Exploring solarpunk ideas (creative writing)

[u/meisking01]

I've been wanting to do some creative writing, and a student I work with turned me onto the solarpunk movement this semester, and I'm hoping to bounce some ideas around with like-minded individuals!

I'm pretty new to solarpunk as an idea, but key themes seem to revolve around inspiring hope toward a sustainable relationship between humanity and nature. This reminds me of how many druids in fantasy (WoW, D&D, etc.) are protectors and guardians of Mother Nature. I think fantasy could be a good lens for exploring solarpunk ideas and themes.

But something is holding me back, and I'm having a hard time putting it into words. I guess I wonder whether fantasy would be at odds with the solarpunk vibe or not.

I'm probably overthinking this, but I figure it can't hurt to see what other people have to say. I'm open to suggestions for ideas that try to explore how solarpunk and speculative fiction can complement each other. Thanks for reading!

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[u/JacobCoffinWrites]

I think it could work as long as the themes line up and magic can't act too much to distance the reader from the fact that solarpunk is doable IRL using the knowledge we already have. The upside is that a fantasy setting allows the writer to demonstrate more old solarpunk practices like root cellars, spring/cold houses, ice harvest and ice houses, vâltori, levadas, carp as kitchen scrap disposal etc from our past that emphasize working with nature and seasons. It also gives the writer more flexibility with people and places, holding up a fun house mirror to look at our own society with.

I wrote most of this for another question about mixing fantasy and solarpunk but here's my suggestion: I think it could work really well in a setting where magic is fading, where it serves as sort of stand-in for oil - a powerful resource which allows for a one-size-fits-all approach to lots of things. Perhaps paired well with a magic-reliant empire which is now crumbling.

Solarpunk should emphasize local communities, environments, and ways of doing things. A solarpunk community in the desert should look much different than one in a tundra, or one in a jungle. If the big society of the setting was using magic the way we use oil and concrete (build the same building in every location and if it's too cold or too hot, just burn more oil to heat or cool it) then we might see magic-reliant buildings becoming unusable or even unsafe in locations where their design isn't a good fit.

If we say magic allowed them to extend this one-size-fits-all approach to everything, from agriculture to transportation, then we might see a setting where the power of that empire is cracking and local cultures and practices are resurging. There's a lot of room for conflict there: disagreements on loyalties and old conflicts temporarily tamped down by the empire bubbling back to the surface, but also on the way forward, on how things should be done, which systems make sense to apply wherever the players are.

[u/meisking01 → u/JacobCoffinWrites]

Thanks for the reply; this helped a lot! I like the idea of magic being a sort of stand-in for oil (or any other unsustainably harvested resource), and I think exploring how a magic-reliant society would cope with the loss/reduction of such an important resource.

The more I think about it, the more I'm reminded of the Dark Sun setting for D&D, which is set in a world like the Bronze Age that has been "defiled" by the over-use of supernatural forces by the big bads of the setting (Sorcerer Kings).

I still have other elements to envision, but you did a lot to help me out, and I appreciate it!

[u/JacobCoffinWrites → u/meisking01]

I'm very glad! if you want to talk worldbuilding sometime I'm always happy to help with that! There's a bunch of low tech technologies (like solar concentrators) which could be extrapolated out give a fantasy region a very distinct character and look

[u/Endy0816]

Perhaps have a 'modern world with magic' setting?

There's some pretty whimsical depictions of solarpunk out there too.

[u/Left_Chemical230 → u/Endy0816]

Perhaps a revitalisation of druids, since wizards are apparently all over Britain and vampires and werewolves are all over the United States? At least, that what Rowling and Meyers have led me to believe.

[u/EricHunting]

Solarpunk is, specifically, a science fiction genre, born in reaction to Cyberpunk, looking to depict plausible scenarios for the actual, relatively near, future. That's what it originated as. The idea that it is also a cultural movement is more recent, coming from it's convergence with Post-Industrial futurism and movements relating to that like P2P/Commons. And so it operates largely in a time frame similar to that of most Cyberpunk media. Like Cyberpunk, it is also very much about urbanism. As I've been saying lately, if the overarching aesthetic theme of Cyberpunk is the future as Kowloon, in Solarpunk it is Kowloon redeemed. To create plausible hope for our future in the present, there needs to be a visible path from the present. What is the Emerald City of Oz without a Yellow Brick Road going to it? But that shouldn't be seen as a barrier to exploring its themes in any contexts you like. We see Solarpunk themes even in kids cartoons like The Raccoons. And with Solarpunk allied to Ethno/Afrofuturism, there's a possibility there to apply the approaches of Magical Realism to storytelling as well. While we must address our civilization's relationship to nature in practical, technical, rational ways for the sake of our mutual survival, that relationship may never be entirely functionalist. Nature may always have a mystical/spiritual aspect that may never be expressed scientifically, but rather artistically. And technology has both functional and artistic use. Stage magicians, stagecrafters, cinematographers and effects artists are some of the greatest engineers and inventors in the world. Science is the pursuit of understanding from the outside-in. Art is the pursuit of understanding from the inside-out.

I've often talked about the issue of environmental guilt that may confront our culture in the future in the wake of our present era of emerging, horrific, social and environmental atrocity and how the culture may choose to cope with that. And this relates to Environmentalism's roots in Romanticism and its development of the Noble Savage literary trope symbolizing a natural human state of grace, an innocence of the sins of a demonized civilization, and a yearning for a lost connection to the natural which has morphed into the contemporary inclination for a neoprimitivism and Waldenesque wilderness escape as a 'cure' to civilization's ills --even though this is quite impossible to pursue on a societal level. Eventually, it fell out of fashion as we --more or less-- clued into the racism underlying the trope and the disrespect of cultural appropriation. But because this represented an essential yearning in the modern person, we never really did give up that trope. We just reinvented it using a new set of characters adopted from mythology and folklore which offered a vast assortment of supernatural beings and creatures personifying aspects of nature. The pagan deities and spirits, the elves and faeries, witches, druids, and wildmen, mermaids, mythical beasts like dragons and unicorns, the 'cryptids' of modern folklore forever eluding the illumination of modern photography, even the various monsters like vampires, werewolves, and demons --even they are fundamentally more innocent of humanity's sins than the average CEO. (we all know who the real monster is in Frankenstein...) And this may be why we find media with these creatures so fascinating.

Unlike the Noble Savage, we can't emulate these beings' lifestyles through cultural appropriation in hopes of recapturing that state of grace --or can we? With the advent of role playing games, cosplay, and computer games many people seem to be pursuing exactly that as a form recreation and entertainment. There are a growing number of 'fandom' subcultures that are basically about abandoning a human identity in favor of a preferable non-human one. Increasingly you hear people in fandoms speak of realizing or expressing their 'true selves' in role play. Some take this to a kind spiritualism, describing themselves as spirits accidentally born human. It's become increasingly popular as the cultural awareness of our dire social and environmental legacy has grown. And so I've wondered about where this might go in the future with the increasing leverage of technology applied to it.

Transhumanism is usually regarded in a functionalist --often militaristic-- context. Enhancing functional abilities like strength, resilience, intelligence. Adding new abilities like control of machines and digital telepathy. Extending lifespan toward immortality. But I think this overlooks the aesthetic/artistic application. It seems like a side-effect of self-awareness that, from the earliest history of humanity, we have been forever uncomfortable in our own bodies and have applied whatever technology was convenient (and often not that convenient or even safe) to the modification of our appearance in pursuit of imaginary ideals, both as self-expression and group identification. Why should the technologies associated with Transhumanism be any different? Cyberpunk media has tended to exploit these technologies for the sake of body-horror, as an analogy to the dehumanization resulting from a corporate invasion of the human being. The Faustian pact of technology. It's always The Colossus of New York over and over again.

But what if people decided to adopt such technology to pursue beauty and self-expression? To take that beyond the confines of biology and random chance? What if people adopted this not to become more 'powerful' but to be better adapted to comfortably, casually, living in nature, with minimal impact? To chase that state of grace we yearn for. What if they adopted this as a means of redemption and absolution through the deliberate abandonment of the human identity and its legacy? To assuage that burden of environmental guilt that everyone --with any kind of self-awareness-- will be carrying in the future? What would that be like? So I've often imagined a future subculture of people called 'Naturists' (pun intended) who do exactly this, some taking a more functionalist route toward a lifestyle of immersion in nature, others taking a more aesthetic approach and adopting lifestyles as those more fanciful creatures of myth and folklore, and to some degree crafting a habitat to aesthetically suit. And some adopting entirely digital existence as both the ultimate minimization of human environmental impact --to literally live on renewable energy alone-- as well as the ultimate freedom of form, identity, and lifestyle in a virtual habitat unrestrained by physics.