Solarpunk fiction is a form of climate fiction, but by focusing on the changes we could make, it can move us past climate anxiety, says author and editor Sarena Ulibarri. She introduces us to five favourites: ranging from near-future to far-future, they present a collection of thought experiments in the ways humanity might yet choose to live.

As SolarPunk Stories has already explored, there are many shades of solarpunk. So many, I added a couple of my own to their framework. From Thrilling to Happy, Fantastical to Rooted, solarpunk is a broad concept, with space inside it for stories ranging from farming romances to survival tales, kitchen-sink dramas to action adventure.

One type of setting that reoccurs across a few short stories and tabletop games is detective fiction. This makes a lot of sense, it has a clear narrative and believable stakes within a generally utopian or protopian society. It implicitly looks at what people in that society value and find unacceptable. No wonder ‘DI Russo - SolarPunk Detective’ is the first thrilling tale from a better future to be published by SolarPunk Stories.

But can solarpunk detective fiction be noir? Here we get into competing definitions. Otto Penzler argues that though classic hard-boiled private detectives, such as Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade or Raymond Chandler’s, Philip Marlowe may bend or break the law, this is done by a protagonist with meaningful agency in pursuit of justice.

In making my case, I’ll sketch the history of various varieties of noir, while also describing recent examples of those varieties. I’ll explore examples of solarpunk detective stories and I’ll finish with discussing a few ways we might see noir in future solarpunk fiction.

Author Susan Kaye Quinn hass announced :

We're reading LOST CAUSE by Cory Doctorow

Subscribe to get links, reminders & recaps if you miss it!

Bookclub is #solarpunk community, thoughtful discussions, the kind of world I want to have!😍🌞🌿

WHEN: Sept 25th 8pm ET

Newsletter: https://www.subscribepage.com/solarpunk_bookclub

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24691019

I’m racing-downhill excited to announce the release of my latest solarpunk novel, Neon Riders. You can discover the ebook on this indie site. It will be findable on other channels eventually.

The illustration is by Neville Dsouza.

Alia, a precocious police detective, is feverishly hunting the killer responsible for the first-ever murder in the city of Sequoia located within the Arctic Circle in Scandinavia. The city was, specifically, created for millions of climate refugees in the aftermath of a catastrophic heat wave. Then the second one happens. The only similarity between the two victims threatens the very future of Sequoia. The killer is willing to go to any lengths to avoid capture. As Alia races against time to save the city, she discovers a deadly secret which turns her life upside down. Will she solve the two murders? Will the city survive?

The author ( @tinjar@tinjar.ghost.io ) lists the following comparable novels:

Neal Stephenson’s “Termination Shock”

Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Ministry for the Future”

Steven Markley’s “The Deluge”

Jens Liljestrand’s “Even if Everything Ends”

Amitav Ghosh’s “Gun Island”

Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven”

From the book's About section :

The subscription fee is $1 per year.

The novel is being published in a serialized manner. I shall upload the latest chapter(s) on this website every week starting 1 April 2025. You will also get the latest chapter(s) in your inbox. Each week's chapter(s) would be about 2,000-4,000 words (~6-12 pages) long. Since, the first novel is about 150,000 words (~500 pages) long, it will be released over the course of a year.

If you would like to discuss the story, feel free to do so with other readers. The nice thing about the platform I am using - Ghost - is that it is “federating over ActivityPub to become part of the world’s largest publishing network.”

One of my most favorite pieces of fiction. It's not 100% solarpunk, but it's set in a much more optimistic future. It makes me think a lot about our world today and how it can be a better place.

Chapters release every so often. I can't wait until the full work is published so I can get a print copy.

For his Abu Dhabi-set science fiction graphic novel Solarblader, Emirati writer Mo Abedin focuses his speculative fiction on renewable energy, inspired by the initiatives happening in the current-day UAE. Dubbing the new subgenre "solarpunk", due to the reliance on solar energy in his version of the future, he hopes to inspire a new trend.

Sandstorm debuted the first volume of Abedin’s graphic novel titled Solarblade at this year's Middle East Film and Comic Con, which ends today. Set in an alternate-universe Abu Dhabi in 2525, it imagines the UAE capital fully reliant on solar energy, bolstered by alien technology that helps harness the full power of the sun.

The Bright Green Futures: 2024 anthology is a collection of short solarpunk stories from guests of the Bright Green Futures podcast, where we lift up stories to build a better world. These hopeful climate-fiction stories include clicky space centipedes, sentient trees, a flooded future Rio de Janeiro and characters trying to find their place in a climate-impacted world. Each story imagines a way for us to survive the future, together.

Verso’s introduction to Solarpunk was inspiring and uplifting. As someone fairly new to the sub-genre, it was easy to understand its principles and history. Verso outlines when the sub-genre was born, where it was made popular and how it contrasts from both cyberpunk and steampunk. I can safely say now that I am convinced. Solarpunk Short Stories from Many Futures is a remarkable, much-needed anthology in the current state of the world that speaks of a future with renewable energy, de-urbanisation and biomimicry.

Bridge City Media is seeking submissions for their Solarpunk Film Festival. Your movie should be 2–15 minutes long, animated or live-action and fictional. Eight finalists will be selected to screen their films at the festival.

The movies will be evaluated by a panel of guest judges and audience members, with winners announced following the final screening. The submission deadline is 16th May 2025. The festival will be held at a theater in Portland, Oregon on 22nd June 2025.

Hey everyone!

Haven't seen anyone discuss these around, so I was curious if anyone knew about them.

Personally I only liked #5 and #2; others were ok but didn't feel that much solarpunk. Let me know if you have different opinions and let's talk about them!

Science fiction writer Octavia Butler wrote in her 1993 novel "Parable of the Sower" that Feb. 1, 2025, would be a time of fires, violence, racism, addiction, climate change, social inequality and an authoritarian "President Donner."

That day is today.

Through her fiction, Butler foresaw U.S. society's direction and the potential for civil societies to collapse thanks to the weight of economic disparities and climate change — with blueprints for hope.

Afrofuturist writers today interpret Butler's work as metaphorical warnings that appear to be coming true and a call to action.

Imaginary Worlds is a show about science fiction, fantasy and other genres of speculative fiction hosted by Eric Molinsky. They have covered everything from the meteoric rise of Romantasy through to the beautiful craft behind Blue Eyed Samurai.

In 2020 they did an episode about our genre featuring two of our solarpunk sisters Sarena Ulibarri and Keisha Howard. That led to solarpunk featuring prominently as one of the highlights of the past decade by Eric in a recent Tenth Anniversary double episode for the podcast.

As part of that he shared how one listener contacted him to let her know how the episode had affected her. Morag McDonald was feeling pretty hopeless about climate change and generally down in her life. Hearing about solarpunk, about ‘a future that was hopeful and possible with real people acting to make it happen’ lifted her spirits.

Does the failure of Disney’s ‘solarpunk movie’ mean our genre is doomed to remain niche?

With its strong environmental message, diverse representation and multimillion-dollar budget, many thought Disney’s 2022 film Strange World would take solarpunk mainstream. That hope was short-lived.

This film did so poorly it is estimated to have lost Disney $197 million. This made it the worst performing film of 2022 and one of the biggest box office flops of all time.

Does this disastrous commercial performance mean that solarpunk will never reach a wider audience? Will it always be fringe? We explore the film and look at some of the explanations for why it did so badly to find out.

In this near future anthology, Solarpunk explores the many ways individuals and resilient groups can fight gentrification, expropriation, abuse and loss of identity, starting within local communities, ultimately to embrace the whole world.

Solarpunk traces a path, rough and tortuous, towards a change now perceived by many as a necessity. “Nobody will give us the future” – seem to say these short stories edited by Future Fiction's Francesco Verso. Solarpunk brings stories without borders, from across the world: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, the UK and USA. Authors are Jerri Jerreat, Ken Liu, Thomas Badlan, Ciro Faienza, Brenda Cooper, Renan Bernardo, Jennifer L. Rossman, Sarena Ulibarri, Gustavo Bondoni, Lucie Lukacovicova, Ingrid Garcia, Andrew Dana Hudson and D.K. Mok.

Ysolt awakes after a freak storm to find herself at the bottom of a ravine in the broken remains of the nomadic home that was supposed to protect her.

Author: Premee Mohamed

Imagine 2200, Grist’s climate fiction initiative, celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress. 

Elysium depicts a near-future Earth in which the majority of rich and privileged humans have migrated to an orbiting space station which gives the film its title. The city-state hogs the advanced medical resources of Earth, leaving the people on the planet below in a perpetual state of lawlessness and impoverishment. Matt Damon stars as Max Da Costa, a former criminal who, while doing dangerous work, is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation, giving him just five days to live. He soon obtains an exo-suit to augment his failing body. It’s then discovered that Max has data hidden in a chip in his brain that can, in theory, alter the computer systems running Elysium, which will benefit all the people who don’t live there.

This week on Solarpunk Presents Podcast, Ariel chats with Selena Middleton, Publisher and Editor of Stelliform Press, all about publishing eco-fiction. What is eco-horror, and how does it relate to solarpunk fiction? What are the hallmarks of a good solarpunk story, according to Selena? How does history fit into visions of the future, and what does character have to do with it? Join us as we discuss all this and more.

The twelfth installment of the Bikes in Space series, This is Your Bike on Plants features 12 stories from a splendid garden of potential futures, from the speculative to the surreal—all powered by bicycles, grounded in feminism, and blossoming with creativity.

You’ll find activist trees, magical flowers, feminist fairy tales, climate parables, photosynthesizing human-bicycle cyborgs, revolutionary elves, dazzling space gardens, green witchcraft, and more to delight your imagination.

Lovers of cli-fi, solarpunk, hopepunk, and feminist bicycle science fiction will all find something to read here.

Featuring stories by Kathryn Reilly, Marta Pelrine-Bacon, Cass Wilkinson Saldaña, Amanda McNeil, Ella P. Francis, Lisa Timpf, Bee Toothman, Kelley Tai, Jennifer Lee Rossman, J.D. Harlock, Kathryn Reese, and Joe Biel.

Thirty-one years after its publication, Parable of the Sower continues to compel and unsettle many readers. Much of the book is harrowing. The violence begins just a few chapters in, when an elderly woman in Lauren’s walled-off urban village kills herself in the emotional aftermath of losing her entire family to a house fire just weeks after she was robbed and raped, and it refuses to relent for the next 300 pages. At least a dozen people have told me how they struggled to make it through the novel and its sequel, Parable of the Talents, because of the brutality that Lauren witnesses and endures (something I struggled to believe as someone obsessed with the books — even before Parable of the Sower became a New York Times bestseller for the first time in 2020).

But Parable is, at its core, hopeful. Over the course of the story, Lauren works to refine, systematize, and share the belief system she has developed, called “Earthseed,” which she presents through poems and verses collected alongside her journal entries. In Earthseed, “God is Change,” and the task of humanity and the faithful is to learn how to transform from God’s victim into God’s partner — to become one who shapes change.

A solarpunk graphic novel adapted by Michele Paris and Lorenzo Livrieri, based on the short story by Nebula Award nominated author, Renan Bernardo.

Welcome to the post-fossil fuel city of Sundyal. Lush green, high-tech, and powered by clean energy, Sundyal seems like an idyllic place. But Janet really struggle's with Sundyal's lack of affordability. In fact, she can barely afford to eat. Meanwhile her best friend, an old and now obsolete model of android named Lyria, prepares to shutdown for the final time.

But is losing Lydia forever, in fact, the only way to save her? Janet wrestles with this and whether or not it's right and justified to objectify and sell her friend like some... disposable thing? Does it matter if doing so means she can afford to stay in Sundyal? And if the price of utopia is that high and inaccessible, is it really a utopia?

Kim Stanley Robinson is regarded as one the greatest living writers of science fiction with more than 20 novels and many awards to his name. In this interview with Anna D’Alton (LSE Review of Books), he discusses the climate crisis, his political commitment to utopian fiction and art’s capacity for imagining alternative ways of living.