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.
I haven't read that Atwood essay, but I disagree that optimistic futures can't be as interesting. I've heard that before. Firstly, I think it's more helpful to think of utopia as a verb, rather than a noun. It's something we work toward, not a specific thing. (I don't often use the word utopia, because it carries a lot of baggage that takes a while to unpack.)
And while not everyone's vision of a utopian (optimistic) world will be the same, there are objective metrics we can use to see if the world is getting better: access to quality healthcare, dropping child mortality rates, dropping rates of infectious diseases, drop in hunger, drops in violence, drop in pollution, etc. The problems we face are not small nor trivial, and I think a lot of narrative tension can be found in stories that focus on the struggles to bring about a positive future.
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.
I haven't read that Atwood essay, but I disagree that optimistic futures can't be as interesting. I've heard that before. Firstly, I think it's more helpful to think of utopia as a verb, rather than a noun. It's something we work toward, not a specific thing. (I don't often use the word utopia, because it carries a lot of baggage that takes a while to unpack.)
And while not everyone's vision of a utopian (optimistic) world will be the same, there are objective metrics we can use to see if the world is getting better: access to quality healthcare, dropping child mortality rates, dropping rates of infectious diseases, drop in hunger, drops in violence, drop in pollution, etc. The problems we face are not small nor trivial, and I think a lot of narrative tension can be found in stories that focus on the struggles to bring about a positive future.