#the year without a summer

[solarpunkpresentspodcast]

In this month’s bonus chat, Ariel and Christina discuss Nebula-award-winning short story “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer – the first winning story that is being labelled solarpunk! Your hosts consider questions such as: what makes this short story solarpunk, actually? What makes it so compelling? If it’s supposed to be solarpunk, why is there no mention of climate change whatsoever?

These questions (and much, much more) are addressed here - but make sure to read the story first, if you don't want spoilers! It's free and takes about 20 minutes all told and is a genuinely excellent piece of short fiction.

Links:

Link to the story - https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-year-without-sunshine/ The historical Year Without a Summer - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer Episode with Jenny Kerber - https://youtu.be/uSz6YvhVsLI?si=hnjAPYUHGkDXUmc4 An analysis of the significance of "nature red in tooth and claw" - https://interestingliterature.com/2016/01/a-short-analysis-of-canto-lvi-from-tennysons-in-memoriam/ Soylent Green - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green Day of the Triffids - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids

[maglorthecrab]

Any American Murder Song fans out there?

[gl1tt3ryd34th]

American Murder Song 1816 lore

Anyone here blessed with knowledge about the story of American Murder Song´s album "Murder Ballads of 1816"/their first 4 EPs? I only know the stuff from their story videos but they feel incomplete. Was there more story told through the live shows and stuff or other means?

[cashthecomposer]

What's your musical about?

It's about the summer of 1816, which was named "The Year Without A Summer" due to horrible weather conditions caused by the eruption of a volcano. During this summer, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, John Polidori, and Claire Clairmont gathered together at the Villa Diodati near the Lake Geneva.

They got really high- like, REALLY high- and read a bunch of ghost stories, after which, Lord Byron challenged his fellows to compose ghost stories of their own. From this contest came a number of works, culminating in the creation of the modern vampire in Polidori's 'Vampyre', and the ultimate winner, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

My show tells the story of everything that happened that summer, the love stories, the duels, the near death experiences, everything! It also includes all of the stories read or celebrated at that gathering, including the above mentioned two, the stories that inspired the contest, and several others.

And, I include an element often neglected by so many other adaptations of that story- at the tender age of 19, Mary Shelley was already a mother to a young baby, William. Her story is one of romance and tragedy, death and life, creation and destruction, and I don't white wash it one bit.

In summary, this musical is my ode to the creation of stories.

[fox-bright]

Years before the covid pandemic began, author Naomi Kritzer wrote the charming, emotionally genuine short story "So Much Cooking," which was a pandemic log through the eyes of a cooking blog. The premise is that the author is a home cooking blogger raising her kids, and then a pandemic hits--and bit by bit she's feeding not only her own, but her sister's kids, some neighbors' kids, and so on, in a situation of pandemic lockdown and food shortages.

It's very good, and was prescient for a lot of the early days of the covid pandemic. I found myself returning to it often in the first couple of years because of how steadfast it was in its hopefulness.

Last year she wrote a novelette, "The Year Without Sunshine," which attacks a similar problem in a similar way; instead of pandemic, this one is about the aftereffects of a distant nuke or a massive volcano explosion (it doesn't say), which has churned a great deal of dust into the air, causing massive damage to society and agriculture. The story covers one neighborhood, pulling together to keep each other alive--not through violence, but through lawn potatoes and message pinboards and bicycle-powered oxygen concentrators.

I recommend both stories. They're uplifting in a way that a lot of what I see lately isn't. They're a bit of a panacea for constant fearmongering about intracommunity violence and grinding hatefulness. We can be good to each other, if we try.

[spuffybot]

It will never not be super ridiculous that Buffy had to single-handedly protect the world from demons, raise her teenage sister, manage a household, and work a full time job, all at the age of 22 and everyone around her is like “god Buffy just grow up and deal with it, stop acting like it’s hard.”

[cammy-mcspammy]

Vent translated through a komahina comic to comfort myself 💜

Also a skip and loafer ref AGAIN YOU CANT STOP ME

[getbreaded]

August, 2024

A cute bookshop I found during my vacation. Can you tell it's by the seaside?

[babyblueetbaemonster]

"If your Nord friend jump into cold water, would you?!"

"Yeah man."

"No! Don't jump into the cold water!!!"

[skunkes]

[menlove]

man as much as I understand why we bind/tuck and that it's not a bad thing if I could wish one thing upon the world it would be for everyone to get so much more normal about men with boobs and women with bulges (and everyone in between w whatever secondary sex characteristics). bc it sucks. it's uncomfortable and can be super super damaging even if you're using the best methods in the world.

and ofc it sucks from cis society but I think I have even more beef w people in the trans community that push this idea that if you're not binding/tucking you're not Serious about being trans.

[sualne]

was checking my emails before going to bed only to find out my endocrinologist casually scheduled an appointment at long fucking last

[everythingwasalreadypicked]

I find it so hilarious how no one in Camp Jupiter takes Octavian and his predictions seriously (even when the books says they do)

Oh, you say Greek gods exist? That they have children too? What's this about a camp? Don't be silly Octavian of course they don't

Sybillyne books? No they are a myth. Like an actual myth. No that harpy didn't memorise them before they burned down. Harpies can only cook and clean, everyone knows that.

Look Octavian, we're at war. Tensions are already high. We don’t need you to sow even more with your insistence on Titan army sneaking into camp and sabotaging weapons. Yes yes, you got stabbed by Saturn's general before, when you were right, that sucks— please shut up now

[blown-to-kingdom-come]

okay maybe this guy still kinda rules

[t0rschlusspan1k]

Black metal has a history of dealing with themes of nature, albeit often from a very idealised western European perspective where nature is usually presented as only fair and benevolent. It also has a history of dealing with dark historical themes, although a good number of bands seem to "coincidentally" hyperfocus on some very specific themes (yeah, we get it, WW2 was important and you only focus on Germany cause you "sing about evil, also cool aesthetics"). It's a breath of fresh then that some bands choose to combine their love of history and dark times and remind us that nature is often uncaring at the same time, and also make a social commentary at the same time without resorting to tired and western-centric cliches. UK based Eowa decided to make an album about the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora, in todays Indonesia, then part of the Dutch West Indies, the largest and deadliest volcanic eruption in recorded history whose deadly impact on climate and atmosphere was felt across multiple continents and for several years. Eowa dress this historical narrative with cold and relentless melodic death/black metal, simultaneously oppressive and majestic, the only way after all to present an event of such scale and a story of such tragedy, and the album's title couldn't be more fitting, it was after all truly, "The Year Without Summer" [x]