Thank you Matthew. I’m trying to do the same. I also started reading a lot of the solarpunk genre. The problem is - as Margaret Atwood said in an essay I read - utopian futures often simply aren’t as interesting to read about as dystopian futures. But that doesn’t need to be the case. I would classify The Expanse and Horizon Zero Dawn as solarpunk - what these stories do well is still provide high stakes where people’s lives are on the line. I guess a good way of writing gripping solarpunk is by focusing less on the fact that climate change has been “solved” (or at least mitigated) and focusing more on the resulting problems - so we made it to space, so we terraformed the earth with AI, what now? Idk I’m still working through this myself; I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Thank you Matthew. I’m trying to do the same. I also started reading a lot of the solarpunk genre. The problem is - as Margaret Atwood said in an essay I read - utopian futures often simply aren’t as interesting to read about as dystopian futures. But that doesn’t need to be the case. I would classify The Expanse and Horizon Zero Dawn as solarpunk - what these stories do well is still provide high stakes where people’s lives are on the line. I guess a good way of writing gripping solarpunk is by focusing less on the fact that climate change has been “solved” (or at least mitigated) and focusing more on the resulting problems - so we made it to space, so we terraformed the earth with AI, what now? Idk I’m still working through this myself; I’d like to hear your thoughts.