intent isn't to confuse), but I think the statement "stories need conflict" is false. I think great stories can be written without it, but certainly not as easily. Maybe it isn't harder to write stories without conflict, the problem is just our society hasn't really taught people how to do that at all and so its harder to conceptualize something that no one taught you? I dunno.
I’ll add sort of my thoughts to the thread, as well as a question I’m asking myself in a bit. Funnily enough, if memory serves me correctly a debate between @Akir and myself on another thread...
I’ll add sort of my thoughts to the thread, as well as a question I’m asking myself in a bit.
Funnily enough, if memory serves me correctly a debate between @Akir and myself on another thread (which I think was about cyberpunk lmao) was inspiration for that thread. Or at least we had that debate and a couple hours later that thread emerged. I could be totally misremembering. I’ll poke around my comment history when I’m done cooking dinner.
Edit: Alas, I think I only witnessed the original discussion and debated getting involved but decided against it.
The book's not free of traditional conflict, but I'd for sure recommend Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. It's maybe not quite so detail oriented either, but I think it's definitely got the vibe you're...
The book's not free of traditional conflict, but I'd for sure recommend Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. It's maybe not quite so detail oriented either, but I think it's definitely got the vibe you're looking for.
yeah it also doesn't have to be super detail oriented! That's just one route I think is interesting and under explored. I mean in general I have a hard time finding much post-apocalyptic fiction...
yeah it also doesn't have to be super detail oriented! That's just one route I think is interesting and under explored. I mean in general I have a hard time finding much post-apocalyptic fiction that doesn't rehash "humans are inherently bad and without the government we will fall to chaos and murder each other" in one way or another. Thank you for the recommendation, I'll give it a read once I finish my Ray Bradbury short story collection :) It isn't going to scratch the itch I described above, but I still think it sounds fascinating and like a great book that I'm excited to read.
Aldous Huxley's "Island" [1] is like this, it's a counterpart to "Brave New World". I enjoyed reading it several years ago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_%28Huxley_novel%29
Give me a story about a local wanderer finding a Solarpunk society that is either good or a utopic (I don't need it to be a utopia, fuck at this point just give me a world that isn't on fire) and just have the character walk through their society, learning about how they live and how their government works, if one even exists!
Aldous Huxley's "Island" [1] is like this, it's a counterpart to "Brave New World". I enjoyed reading it several years ago.
kim stanley robinsons mars trilogy from the 90 sounds like its nearly exactly what you ask for. he gets mentioned in the article too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
kim stanley robinsons mars trilogy from the 90 sounds like its nearly exactly what you ask for. he gets mentioned in the article too.
Reading this, I could not avoid thinking about Ursula K. Le Guin's the Dispossessed. It is not (at least not aesthetically, though maybe ideologically) solarpunk, and the story clearly has darker...
Reading this, I could not avoid thinking about Ursula K. Le Guin's the Dispossessed.
It is not (at least not aesthetically, though maybe ideologically) solarpunk, and the story clearly has darker moments and conflict, even if in smaller scale than a lot of scifi.
But it hits many other points of what you want: it contrasts an ambiguously utopistic, anarchistic societ to a more earth-like capitalist society. The book explores the customs of both societies, and the central conflicts are about navigating and improving the systems. Like many other Le Guin's stories, it is very character focused and focuses on the protagonist's journey through the two worlds. And while it is clear which side the author favors, the book definitely explores the the problems of both societies.
It made me feel hopeful about the possibility of a better society, and left me craving for more utopian fiction.
I'm reeaaallly lazy so I'm not going to check, but eithere in this article or another "What Is Solarpunk" article that lists The Dispossessed as the example of Solarpunk lit. I've had it...
I'm reeaaallly lazy so I'm not going to check, but eithere in this article or another "What Is Solarpunk" article that lists The Dispossessed as the example of Solarpunk lit. I've had it bookmarked on thriftbooks along with some China Miéville novels. Me thinks I'll wait one or two more days and see if any other suggestions roll in and put in a big order.
Looks like it was this linked article! Sorry, I had read the article some time ago before my comment and didn't think to check again. I still find it a bit weird to call it "The poster child for...
Looks like it was this linked article! Sorry, I had read the article some time ago before my comment and didn't think to check again.
I still find it a bit weird to call it "The poster child for Solarpunk" as the book predates the concept of solarpunk by quite many years! I do understand why it comes up though.
I'm reading The Dispossesed right now and immediately thought of it when I read the parent comment. It does a fantastic job of exploring through questioning -- and it's written beautifully, which...
I'm reading The Dispossesed right now and immediately thought of it when I read the parent comment. It does a fantastic job of exploring through questioning -- and it's written beautifully, which is rare for heavily political books.
First I'm hearing of solarpunk, and what a wonderful rabbit hole it is. Thanks for sharing. :)
Interesting bit about solarpunk music. Aurora seems like a good fit, the vast majority of her lyrics dovetails with their ethos. See Daydreamer, The Seed, Apple Tree, Conqueror, Warrior.
YES! Everyone come to Solarpunk >:) /r/solarpunk is one of the few subreddits I still regularly visit (and share content between the two).
One thing I'm craving is "traditional-conflict free story" and I think Solarpunk is a really really good avenue for that kind of thing. I kind of want to see the exact opposite of a cyberpunk story: Give me a story about a local wanderer finding a Solarpunk society that is either good or a utopic (I don't need it to be a utopia, fuck at this point just give me a world that isn't on fire) and just have the character walk through their society, learning about how they live and how their government works, if one even exists! There is a non-trivial number of people in Solarpunk that are anarchists! An ideology that most everyone has misunderstandings about what it is and/or what an anarchist world/society would look like. Walk me through it! Have the protagonist ask questions and wrestle with the differences between their society and his! What morals and philosophies have gained/lost importance in this new world? If the society has flaws, have the characters talk about them! Leave it open to the reader if this new society is realistic or good. I don't need a society to be fatally flawed, or the government to be covering up some big secret that the protagonist must uncover and attempt to defeat like in Cyberpunk. Maybe the problem they face is passing legislation is incredibly slow, or the government is based on direct democracy which is open for lots of flaws to be explored. How do they vote? FPTP? Ranked Choice? Neither? A voting method that is novel/underexplored? Do some situations use one voting mechanism and anther uses a different one because situationally each one has strengths for that problem, or because of how many people are involved in the decision makes one option better than the other? Look at the cost and benefits of a vertical vs horizontal hierarchy based society. What about societies that are that have a very fluid system of laws that are easy to change quick to be voted on rather than what we have now? Does race exist in the future? Does race exist in the future in the same way we view it now? Do police exist? Prisons? Private property? Capitalism? And this is me just strictly thinking about politics and societal organization. It doesn't even get into new technology, unique cultures, the actual personalities of the individuals, etc. Importantly! In none of these does it have to paint one as good and one as flawed or bad (it can, and on some topics you could argue it should, but not a requirement). There's a world of questions out there that could be written about and I think are super interesting if looked at from a solarpunk lens.
Just give me some hopeful books that talk about a better future. I feel like there is a wealth of questions and interesting stories if people were interested in telling happy stories instead of depressing/negative ones. We know from the success of Amelie that there is a market and people will watch and enjoy movies with low-to-no stakes in the story and tells a happy story with ultimately a happy ending. I'm thinking of something like World Without End except
Spoilers for 1956 World Without End
maybe the soldiers learn a fucking lesson and don't restart the society that caused an apocalypse because you don't like their moralsFor a good more in-depth look at the movie I'd suggest Jack Saint's Apocalypse Video. The whole thing is really good, and I think gets at the underlying ideas of what about solarpunk appeals to me. The talk about World Without End specifically is at timestamp 1:05:30.
EDIT: Wanted to come and add a new thought my partner had. I think a very good example of what I'm looking for is fanfic. As usual, I am going to be doing a fair bit of generalization so this isn't about all fanfic, more that it is significantly easier to find these types of stories in fanfic. But yeah, fanfic is a great example of this. A lot of fanfic is either fleshing out a world they find interesting, or wish fulfillment. You can often tell by looking at the tags if a fanfic is going to have a high or low stakes conflict, and in a lot of them the are "low stakes". Sometimes the "low-stakes" thing is something normally high-stakes but the characters don't react to it like it is high stakes. Or information is given to us the reader to know that the stakes aren't actually as high as they may seem. Or, in a good amount of cases the whole point of the story is "fuck it, I just want to explore this world more so I'm just going to write characters going through their day-to-day life so I can describe the world and how it works". I don't have to worry about the world ending, or major tragedy happening unexpectedly, or a depressing ending (other than an abandoned fic :P nothing worse than that). I know that I'm in for a pretty low-stakes ride where not much depressing or stressful is going to happen and I can just enjoy the world and the characters. I don't want it to come off as I don't think tragedy or darkness or stressful situations have a place in media, I think they do; horror is by far my favorite genre. Moreso I think that media overly-leans into those types of stories and under-value the ability to tell a compelling and interesting low-stakes story, and I think that embrace of "dark gritty antihero" or "What if <superhero, scientific discovery, other good thing> but actually its bad". I'm just tired man. The whole world is a dark and depressing hellscape that is likely going to destroy itself in a horrible fireball. I don't need all my media to be depressing too.
Story kinda has to have conflict, even if it's as simple as "where can I have a bite to eat?" Character wants a thing, and doesn't have a thing, and has to go through an ordeal to get a thing. Now the conflict can be internal, as in this person happens across this society, and is wondering whether they should give up the life to have to join the commune, or what happens when another society wants their macguffin device, or why the crops aren't coming in.
That's why I tried to say 'traditional conflict'. I guess another or better way to say it would be "no high-stakes conflicts". I actively don't want a story where the sorts of things the average person thinks of as a conflict is existent or a driving force in the story. I don't want a bad/morally gray antagonist trying to thwart or subvert society, I don't want there to be issues with the crops that they have to solve, I don't want there to be a society trying to steal the macguffin device (shit I'd prefer there wasn't one). Those are all things that can be in a story, and in a solarpunk story, and in general I have no problem with those stories. I just personally find them to be less interesting and not what I want in a story at this moment and would prefer to see stories that just... investigate a lifestyle. I will read captains logs about a random month in the life of a person in the society where nothing abnormal or bad or interesting happens. Just gets up, goes to do whatever it is they do all day, interact with their peers, do whatever it is they do in their free time, and then go to bed. Preferably, since we're in a solarpunk future, this tone would mostly be happy/optimistic. There doesn't have to be any more conflict than "I exist in a society that meets my needs and so I will interact with my society to make sure my needs are met. This is how I do that"
Man, maybe that story I'm working on is perfectly timed. I'm well ahead of you. ;)
Man oh man I've been seeing you talk about working on your story around here for a while now, I am very excited for it :)
I almost posted the first segment here on Christmas eve (as that's when the story starts). Not quite finished cooking it yet, though. I'm still collating the effects of the next 200 years of projected scientific progress (futuretimeline.net is very helpful). Once you realize that self-assembling/replicating robot swarms, designer evolution, designer matter (programmable, of course), 10 terabit wifi (orbital), and machine-human teams for everything is the shape of it, things get really wierd. No way in hell my guesses will get it right, but right isn't the goal - fun and thought provoking is.
I will share it in ~creative once I'm off and running. I'll need the feedback. :)
I'll be sure to keep my eyes out for it :)
I think calling it 'conflict' might be missing the scope. It's 'happenings' a story needs, and those don't have to be conflict necessarily. Conflict is more of a spice than the pudding to me. Watching your characters come out on top is very satisfying but as in life, it'll be better if they stumble and faceplant occasionally. How they pick back up is great for character development.
I think we rely far too much on the conflict, it's not a good crutch.
Thank you!! You just elegantly and concisely stated my thoughts and stance perfectly.
Really feels like you're inside my head. I'm not a writer, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I could go out and write the kinds of books I'm describing. I think conflict makes it easier to write an interesting story and gives clear ways for the story to move forward and to follow the plot (assuming the book is well-written or the intent isn't to confuse), but I think the statement "stories need conflict" is false. I think great stories can be written without it, but certainly not as easily. Maybe it isn't harder to write stories without conflict, the problem is just our society hasn't really taught people how to do that at all and so its harder to conceptualize something that no one taught you? I dunno.
I’ll add sort of my thoughts to the thread, as well as a question I’m asking myself in a bit.
Funnily enough, if memory serves me correctly a debate between @Akir and myself on another thread (which I think was about cyberpunk lmao) was inspiration for that thread. Or at least we had that debate and a couple hours later that thread emerged. I could be totally misremembering. I’ll poke around my comment history when I’m done cooking dinner.
Edit: Alas, I think I only witnessed the original discussion and debated getting involved but decided against it.
The book's not free of traditional conflict, but I'd for sure recommend Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. It's maybe not quite so detail oriented either, but I think it's definitely got the vibe you're looking for.
yeah it also doesn't have to be super detail oriented! That's just one route I think is interesting and under explored. I mean in general I have a hard time finding much post-apocalyptic fiction that doesn't rehash "humans are inherently bad and without the government we will fall to chaos and murder each other" in one way or another. Thank you for the recommendation, I'll give it a read once I finish my Ray Bradbury short story collection :) It isn't going to scratch the itch I described above, but I still think it sounds fascinating and like a great book that I'm excited to read.
Aldous Huxley's "Island" [1] is like this, it's a counterpart to "Brave New World". I enjoyed reading it several years ago.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_%28Huxley_novel%29
kim stanley robinsons mars trilogy from the 90 sounds like its nearly exactly what you ask for. he gets mentioned in the article too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
Ohhhhh those sound like what I'm looking for!! Going to add that to my shopping list. Thank you!!!
Those are wonderful books, some of the best scifi has on offer. ;)
Reading this, I could not avoid thinking about Ursula K. Le Guin's the Dispossessed.
It is not (at least not aesthetically, though maybe ideologically) solarpunk, and the story clearly has darker moments and conflict, even if in smaller scale than a lot of scifi.
But it hits many other points of what you want: it contrasts an ambiguously utopistic, anarchistic societ to a more earth-like capitalist society. The book explores the customs of both societies, and the central conflicts are about navigating and improving the systems. Like many other Le Guin's stories, it is very character focused and focuses on the protagonist's journey through the two worlds. And while it is clear which side the author favors, the book definitely explores the the problems of both societies.
It made me feel hopeful about the possibility of a better society, and left me craving for more utopian fiction.
I'm reeaaallly lazy so I'm not going to check, but eithere in this article or another "What Is Solarpunk" article that lists The Dispossessed as the example of Solarpunk lit. I've had it bookmarked on thriftbooks along with some China Miéville novels. Me thinks I'll wait one or two more days and see if any other suggestions roll in and put in a big order.
Looks like it was this linked article! Sorry, I had read the article some time ago before my comment and didn't think to check again.
I still find it a bit weird to call it "The poster child for Solarpunk" as the book predates the concept of solarpunk by quite many years! I do understand why it comes up though.
I'm reading The Dispossesed right now and immediately thought of it when I read the parent comment. It does a fantastic job of exploring through questioning -- and it's written beautifully, which is rare for heavily political books.
Something about the writing style irritates me. That said, though ... yeah, first I've heard of Solarpunk, too, and I'm grateful for the discovery.
I'm disappointed that we settled on the term "solarpunk" when "greenpunk" was, like, right there as an option.
Greenpunk sounds like a 2000s term for a Green Day band fan. Solarpunk does sound better.