Solarpunk is the speculative fiction genre that replaced dystopian doom with solar panels, community gardens, and radical hope. A complete introduction to the genre's origins, subgenres, key writers — Becky Chambers, Kim Stanley Robinson, Nnedi Okorafor, Ursula Le Guin — and how it compares to science fiction, dystopian fiction, fantasy, and horror.
@tinker@poVoq
It’s a field of fast-growing weeds, or a stand of aspens. It’s as if Euromericans, in the age of colonization and displacement of “old-growth cultures” are behaving like colonizing plants after a massive disturbance, dominating the landscape. But those colonizing plants find they cannot continue this rate of growth and resource extraction. They start to run out of resources, disease may attack the overdense populations, and competition begins to limit their growth. [4/n]
@tinker@poVoq
In fact, their behavior facilitates their own replacement. Their rampant growth captures nutrients and builds the more stable conditions in which their followers can flourish. Incrementally, they start to be replaced.
The ones who come next are different, growing more slowly in a resource-limited world. Stressful conditions incentivize nurturing relations of cooperation alongside competition. [5/n]
@tinker@poVoq
The extractive practices of the colonists must be replaced with reciprocity and replenishment if anyone is to survive. Investing in persistence, the new inhabitants are in it for the long haul. These communities have been called “mature” and sustainable, in contrast to the adolescent behavior of their predecessors. [6/n]
@tinker@poVoq
This transition from exploitation to reciprocity, from the individual good to the common good has been seen as a parallel to the transition that colonizing human societies must undergo, from hoarding to circulation, from independent to interdependent, from wounding to healing, if we are to thrive into the future. [7/7]
@tinker @poVoq
It’s a field of fast-growing weeds, or a stand of aspens. It’s as if Euromericans, in the age of colonization and displacement of “old-growth cultures” are behaving like colonizing plants after a massive disturbance, dominating the landscape. But those colonizing plants find they cannot continue this rate of growth and resource extraction. They start to run out of resources, disease may attack the overdense populations, and competition begins to limit their growth. [4/n]
@tinker @poVoq
In fact, their behavior facilitates their own replacement. Their rampant growth captures nutrients and builds the more stable conditions in which their followers can flourish. Incrementally, they start to be replaced.
The ones who come next are different, growing more slowly in a resource-limited world. Stressful conditions incentivize nurturing relations of cooperation alongside competition. [5/n]
@tinker @poVoq
The extractive practices of the colonists must be replaced with reciprocity and replenishment if anyone is to survive. Investing in persistence, the new inhabitants are in it for the long haul. These communities have been called “mature” and sustainable, in contrast to the adolescent behavior of their predecessors. [6/n]
@tinker @poVoq
This transition from exploitation to reciprocity, from the individual good to the common good has been seen as a parallel to the transition that colonizing human societies must undergo, from hoarding to circulation, from independent to interdependent, from wounding to healing, if we are to thrive into the future. [7/7]