#solarpunk anthologies

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

This is amazing. Also, we have an episode where we talk to Justine Norton-Kertson about Bioluminescent before it was released which, if you're interested, you can listen to here: https://shows.acast.com/solarpunk-futures/episodes/interview-with-justine-norton-kertson-about-bioluminescence-

(It was made when SP was still a bb spinoff of Solarpunk Futures pod ;) )

An Overview Over the Solarpunk Anthologies

I thought, where I am already here, trying to get everyone to engage with Solarpunk as more than just an aesthetic and pretty flowers, I should give a quick overview over the Solarpunk antholigies, that have been released so far.

Note that so far most releases within the genre are in fact short stories. Though if anyone is interested, I can make a list of the novels I am aware of!

Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World is pretty much how the genre got its start. The book was originally released in Brazil and only recently had been translated into the English language. It only covers a few stories, but those are a bit longer than your average short story to make up for it.

Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation has been quoted by many writers in the genre to have been a massive inspiration to them. The stories are very diverse and cover lots of ground.

Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology is probably the weirdest out of this bunch. While all of the other anthologies mostly focus on either SciFi settings or stories set in the here and now, Wings of Renewal mixes Solarpunk with Fantasy elements. At times those stories are SciFi, too, at times they are really mostly fantastical.

Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers explores a wide variety of Solarpunk settings, some hopeful, some less optimistic. It is mostly set in warm and hot scenarios, though those can also vary quite a bit.

Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Winters then went ahead as a "sequel" of sorts to explore the concept of Solarpunk in colder climates.

Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures has probably to be my favorite one from the anthologies edited by Serena Udaberri. It explores how humans and animals can live together in Urban settings. And once again, the stories vary from those set in a more futuristic and a more present setting a lot.

Fighting for the Future is the most recent of those anthologies, as it has only released last month. (And yes, this also means: I have not yet read it at all.) It features stories of Cyberpunk and Solarpunk futures - as well as stories where both intertwine!

Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology is exactly what it says on the cover. An anthology featuring Lunarpunk stories. So Solarpunk with a bit more mysticism to go with it. And as this also only has released earlier this year I admittedly also have not gotten around to reading it yet.

This does remind me though: Would anyone be interested in me writing mini reviews to the stories in those anthologies?

[corthartle]

Substrate issue 03 is here <3

free to download via the link below. distribution is encouraged. print copies are available for a $5 suggested donation to cover ink and shipping, just dm me. submissions for issue 04 open mid-march

SUBSTRATE is a quarterly anthology zine that asks artists of all kinds to consider what a better world might look like

[frogonamelon]

[amaliazeichnerin]

Solarpunk as a literary genre is not widely known in German speaking countries (so far). I started reading this anthology which also features an essay about what defines Solarpunk as a genre.

"Sonnenerwachen - Facetten des Aufbruchs" (Hrsg. Saskia Dreßler, K.H. Zimmer)

[justalittlesolarpunk]

New reading material yesssss

[electriccloudcomics]

Calling Detroit Area Comics Artists Do you have a vision of the future? Do you have a story of a time that will take place in a million could-be years, or on a thousand maybe worlds? Electric Cloud is seeking submissions for its third issue, “Visions”.

The theme this time deals with all kinds of speculative fiction – welcoming utopian and dystopian worlds, cyberpunk cityscapes, afrofuturist cosmologies, and trans-humanist evolutions. A Detroit (and Detroit area) comics zine, Electric Cloud’s previous two issues, “Dreams” and “Travel” shared short comics about their titular subjects submitted by a diverse array of creators.

This time, it’s explorations of what’s to come. All stories that fall under the heading of science- and speculative-fiction are welcome. If you have a story about a could-be world of tomorrow, share it with Electric Cloud. Submit your comics by September 22nd, just in time for autumn. -------------- SUBMISSION RULES Submissions should be no more than 4 pages and adhere to the dimensions below. Dimensions are given in inches, and include other acceptable rations. Larger is better for scaling! All work will be B&W.

Digital Submissions: 300 dpi minimum Ratio: w5.5 x h8.5 (5.5x8.5, 9x14, 7x11, 11x17). Submit each page individually as PDF or PNG

Scanned Submissions: 300 dpi minimum

Ratio: w5.5 x h8.5 (5.5x8.5, 9x14, 7x11, 11x17).

Submit each page individually as PDF or PNG

Physical Submissions:

Ratio: Same as scanned submissions. Max 11x17. Pages should be single sided to enable better scanning. The higher the contrast of submissions the better, so inked pages are preferable.

-------------- SUBMIT TO:

Digital & Scanned submissions: email PDF/PNG pages individually to electriccloudcomics@gmail.com

Physical submissions: to submit physical submissions, email electriccloudcomics@gmail.com and inquire about pick up and drop off options.

[justabeautifulgirl]

Content Warning: mentions of blood/light gore //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Alexandrite looked down and saw that her hand wasn't there, as she looked at the bleeding stump that was once her hand. Suddenly she felt the sharp, white hot burning pain in her ragged forearm. She jerked awake, sweating and breathing hard as if she had just finished a marathon. "Shhh Love." It was Ashanti, they are holding Alex and whispering that it's okay and it's only a dream. She sat there trying to calm herself, reciting, "I am Alexandrite, I am beautiful, I love nature, and I am okay." She recited this many times over until she felt calm enough to get up and walk into the kitchen to pour herself a cup of water. Ashanti walked in after her. "You alright babes?" "Yeah I'm... I'm okay. Just another," She gestured with her robotic arm. "You wanna talk more about it or move on?" "I do want to talk more about it... but not right now." "Okay darl." "You okay for touches? Kisses?" They said this last part sweetly, feigning shyness. "Come 'ere you." She held out her robotic arm opening herself for a hug and instantly they fell into her arms, both of them leaning against the counter in the warm faux candle light of their low lit kitchen. "I love you." They said. "I love you too babe. I want to plant sunflowers tomorrow." "Alright Love, can we plant melons too?" "As long as it's not cantaloupe." They both laughed together at the silliness of the conversation. There were so many ways that life could have gone but Alexandrite felt this is one of the best possible outcomes.

[rosemariecawkwell]

Humber SFF Solar punk anthology

Announcing the HSFF Anthology Shellie Horst runs Humber SFF. There’s an announcement I think some of my local SFF writers might be interested in.

[devout-transgenderist]

Persistence (Or: To Survive, To Thrive)

Have you ever watched a sunset or sunrise?

With the horizon painted in colors and lights

The entire display is a decades old reprise

Every person in history has known those sights

Have you ever watched something clamber to sprout?

As it claws and it tears through the cracks in the stone

The primitive instinct to fight and to shout

As it's displaced and trampled but never alone

There is a beauty that strings us together

This planet is older than the people within

There is no change in the stars or the weather

An orbit does not have an end or begin

This world did not start out perfect for life

We had to learn to create and learn to destroy

There were moments of panic and moments of strife

But in the midst of the danger there are things to enjoy

To be a human is to persist and survive

To exist in a world in which we do not belong

At the end of the day we just want to be alive

The divided are weak and the united are strong

There are people who swear that we break the rules

That we go against some natural order of things

But the nature of humans is a series of duels

We are fighting to reach what the next morning brings

So we should not listen to those who insist

That there is some code or some rule to exist

We do not thrive if we do not resist

You can not make us extinct.

[cognitivejustice]

By accepting as inevitable humanity’s demise by its own hand, post-apocalyptic fiction places no responsibility on the living to course correct.

Solarpunk looks towards a post-capitalist future of renewable energy. It rejects climate “doomerism” and shows what our collective future could look like if we heal our relationship with the natural world.

Far from Star Trek’s “full luxury space communism,” where humans race across galaxies via endless sources of energy, the technology in solarpunk is imminently achievable. In the anthology Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias, science fiction writer and democratic socialist Kim Stanley Robinson describes this genre as rejecting “the inevitability of the machine future.”

Instead [solarpunk] asks, “What is the healthiest way to live? What is the most beautiful?”

Rather than Elon Musk’s tent cities on Mars, these fictional worlds “cobble together aspects of the postmodern and the paleolithic, asserting that we might for very good reasons choose to live in ways that resemble in part the ways of our ancestors.” 

[alpaca-clouds]

You should watch Kizazi Moto!

Okay, people. One quick thing: You should totally watch Kizazi Moto on Disney+. It is an anthology series. Meaning: 10 animated short films, each telling their own stories. All in different animation style.

If I had to describe it, I would call it: Like Love Death + Robots, but African and actually good.

Disney has not marketed it much. Heck, even with the recent release I have heard it does not show up on the front page of Disney+ for me.

But really, you should give it a shot. Especially if you want to see diversity and if you enjoy Cyberpunk or Solarpunk, because both of the genre can be found within the Afrofuturist stories of the series.

I really hope more people see it.

[eightyonekilograms]

I think a lot of solarpunk writers would benefit from pivoting mediums and picking up one of those "How to Draw Manga" books we all remember from middle school.

Neth introduced me to solarpunk writing a little while ago. I knew about solarpunk illustrations (the eco-futurist drawings of green cities and so on) but apparently there's an accompanying literary mini-movement.

I read an anthology of solarpunk, and my general impression is that the median solarpunk story is not plot- or character-focused, but takes the form of "here's a day on the commune after the revolution: follow these characters as they go to the town market to barter for food, then return home and do communal child-raising as they talk about how awful it was in the capitalist before-times".

To be honest, it's pretty bad. But I actually think it's not unsalvageable: a lot of it could be partially saved by switching to a visual medium and yanking out 90% of the talking. It occurs to me that a lot of this stuff is basically Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou with more unsubtle leftist fantasizing, and I love YKK.

The difference is that YKK is a manga, where "nothing happens" is a much less grating experience on the reader. With big empty visual panels of serene landscapes and sparse dialogue, you can let the sensation of the imagined world wash over you, which I'm pretty sure is the effect these authors are aiming for. But that's just too hard to do in prose unless you're a master of style, and these writers are not.

[justalittlesolarpunk]

Sneak peak at the solarpunk short story anthology I’m planning! Let me know if you have questions about it

[solarpunk-nightbird]

For decades we dreamed dystopia, and in March of 2020, when COVID crashed upon U.S. shores, it seemed like we had dreamed it so well we wished it into being. While wealthy reactionaries are building actual bunkers and prepping for environmental collapse, fantasizing about which shade of hopelessness our apocalypse will take is a luxury we can no longer afford. By accepting as inevitable humanity’s demise by its own hand, post-apocalyptic fiction places no responsibility on the living to course correct.

These days, climate change isn’t over the horizon, it’s here. The virus that shuts down the globe? We had that, too. Dystopian fiction? That’s so 2012. It’s time we collectively dream of something else. A better world is possible, but if artists and writers are to contribute to that better world, we’re going to need to balance our splendid hellscapes with gardens of earthly delight. We need to envision futures that are livable and happy, and we need to imagine how we get there from here. What’s more, we need to make those worlds as thrilling and engaging as any post-apocalyptic zombie-strewn nightmare.

Fortunately, we don’t need to invent a new literary genre to show us the way to a better tomorrow. Just as there is a left-wing climate movement demanding humanity break from fossil fuels to create a bright future for life on Earth, so is there a parallel climate fiction that allows us to imagine that better world. In steps solarpunk, left-wing literature’s answer to the dystopian novel. Solarpunk looks towards a post-capitalist future of renewable energy. It rejects climate “doomerism” and shows what our collective future could look like if we heal our relationship with the natural world.

Far from Star Trek’s “full luxury space communism,” where humans race across galaxies via endless sources of energy, the technology in solarpunk is imminently achievable. In the anthology Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias, science fiction writer and democratic socialist Kim Stanley Robinson describes this genre as rejecting “the inevitability of the machine future.” Instead it asks, “What is the healthiest way to live? What is the most beautiful?” Rather than Elon Musk’s tent cities on Mars, these fictional worlds “cobble together aspects of the postmodern and the paleolithic, asserting that we might for very good reasons choose to live in ways that resemble in part the ways of our ancestors.” 

-via Current Affairs, March 25, 2024

[duckprintspress]

Duck Prints Press Books by Agender Authors for Agender Pride Day!

The last two years, for Agender Pride Day (today, May 19th!), we’ve done rec lists (2023 | 2024) featuring books with agender characters – both those we’ve published and others. This year, we thought we’d instead focus on authors! Thus, for Agender Pride Day 2025, we present 8 agender authors and artists we work with (including yours truly, the Press’s owner, aka unforth, aka Claire, aka Nina Waters). Some of these works feature agender characters, some don’t, but across the board, we are who we are, and we are proud to be agender creators!

Read on to see the above slides as a list, with links to each story or anthology!

S. J. Ralston

Razzmatazz in Aether Beyond the Binary

The Inscrutable Fate of the ISV Devotion (Patreon exclusive)

J. D. Harlock

Somewhere Other Than Here in A Truth Universally Acknowledged

Sword Dancer in Aim For The Heart

Chinaski’s Dirty Work

The Sea Bears Salvage Co. (Patreon exclusive)

Solarpunks: Viva la Revolución

An Odd Gathering of Peculiar Cats

The Blood Tithe (Patreon exclusive)

Ride On, Shooting Star (Patreon exclusive)

Alex Bauer

Wintersong in Many Hands

Nina Waters

A Glimmer of Hope (novel)

The Last Letters of Mrs. Victoria Holmwood

Puppetry

Widow’s Black

Lust

Knishes and Noshes and Angel in Add Magic to Taste

To Dance at Lady Chadston’s (Patreon exclusive)

Bi-Pan Solidarity (Patreon exclusive)

Zel Howland

Art: Chrysopoeia (Patreon exclusive)

Chrysopoeia

The Lightkeeper and the Sea (Patreon exclusive)

Flower and Rot in Aether Beyond the Binary

Pas De Deux and A Stolen Moment in A Truth Universally Acknowledged

Rascal Hartley

Among the Stars in She Wears the Midnight Crown

Trousers and Other Oddities in A Truth Universally Acknowledged

Lyn Weaver

Weather the Storm

What Monsters Need (Patreon exclusive)

We All Need to Get By

Things We Know, But Don’t Recall

Count the Number of Seeds

Entanglement

Growing Wild (Patreon exclusive)

Can Virtue Hide Itself? in And Seek (Not) to Alter Me

The Thing With Feathers in She Wears the Midnight Crown

Catherine E. Green

Of Loops and Weaves

The Serendipity of a Late Train in Aim For The Heart

To Hold the World Close in Aether Beyond the Binary

[nothwell]

Robin Jo Margaret (xe/xyr) joins Noah Hawthorne (he/they) to discuss xyr queer indie author journey, including the new She Was Monstrous anthology, flipping the script on who gets to be the beast in romance, forging author community through collaboration, and the joy of commissioning human artists.

Robin Jo Margaret (xe/xyr) is a queer and disabled author from Italy, writing paranormal and monster romance and erotica under the penname Robin Jo Margaret for paranormal and monster romance and erotica, and human stories (both spicy and non) under R.J. Margaret. Whether clearly stated or not, there is always some kind of queer representation in xyr books, and xe makes room for many body types, especially bigger ones, as well as disabilities. You can connect with xyr here on tumblr @robinjomargaret

Noah Hawthorn (he/they), also writing as Aelina Isaacs, is the author of the queer cozy fantasy series Adventures in Levena, beginning with Phantom and Rook, and the solarpunk novel The Rebel Foxes, amongst other titles. You can connect with him here on tumblr @noahhawthorneauthor