Solarpunk discussion

Whether built on abundance or adaptation, reform or a new understanding of survival, these stories provide flickers of hope, even joy, and serve as a springboard for exploring how fiction can help create a better reality.

A group exercise to envision a clean, just future became a climate-fiction contest to create stories of life in that future. This the collection from the first year of Imagine 2200, and it's available free online here: https://grist.org/fix/series/imagine-...

The art is stunning.

And there is also the audio to listen to the stories!

Excellent!

I listened to a couple of stories from this last month, and they were good, so it will be interesting to listen to the rest of them.

I started off with A Séance in the Anthropocene and really enjoyed it - it touched on a few different points that have come up in some recent group reads. The indigenous worldview, solar panels as trees - that was cool. it did a bit more of the "here's how the previous generation lived" lens on our present as the story's past than I usually like, but there were good hints about the world that's evolved since. And the art - just gorgeous. I really love the way this collection has presented itself.

Here're my reading notes too:

~ Marissa Lingen's "A Worm to the Rise" regaled me with its pithy summary of cheap-o "investigative" journalism (as opposed to the proper kind):

In the early days, she hoped for a scandal. Hypocrisy would be best — environmentalists who used polluting technology for literally anything, that was always a popular way to make the public feel better about itself. If not that, a titillating exposé of latter-day hippie life would do. Orgies around bonfires, drug use, sordid abuse of petty power — that kind of story was easy to spread on social media. It would make a name for her.

After two weeks of crushing labor with never an orgy in sight, not even a bonfire, and considerably less drug use than she’d seen at Stanford, Augusta found that the kind of story she was planning shifted. Not to a puff piece, she assured herself. Not becoming the soil reclamation PR department. Just … not raking the same kind of muck.

She began to wonder whether the people who came up with the term “muckraking” had ever spent much time working soil with a rake. It sounded so easy until you did it.

Hi folks, glad this group is reading this series. I was one of three story reviewers on this project last year, and I helped narrow the field down from some 900+ entries to the final 20 we sent to the judges (who then narrowed them down even further). I think these finalist stories are a great mix that balance quality writing and storytelling with the specific remit of the contest. It was also amazing to see how much the prompt of the contest inspired people from all over the world to envision positive, flourishing futures for their communities and the planet. We passed on a great many pieces that didn't quite work as stories but were lovely, vibrant acts of imagination. And there were great stories that didn't make the final cut because they didn't quite fit the theme. All in all a fascinating intellectual experience, and I'm really proud of how rigorous our process was.

It's hard to pick favorites after all that, but I will say that "A Worm to the Wise" is a story that really jived with me, and I still think about some of the imagines and ideas in "Tidings." And all the stories have something compelling to speak to them. Excited to hear what jumps out to the rest of you!

~ Renan Bernardo's "When It’s Time to Harvest" offers subdued humor and subtle ruminations that will only grow and ripen on a second reading. Just like any clever metaphor. ;)

Andrew wrote: "Hi folks, glad this group is reading this series. I was one of three story reviewers on this project last year, and I helped narrow the field down from some 900+ entries to the final 20 we sent to ..."

Great to see you here - thank you for joining in! Boy do I ever not envy you having to narrow those entries down :)

Checking that out next Kalin, how can I resist now!

A Séance in the Anthropocene by Abigail Larkin ★★★☆☆
In a Native American lead carbon neutral future one twenty year old decides to study living history instead of engineering. The MC was so accurate it was annoying.

What a 20 year old says: I want to respectfully listen to your opinions and personal stories.

What a 20 year old means: I want an excuse to be mad, listen to my own voice, and rant to as wide an audience as possible.

The Tree in the Backyard by Michelle Yoon ★★½☆☆
Tenuously constructed story about a child who can speak to spirits. Boring.

~ I liked the long-distance perspective on our own times in Abigail Larkin's "A Séance in the Anthropocene." I know this rage against the past, this utalawuhska, all too well. And I was glad to see it join hands with nudahvundiyv, kindness toward the past.

~ An important notion from Lindsey Brodeck's "Afterglow":

“What pronoun would you use to describe what you see here?” Wyl points to a bee meandering lazily through the air. (...)

The man smiles in a self-conscious way, like he is afraid of being tricked. His flushed cheeks are almost as red as his shirt. “It’s on a flower?”

Wyl smiles, but shakes their head. “That is what I assumed you would say, but we’re here to show you a different way of seeing the world, and the inhabitants we share the world with. Our mission is more than beekeeping, gardening, and rewilding. We’re fighting for a semantic shift too. What do any of you know about 452b, the first planet the pods landed on all those years ago?”

I’m never one to speak up in crowds, but something compels me to answer.

“The plant people living there, they can hardly tell anything apart,” I say. “Not just from each other, but from anything that is alive. Everything is connected. That’s why their language is so hard to understand.”

Wyl nods, and I assume I’ve given the right answer.

“You’re close, but that isn’t quite it.”

I stay silent. My cheeks are now flushed too.

“You are correct about one thing. The Heliogen language is certainly difficult to translate into our own. English speakers inherited a language of imperialists, one that objectifies and capitalizes on virtually everything it comes into contact with. The language of the Heliogens is far different. Their language emphasizes the connections between us, not the arbitrary boundaries intended to separate us. Heliogens even have a pronoun for everyone, and everything. And that pronoun is ‘se.’ A Heliogen would never say, ‘It is flying through the air,’ because they recognize the similarities we share with other animate beings as being far more important than our differences. ‘Se’ is the ultimate form of respect, expressing the connection we — or should I say ‘se’ — share with all others. This bee, se pollinates our flowers; the flowers, se give us nourishment and beauty. Our words are just as important as our actions. They shape our mind, our way of seeing, our sense-making.”

It is beautiful, what Wyl is saying, but also difficult to grasp. As I try to think about the way the language I speak influences the way I understand the world, I feel my thoughts go fuzzy.

“We can even use ‘se’ to describe ourselves, for it is incorrect to think of ‘you’ or ‘me’ as composed of only human-ness. In fact, se are working together with trillions of prokaryotic cells. So this makes us amalgamations, holobionts, chimeras, constantly changing, yet one.”

The story then addresses other ways in which our languages shape our perceptions; I think we already saw some of them in Braiding Sweetgrass.

The Case of the Turned Tide
I loved how the details of this story depict a possible future and the take home message of the story.
One-size-fits-all approach is doomed to fail without the proper adjustments.
All it took was having conversations and inviting people to lean on their expertise to come up with their own solutions.

Tidings by Rich Larson ★★★☆☆
Vignettes of a future world. The Babel Tech, that lets us talk to animals, was my favorite - the moose was hilarious.

Andrew wrote: "It's hard to pick favorites after all that, but I will say that "A Worm to the Wise" is a story that really jived with me,"

I agree with you on that story Andrew. I really like it too. There is something that feels quite real about it.

I just read “ The Case of the Turned Tide” which is a detective story. Perhaps not the best mystery that I’ve read, but does touch upon a lot of things throughout the story, an interesting story.

Neus wrote: "The Case of the Turned Tide
I loved how the details of this story depict a possible future and the take home message of the story.
One-size-fits-all approach is doomed to fail without the proper adjustments.
All it took was having conversations and inviting people to lean on their expertise to come up with their own solutions.

Neus, that was one of the things I thought was interesting about this story. The one size fits all may not work so great, sometimes things have to be adjusted to the place, and culture.

~ Rich Larson's "Tidings" won me over with both its ideas and their presentation. Here're a choice two:

Three or four minutes later, they’re at Kat’s apartment. The make-out starts in the cramped lift and continues into the cramped flat. She clears off the couch and then helps Jan peel his shirt off, both of them fumbly and excited, and when it clears his tousled head Kat is face-to-face with a hollow cheeked woman in a boat.

Kat blinks. The woman blinks back. The crisp image, rendered in nano ink, is a livestream.

“Uh, Jan? Who’s on your stomach?”

Jan glances down. “Oh. I forgot.”

He prods his slightly beer-wobbly gut. A name appears in the nano ink: Tharanga Mendis.

“It is hard for me to read upside down,” Jan says. “But that. She is a refugee from Negombo. The wet bulb temperature is 38 now. People cannot sweat, so they leave or they die.”

Kat loses her booze buzz to the old cycle: guilt, annoyance at having to feel guilt on a night where all she wanted to do was hook up, guilt for the annoyance.

“You shouldn’t be skincasting people’s suffering,” she says sharply. “Or sharing their faces. It’s gross.”

Jan’s slate-gray eyes turn solemn. “It’s only sort of gross,” he says. “Her face is already known. This is a feed from border surveillance. I’m watching them watching her, and everybody else in the boat.”

Kat frowns. “Accountability?”

Jan shakes his head and grins his lopsided grin. “Better,” he says. “Catalonia is only letting in migrants with proof of employment.”

The smart tattoo shifts, showing a child now. They pull faces at whatever border drone is circling their vessel.

“With enough people streaming them, they can be classified as performers,” Jan says. “We had a legal AI do up the contracts.” He holds up his phone, and Kat sees the same feed. “I have it going everywhere,” he says. “Not just the tattoo.”

“If that works, it’s only going to work once,” Kat says, slumping down onto the couch. “You know that, right?”

“That’s OK,” Jan says. “We have lots of ideas. We just have to keep, you know, implementing. One little thing at a time.” His forehead creases. “Did you still want to have sex?”

Kat rubs at her face. “I don’t know. Kind of.” She glares. “How do you forget you have that playing on your stomach? How can you keep things — partitioned, like that?”

“Because it’s not my responsibility,” Jan says. “It’s everybody’s responsibility. And not everybody is doing their part, but a lot of people are, and I trust those people a lot.” He shrugs. “So do what you can, let go of the rest.”

Kat shuts her eyes. The last thing she wanted to think about tonight was climate refugees battling draconian border security, but the world is too small, too hot, too claustrophobic, to avoid thoughts like that anymore — even for a night.

“Shirt stays on,” she says, pushing it back into his chest. “But, uh, send me the stream first.”

This is just how things are now. Kat does what she can, and lets go of the rest.

“Hello,” Suma says, voice shaking a bit from excitement. “My name is Suma.”

The moose swings his big head left, then right. Snorts.

“Can you stop wrecking the fence?” Suma asks. “We could give you a bucket of apples to eat, if you like. And some spare rhubarb to step on.”

The babeltech kicks in, and the synthesized representation of the moose’s non-human person neural processes comes blaring through Suma’s tablet.

“FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.”

Suma blinks in surprise. “Cade?” she says, in a low voice. “Why’s he saying that?”

Cade tries to keep the laugh down, and it nearly bursts their belly. “Uh, I think it’s rutting reason,” they say. “Maybe he’ll be more conversational in a couple weeks.”

Suma purses her lips. “If the moose is allowed to say it, can I say it, too?”

“Just once,” Cade says. “Since you got babeltech to work with a cervine. You earned it, kiddo.”

Suma grins. “Even if he only cusses at us, this is still so fucking cool.”

Afterglow, by Lindsey Brodeck, was absolutely fantastic - I love the writing, and the take on migrating from Earth (I believe that if the billionaires do make it to space, it'll be with indentured labour; it's happening on Earth, there's no chance they wouldn't make the most of space). But it also felt hopeful, and found beauty in small places. Loved it.

When It's Time to Harvest, by Renan Bernardo - also gorgeous, and it hit very different spots; I have an aging parent with issues on letting go, so it felt very familiar. On a wider scale, we have a huge generation currently hitting this time of life.

A Worm to the Wise, by Marissa Lingen - Other than the worms (I have a literal worm phobia, it's a pain), this was great too - I've had a great run of stories today! Loving everyone's thoughts on these too.

Done. :)

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

A Worm to the Wise
I loved the touches of humor in this story and how Augusta falls in love with such an important task as soil remediation. I think this story could have happened in our present and not necessarily in the future. It's not that we lack devastated soils, and this is the reality for many graduate students today:
“Show them what you can do. And then do another. And another.”
How she was to eat while she was “showing them” was left as an exercise for the student.

The take-home of the story is that, no matter where we come from, the important thing is to pull together to get the job done:
Everyone comes from somewhere. We knew that. You weren’t here to sabotage the work. That’s what matters, doing the work.

The Tree in the Backyard
It's a good idea to replace the cemeteries with backyards full of trees. Beyond this, the story of the girl who hears the spirits and tries to talk to her father didn't really appeal to me.

Broken From the Colony by Ada M. Patterson ★★★☆☆
“They all firmly believed survival could be bought in a store.”
Her observations on panic buying before a hurricane were hilarious. But that was the best part for me. The rest was artistic with itinerante musings and dangling threads.

Afterglow by Lindsey Brodeck ★★★★☆
This read like a prequel to Emergency Skin - enjoyable!

Lena wrote: "Afterglow by Lindsey Brodeck ★★★★☆
This read like a prequel to Emergency Skin - enjoyable!"

Ooh I can see it - great call!

Thanks!

The Secrets of the Last Greenland Shark, by Mike McClelland - I thought this was beautiful, very sad, but beautiful. Some of the ends were harder than others, but the story's end was perfection.

The Case of the Turned Tide, by Savitri Horrigan - As both Neus and Hakon mentioned, one size fits all is a good thing to call out; in real life it usually means compromising and ending up with something that doesn't actually fully work for anyone. Adaptability is key!

Broken From the Colony, by Ada M. Patterson - just a bit too disjointed for me, though I got the thrust of it. As much as I didn't completely follow it, I still thought the writing was gorgeous.

Canvas-Wax-Moon by Aibhe Pascal ★★☆☆☆
DNF
Painfully boring children’s story.

The Cloud Weaver’s Song by Saul Tanpepper ★★★★½
Oh that was excellent! Future survivalist Native American’s get stuck in their new ways, but one woman dares to remember her roots - The Earth needs water too.

A Worm to the Wise by Marissa Lingen ★★★½☆
A journalism major prefers working to renew soil but will give good press for the cause.

When It’s Time to Harvest
I loved this vertical veggie farm, such a great solution for feeding people in cities. It's no coincidence that this amazing legacy comes from such a resilient, supportive and determined couple.

El, the Plastotrophs, and Me by Tehnuka Ilanko ★★½☆☆
I didn’t understand where they were or how they got there. They are part of a limited resource community and the story is about one family member imposing on the lives, and dreams, of the others. I didn’t feel the issues were resolved.

I did find the pandemic ready community interesting as the first pandemic ready luxury building is going up in Miami.
https://youtu.be/2VKFet0wjYM

Lena wrote: "El, the Plastotrophs, and Me by Tehnuka Ilanko ★★½☆☆
I didn’t understand where they were or how they got there. They are part of a limited resource community and the story is about one family memb..."

I felt the same way about this story and thought that maybe I hadn't got it right.

No, you saw what was there.

Canvas – Wax – Moon
A well-timed story with all that's happening in the US. Abortion should be a right, now and in the future.

Wow, you got way more out of that one than I did. I was bored quickly by the mundaneness and quit.

If you receive email I have sent you an invitation to participate in the group poll for September. Hákon and Andrew, you can email me a nomination for the poll by the 8th please.

Lena wrote: "Wow, you got way more out of that one than I did. I was bored quickly by the mundaneness and quit."

Yeah, I would have quit it too if it hadn't been for the story being so short.

The Secrets of the Last Greenland Shark by Mike McClelland ★★★★★
“Survive. Survive. Survive.”
And then I cried. I cried and cried while walking my dog, unable to explain to passing strangers that I had just read something beautiful.

A Séance in the Anthropocene
I got deep into the story with this one and while it is true that it does pose a harmonious future, they have come to it out of desperation and not by choice. So it has been very sad to read about the tragedies that happened during the Dark Decade of this story and all the extinct animals, partly because if we continue at this pace, this might actually happen.

This part reminded me of The Overstory:
"The crossings were designed to allow forests to migrate overhead — slow, giant, singular organisms moving across time."

My favourite character was Grandma Marne:
"Don’t bother trying to improve Mother Nature’s design."

Fiona wrote: "The Secrets of the Last Greenland Shark, by Mike McClelland - I thought this was beautiful, very sad, but beautiful. Some of the ends were harder than others, but the story's end was perfection."

I couldn't agree more. That was a beautiful piece of writing.

Lena wrote: "Broken From the Colony by Ada M. Patterson ★★★☆☆
“They all firmly believed survival could be bought in a store.”
Her observations on panic buying before a hurricane were hilarious. But that was t..."

I agree with Lena and Fiona.

The Case of the Turned Tide by Savitri Horrigan ★★☆☆☆
That was a rough draft for the beginning of a story - curtly ended.

I listened to two stories today, Tidings by Rich Larson, which I liked. I liked this connected flash fiction setup. Perhaps not the best in the collection, but I thought it was pretty good just the same. I think I may read it again someday.

The second story was The Tree in the Back Yard by Michelle Yoon. I didn't like that one as much as Tidings. It's interesting in some sense, but somehow just didn't touch me.

Hákon wrote: "Fiona wrote: "The Secrets of the Last Greenland Shark, by Mike McClelland - I thought this was beautiful, very sad, but beautiful. Some of the ends were harder than others, but the story's end was ..."

Agree. And this "ability to, finally, reach out and communicate across species. To share the eyes of a lion, snake, or mole. To feel the wolf’s fierce capacity for love, the sheer intelligence of the octopus, the spider’s unfathomable ingenuity" is awesome.

Neus wrote: "Hákon wrote: "Fiona wrote: "The Secrets of the Last Greenland Shark, by Mike McClelland - I thought this was beautiful, very sad, but beautiful. Some of the ends were harder than others, but the st..."

Absolutely! The sense of interconnectedness appeals to me, but I also thought it felt really natural, like it wasn't a stretch for the story, just - of course that would be a thing. If that makes sense?


Tidings, by Rich Larson - I'm a huge fangirl about this author, he's one of a few short story writers I keep track of. I liked this, but I didn't love it - I feel like the shorts within the short were just a bit too fragmented, and I never quite got into the flow.

Canvas, Wax, Moon, by Ailbhe Pascal - Yeah a lot of the action on this one happens in the last section. I think it's timely as well, but I struggled with the writing style on this, I found it really hard to focus on.

The Cloud Weaver’s Song, by Saul Tanpepper - This was gorgeous. And another really well-done example of why staying within the lines is frequently the wrong call!

El, the Plastotrophs, and Me, by Tehnuka Ilanko - Aw, I struggled with the unfairness of this that was left unresolved. But I loved getting a kiwi story! Hit me up if anything needs translating :D

The Tree in the Back Yard, by Michelle Yoon - I wasn't as much of a fan of the ending of this, but I do like the idea of the pods.

And I'm done - I have really enjoyed the discussion this month, thank you all so much for joining us for this one! When this year's comes out - sometime in the Northern Hemisphere fall - I definitely vote we get it into another monthly read :)

Kalin wrote: "~ Rich Larson's "Tidings" won me over with both its ideas and their presentation. Here're a choice two:
Three or four minutes later, they’re at Kat’s apartment. The make-out starts in the cramped l..."

Nice choice from Tidings! I liked it, but like Fiona, I didn't get into the flow.

Fiona wrote: "When this year's comes out - sometime in the Northern Hemisphere fall - I definitely vote we get it into another monthly read :)"

I second that.

Hákon wrote: "Fiona wrote: "When this year's comes out - sometime in the Northern Hemisphere fall - I definitely vote we get it into another monthly read :)"

I second that."

Me too!