Tag: sci-fi

Global Frequency — Read Report

(Global Frequency Deluxe Edition at DC.com)

The version from my local library is the Deluxe Edition, containing all 12 original issues from the 2002-2004 run. As an early 2000s title, I’d say this is on the tail end of non-superhero books working their way into mainstream culture. So there is no spandex and no superpowers (at least by that parlance), but Global Frequency does dabble in super-villain sci-fi and supernatural stuff on roughly the believability level of The X-Files.

The Global Frequency is a semi-secret, global and unaffiliated spy organization, 1001 specialized experts recruited by a woman who calls herself Miranda Zero. They live in a heightened version of the real world at the turn of the millennium, and they find solutions for crises big and small.

Each issue is a self-contained story, “monster of the week” style. There is no broader arc or big bad pulling all the strings, and no significant final wrap-up for the series. Miranda Zero and her central radio operator Aleph are the only recurring characters. Everyone else is a day player, and therefore sometimes expendable.

Each issue sets up a high stakes problem with many lives on the line, then places Global Frequency members with interesting skills nearby to solve that problem. Sometimes “interesting skills” means hacking into anything and everything. Sometimes it just means a lot of punching and shooting. Sometimes it’s being a super-detective or having a bionic arm or being a magician or building your own civilian space agency.

Some of the impending catastrophes are varied, like a memetic alien mind virus or an apparent angelic visitation that drives a whole town insane. Unfortunately, about half of them boil down to a big bomb. And by big, I mean at least three separate instances of nuclear weapons, and one orbital railgun that would only be similar in effect to an atomic bomb.

2000s Edgy

The series is very of-its-time, on the bleeding edge of what was cool in 2002: parkour and UAVs and satellite imagery. The Matrix was only a couple years earlier, and the Internet still felt new. I don’t begrudge the high tech that seems mundane from a 2020s perspective, or the hackers that get into any computer in five seconds flat. Some of the early web slang, spoken aloud by serious characters, is a little harder to forgive.

The biggest problem, however, is classic Warren Ellis: the series seems to want to play with the literary big boys, but it comes off as adolescent a little too often. It’s William Gibson by way of Hot Topic.

Oh, there are cultists with a bomb and hostages? And the bomb is connected to their heart rate monitors? And they took a slow-acting poison? It’s a delicate situation. Better send in a pair of action heroes to shoot them all, and shoot the remote before the leader can push the button. Good thing the heart monitor bit was a bluff.

Then, of course, the action heroes who have been at each others’ throats the whole time can immediately go offscreen to get it on. Its violent and sexy and there are naughty words, and that makes it adult.

I don’t mind these kinds of shenanigans. They’re why people still love over-the-top 90s action flicks. Heck, Netflix is still making a few of those movies per year, with big actors and eye-watering budgets. It works when the story doesn’t take itself too seriously. But Global Frequency sometimes feels like it’s trying a little too hard to be cool.

Missed Opportunities

That said, the series could have really benefitted from another 12 issues, and I would have been happy to read them. The run is short and it sticks to the anthology- style disconnected stories a little too much for my tastes. There are two things that more issues could have given breathing room for: a multi-issue arc, and an opportunity for failure.

The Global Frequency is a sort of an organizational Mary Sue. Their funding and equipment is never really explained. All their members are experts in their field, and everyone is fully aligned with the mission, whatever that might be. There are no moles and no traitors, despite their many enemies. In a spy series!

I would love to have gotten a little more background, and that could have very easily played into some kind of SPECTRE counter-spy organization or villain with a bone to pick. It would also have allowed for the Global Frequency to fail. Because they never really do. Individual members may die in the line of duty, but they always save the day.

Art and Extras

The art is solid and varied. Each issue has a different artist, so there’s always something new to look at. The angles, panels, and framing are occasionally unexpected, but there’s nothing especially crazy or unusual going on for this era of DC. There were a few places where the action was muddied, mostly in a specific issue that is almost entirely taken up by a big one-on-one brawl.

The book ends with two Deluxe Edition extra features: the original proposal for the series as submitted to DC, and a script for one issue. These are interesting for those who want to work in comics, and those who just like to see how the sausage gets made.

Cordyceps Cosmicum — The Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Cordyceps Cosmicum

Grigory Romanslov has space mushrooms growing in his head. He knows this ought to worry him, but it doesn’t.

He knows there are mushrooms in there because his sinuses and ears feel plugged, and everything smells like portobello, and a delicate, thin-stemmed white cap unfurled just above his earlobe while he was shaving last week. Maybe he shouldn’t have breathed in the glowing green dust surrounding the crater he found in the south forty.

A Google search leads him to Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which sounds much nicer than “zombie ant fungus.” It tells him the fungus controls the ants’ behavior. He doesn’t feel like the space mushrooms are controlling him, although he has been drinking salt water lately, and sucking on pennies.

He feels healthy, despite  the fine white fuzz growing on his skin. He did puke up his breakfast on the front lawn yesterday, but he felt fine after.

When he wakes up and sees a dozen tree-sized  mushrooms in the yard, it makes him happy. They look nice there. Decorative. And the spores twinkle a million shades of green as they catch the morning breeze.

Adventure — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Adventure

Life in the preserve is peaceful. It’s not very big—you can walk the perimeter in a day—but there are only a few of us and we don’t need much. There is plenty of good food, and for the most part we all get along. If any of us feel the need to explore, there are other preserves the Robbies can take us to.

I was happy where I was. I didn’t plan my adventure; it happened to me. One day I woke up sick, the first of us to know “illness” in 194 years. The Robbies were very kind. They explained how my illness could spread, so I had to be taken away from the preserve. That’s why I became the first person to see the world outside the preserves.

The Robbies have cities filled with gleaming spires of silver and glass. Machines fly among them like beautiful insects. They brought me to a tower and told me it had been built just for me, a “hospital” where they would examine me and try to understand why I was sick.

They haven’t found the answer. My body hurts so much I can barely get out of my bed. I do not blame them. They know much more than I do. If they cannot find the answer, who could? They are always kind, and they seem to be working very hard.

One of the Robbies visited me yesterday to tell me I may be the first human in centuries to go on another kind of adventure. He placed a silver hand on mine and explained that the illness would stop my body from working. Then, I will embark on an adventure called “death.” Just as we left the preserve to come here, I will leave my body and go somewhere else. Even the Robbies don’t know where.

It sounds frightening, and I am very tired, but I have learned that we cannot always choose our adventures. Sometimes they choose us.

The Other Side — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

The Other Side

We converted to green energy. We built the carbon sequestration plants. We started turning things around. We had the best of intentions. We were just too slow.

The result was widespread famine and death, unnatural natural disasters, and the worst refugee crises in human history. The die-off of species eventually slowed, but so many ecosystems had already been thinned out and strained beyond the breaking point.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. When the ecosystem is going to collapse anyway, you might as well get creative.

Enclaves of rogue gene-grinders sprouted up in places that were already supposedly uninhabitable, CRISPRing up new versions of old species to fill in the empty niches. It was an imperfect science, and every change caused its own cascade of problems, like propping up a collapsing building so they could live in the basement.

Instead of becoming wastelands, those places became new oases of chaotic life—riots of species that broke down pollutants, converted chemicals, generated energy, and regenerated resources.

The gene-grinders didn’t stop at other species. They had grown beyond taboos. They altered themselves to better fit their new ecosystems, and sometimes just for fun.

The world survived global catastrophe. Humanity survived too. But neither was the same on the other side.

Fifteen Years — The Story Idea Vault

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Fifteen Years

He’s one of the most successful CEOs in history, turning a small business into a corporate behemoth in a little over a decade. Every industry he touches is revolutionized. Every decision proves prescient. He keeps the prices low. He takes care of his workers and their communities. He puts people over profits, but the profits still roll in. The business analysts don’t understand how he does it. Nobody does.

It’s easy though. Easy when you can travel backward in time exactly fifteen years. Easy when you can try every strategy, make every mistake, and then start again. How many times has he started over?

What’s hard is the long cycle. Fifteen years to recharge, and then back again. No way to go further. No way to escape that event horizon of the past.

So many days are too far back now for him to visit. They exist only as memories. The day he met the woman he loves. They day they married. The day she got her diagnosis.

She’s still back there, in the past. He can still visit her hospital bed. He can smell the antiseptic, see the sunken hollows of her cheeks and eyes. Hear the wheezing rhythm of the machine that helps her breathe. Two weeks before she passes on. Two weeks by her side, every fifteen years.

He knows he should let her go. That’s what she would want. He has tried. But he’s so afraid to lose those last two weeks. Then she’ll really be gone beyond his reach. And what will be the point of this empire he has built? What will be the point of anything?

The date is blocked off in his calendar, among the meetings and events. It’s nearly time again.

Fifteen years.

The Fall of Hyperion — Read Report

Book | E-book (affiliate links)

The Fall of Hyperion is the second book in the Hyperion Cantos. It is the sequel to Hyperion, and although the two Endemion books pick up a related story in the future of the same universe, the two Hyperion books really form a complete pair.

They are an interesting duo of books to compare. Hyperion has only a few long chapters, each a self-contained story. As the first half of a series, it makes little attempt to resolve loose ends. The Fall of Hyperion has a very large number of short chapters and has many mysteries to wrap up and plot points to resolve.

Severn, Gladstone, and the Pilgrims

Hyperion followed the stories of the seven Shrike Pilgrims, who make their way to the so-called Time Tombs, finding themselves alone in a dire situation as the galaxy sits on the brink of war. The Ousters, humans who long ago committed to life in wandering deep space colonies, face off against the Hegemony, a culture stradles hundreds of planets with instant-travel “farcaster” portals and a central government.

The Fall of Hyperion introduces the character of Joseph Severn, who takes his name from a friend of the ancient poet, John Keats. Severn is a “cybrid”—a hybrid of human biology and an AI personality, with the artificial memories of John Keats embedded in his mind. As if that weren’t enough, Severn is in some ways the twin of Johnny, the dead cybrid lover of one of the Shrike Pilgrims.

Severn is hired by Hegemony CEO Meina Gladstone, ostensibly to draw her portraiture in what is expected to become a defining moment of the Hegemony’s history. For most of the book, chapters alternate between Severn and the Shrike Pilgrims. The Pilgrims work to discover the mysteries of the Time Tombs and how they relate to the Shrike, a four-armed, semi-mythic, razor-covered metallic monstrosity that seems inextricably linked to the tombs and a far-future war where humankind fights for its existence.

It eventually becomes apparent that the chapters alternate because Severn has the unique ability to “see” the pilgrims’ activities in real time through his dreams, and it is because of this that Gladstone wants to keep him close.

The Hegemony’s war with the Ousters heats up and threatens to spill out of the Hyperion system, into the web of farcaster-linked worlds. But the pilgrims and Severn soon learn that the Ousters may not be the biggest threat. The Core of hyper-intelligent AIs, inventors of the farcasters and aloof patrons of the Hegemony, are revealed to be split into three competing factions. At least one of these is Hell-bent on creating a machine god and wiping out humanity.

The Challenges of Mythic Sci-Fi

The greatest strength of Hyperion becomes the main weakness of The Fall of Hyperion. The first book manages to build an epic space-opera universe and populates it with characters and stories pulled from other genres. The overall effect of the Pilgrims’ quest and their adventures is a mythical-feeling quest in a far-future setting.

Hyperion gets away with this partly because it only dips its toes into galactic politics and space wars and AI metaverses. But the sequel has to gather the loose ends into a somewhat logical and satisfying conclusion. As a result, it digs deeper into many of the sci-fi elements and strips away some of the hand-wavy magic of the universe by explaining how it all works. Of course, the AIs and quantum physics of eight centuries in the future are still magic, just with a technobabble vocabulary.

I do appreciate that the resolution really resolves the story (even if it does leave one very specific opening for the sequels). The two books make a satisfying series. But the second book feels more like “standard” space opera and doesn’t quite achieve the same highs of the first book.

That said, my favorite chapter across both books comes from The Fall of Hyperion, and follows Meina Gladstone as she traverses many worlds by farcaster on the eve of war. Rarely does sci-fi achieve such a sense long history in its setting or capture so well the feeling of insignificance in the face of a vast universe.

Is Dan Simmons Problematic?

Coincidentally, as I was re-reading these books, Dan Simmons passed away. I clicked through a few articles and quickly learned that he is widely considered problematic. I hadn’t come across much in these books that raised my hackles, so I ventured down the Internet rabbit hole to see what random strangers found objectionable.

The answer was mostly in his other books. It turns out historical and alt-history fiction is a more fertile ground for outright racist tropes. However, I did find some specific complaints with the Hyperion books, and I thought they offered interesting insights into modern readers.

Firstly, some people are just excited to pile on. Hating things online has long been a popular pastime, and hating on awful people has the added bonus of letting the hater feel superior and righteous.

A notable number of criticisms come from “readers” who pretty clearly haven’t read the material. They complain about unreasonable interpretations of the material, or complain about something insignificant when there are clearly better examples for their argument elsewhere in the books. At best, these are readers who quit after the first few chapters.

One critic took offense at the use of the r-slur by one of the characters, in reference to a tribe of people with a parasite that revives them whenever they die, but degrades their mental faculties each time. This is an interesting case, because the first book was published in 1989.

For younger readers unfamiliar with the history, I suspect it comes across as weirdly blatant use of a nasty slur. These readers seem unaware of the shifting moral terrain of scientific terms around mental disabilities over the course of the 20th century. I think it’s fair to assume that this particular usage of the r-word was considered relatively innocuous in ’89. The modern, offensive, and derogatory usage of the word (and pushback against it) came mostly in the following two or three decades. Similarly, the word “oriental” is used once or twice. That might have been a bit dated in ’89, but I don’t think it would have seemed nearly as off-color as it does today.

These books are “only” 40 years old, but that is enough time for the language and the culture to change. I may be the old man yelling at clouds, but this shallow maligning of the author’s intent and tone strikes me as willful disinterest in any non-negative interpretation.

That said, there are parts of these particular stories that don’t hold up well to modern sensibilities. Simmons indulges in a few Star Wars-style monolithic planets, including a Catholic planet, a Jewish planet, and an Islamic planet. None of these are explored in great detail, but the Islamic planet is suggested to be a place where holy war and fanatic religious hatred are normalized.

There’s also no question that the book embodies a full-on male gaze. It definitely doesn’t pass the Bechdel test. On a list of important characters, the top fifteen contains—at most—three women. Only two of them meaningfully impact the plot. And yet there are a number of sex scenes focusing almost exclusively on female anatomy.

Of course, sex in sci-fi is hardly a big deal, especially in a world where romantasy is a wildly popular genre. I’d also argue that the most gratuitous examples in these two books come from the story of the meathead action hero, whose focus on sex and violence make some sense for his character.

I don’t defend Simmons’s character. It certainly sounds like some of the books I haven’t read contain more racist and questionable material. For what it’s worth, the first two Hyperion books mostly avoid it.

Hummingbird Salamander — Read Report

Book | E-book | Audiobook (affiliate links)

Jeff VanderMeer has hovered at the top of my favorite authors list since I read Borne and Dead Astronauts. The Area X trilogy only cemented that position. I had understandably high hopes for his latest book, Hummingbird Salamander.

Hummingbird Salamander stays close to the modern day in a way that will feel familiar to William Gibson fans. There are science fiction elements, but they are very restrained compared to VanderMeer’s previous work.

Borne was almost Joycean in a way that made it a challenging read. Hummingbird Salamander is much more straightforward, even if VanderMeer can’t stop himself from adding literary flourishes. It comes across as more of a suspense/thriller story than anything he has written in recent years.

Eco-Terrorism and Generational Trauma

It’s not particularly hard to pick out the bigger themes running through VanderMeer’s work. Ecology is the most obvious. His stories explore the ways humans interact with the world around them, and how social and technological factors intertwine with the natural world. Area X seems to exist in a relatively near future where climate change continues apace and a mysterious section of coastline is hidden behind government claims of a localized ecological catastrophe. The Borne stories describe a far-flung future city where most of what survives is the result of extreme genetic manipulation.

In Hummingbird Salamander, humankind’s fraught relationship with nature is again front and center. The story begins with a note that leads the protagonist, Jane, to a storage unit. The note contains the words “Hummingbird” and “Salamander,” with some mysterious dots in between. The storage unit contains an actual, taxidermied hummingbird of a variety that turns out to be extinct. These clues lead Jane into a deadly mystery that involves poaching and the illegal wildlife trade, as well as eco-terrorism and organized crime.

Jane lives in an America that is on the brink. Extreme weather is normalized. Ecological collapse is commonplace. Pandemics are perpetually imminent. It turns out that society fails in more of a whimper than a bang, and most things in life are getting slowly, steadily worse. But people still have jobs, family, and lives. Jane has all of these things. She’s a private security analyst, a mother, and a wife. She stands out as an unusually tall, strong woman who has excelled at weight lifting and body building, but has an otherwise normal, middle-class existence.

Another common theme among VanderMeer books is generational trauma, and in some ways this is just ecology at an individual level. A family is an environment, and as our current world is shaped by the mistakes made by our forefathers and ancestors, our personal hangups and dysfunctions are shaped by those who raised us, and those who raised them.

Jane’s dysfunctions are revealed slowly in fragments and flashbacks, only becoming fully apparent in the final third of the book. In many ways, this is the story of everything she does wrong, and why.

Where it All Breaks Down

Hummingbird Salamander is a well-written book. It has rich and detailed characters, an interesting setting, and touches on timely topics. And after some consideration, I have to admit that it is the most unenjoyable VanderMeer book I have read. This book and I have irreconcilable differences, and they are, unfortunately, at the very heart of the story.

From the first chapters, Jane is obsessed with the hummingbird and the mystery it represents. And sure, there is a reason for why the two words on the note would be important to her. But even with all the answers that are eventually revealed, I can’t help but feel that her obsession is unreasonable.

I might be able to overlook that questionable motivation if I had some sympathy for Jane. But in spite of her horrible upbringing, I find it hard to root for her. There are a handful of moments in the book where Jane shows affection for her teenage daughter and long-suffering husband, but these seem like afterthoughts. These people are hindrances, distractions from her obsessive pursuit of the central mystery. When it becomes apparent that unraveling the mystery might be dangerous, she barely spares a thought about how that could impact her “loved” ones.

In the end, she makes choices that destroy her family and ruin their lives, but she can barely muster a moment of self-reflection or regret. Her coworkers are caught up in the maelstrom. Strangers are hurt and killed because of her. She simply doesn’t care. She gets tougher and meaner as the book goes on, but she was cold and indifferent to begin with.

I will admit, as a husband and father of a teenage daughter I may be especially well-positioned to dislike Jane and her choices. Other readers with different backgrounds might have an easier time identifying with her and sympathizing. I enjoy flawed characters. I just need them to have enough redeeming qualities to get me on their side.

All Cloud, no Silver Lining

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d say VanderMeer’s work shows a positive attitude or hope for the future, but the pessimism has never been as apparent as it is here. A straightforward reading suggests that we might have to hit rock-bottom (as individuals and as a species) before things will get better. And even then, they might not.

Jeff’s other work balances that dark and dismal worldview with genuine strangeness and wonder. There’s a reason he was one of the leading voices of the New Weird/Slipstream movement. His worlds are shadowy and unfamiliar, but also unexpectedly delightful. Nobody loves a tidal pool the way this man loves a tidal pool. He describes coastlines like French poets describe their lovers. Hell, in Borne, the post-apocalyptic city is effectively ruled by a kaiju-sized, magically levitating super-bear, and the scariest villain is a regular-sized (but very menacing) duck.

There’s almost none of that here. The drones have gotten a little fancier and the world’s gone to shit. No impossible sci-fi. No crazy weirdness. Just a mysterious note in a grim world that eventually leads to violence and heartbreak.

The Missed Twist

I don’t want to be too down on this book, and I’ve already gotten more negative than I really like. The fact is, I plowed through it, and I did want to know the answer to the mystery. I wanted to know how it all turned out. But the entire time I was reading, I kept waiting for the twist that would help me finally understand Jane and why she was doing all this.

That twist never came.

Solarpunk Syllabus

I recently purchased a solarpunk anthology, and it led me into a minor fixation on this lesser-known sub-genre of science fiction. Last week I wrote an introduction to solarpunk, but I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve been exploring the web to find more, and compiling a little syllabus for my own self-directed course.

Since I’m taking the time to write it all down, I figured I might as well put it out as a resource for anyone else who is interested in digging a little deeper. (As usual, I’m providing Bookshop.org affiliate links where possible – these support me and local bookstores.)

It’s interesting to note that most of the solarpunk fiction I’ve found so far is anthologized short stories—fitting considering my renewed focus on short fiction this year.

Short Fiction

Novels

(Retroactively Categorized as Solarpunk)

Articles and Essays

Posts and Lists

Related

Solarpunk 101

The term “solarpunk” has been on my radar for a couple years: a fuzzy idea of a genre that has ecology and climate change near its center, and the overused “-punk” suffix that we can no longer trust to have much real meaning.

When I finally picked up an actual solarpunk anthology at my local Half-Price Books, the introduction sent me spiraling down an Internet rabbit hole. I found myself with 30 tabs of solarpunk open, at least that many already combed through, and a small pile of dead links and dead ends.

The term solarpunk is now more than a decade old, but it still exists in the periphery, the outskirts and wild country of sci-fi, futurism, fashion, and politics. It may be a short-lived idea that never achieves critical mass. Only time will tell if it’s something that has actually taken root and begun to grow.

As evidence of this tenuous position, I submit most articles, posts, and papers that mention solarpunk. The vast majority are just like this one: explanations that attempt to answer “What is it, really?”

And yet, there is a cult following. Among this small cohort, there is clearly a hunger for more of this genre and aesthetic. There appears to be a demand that far outstrips the supply (a couple anthologies, small online magazines, and a smattering of discourse).

I’d love to talk about where solarpunk might go, and how it can grow and gain traction. But I’ll have to save that for later posts. First, I have to start where everyone starts. What is solarpunk?

Origins

The first piece of Solarpunk literature generally cited is Solarpunk: Historias Ecologicas e Fantasticas em um Mundo Sustentavel—a 2013 Brazilian anthology, first published in English in 2018.

Another widely cited early work is a Tumblr post that popularized the term on that platform. The tag now has 20k followers.

Solarpunk – Notes Toward a Manifesto is a somewhat more academic treatment of the nascent movement and the ideas that influence it.

The Aesthetics of Solarpunk

There aren’t any. Not really.

Well, okay, that’s just my personal position. Others will disagree.

There aren’t any. Not really. This is my position. Others will disagree.

Plants and nature have an obvious place in it. Stained glass and art nouveau have been proposed as a component. Reclaimed and recycled materials, decomposable and natural materials; metal, glass, fabric, stone and wood. Less plastic. Or the polar opposite of Apple’s design philosophies.

A fair amount of ink has been spilled trying to corral an aesthetic, but these attempts often come at it from the wrong direction. You can’t start with an aesthetic and then back into a genre from there. The recognizable elements of cyberpunk and steampunk were distilled from many examples of those genres.

I’d argue that there simply aren’t enough popular examples of solarpunk to achieve the critical mass needed for generally agreed-upon aesthetics to emerge. That’s okay. It’s exciting. The field is still wide open, and resonant ideas still have a chance to shape what the genre might become.

The Politics of Solarpunk

If the “punk” in cyberpunk and steampunk ever held any political connotations, I would argue that they have long been ground down and worn out. The philosophy of cyberpunk is largely nihilistic: a wildly unequal world full of wealth disparity, desperation, and hopelessness, where the unification of corporate greed and governmental control has made the rich practically unassailable. If I were a cynic, I might say it’s a slightly grimier, neon-lighted version of the world we appear to be living in.

The politics of steampunk is anachronistic Victorian British, which isn’t much better.

Solarpunk might have more right to claim “punk” than its older siblings. It has an inherently political core: a belief that the average Joe has the duty to fight back against the status quo, that the system dominated by corporatism, greed, indifference to human rights, and ecological catastrophe must be overthrown. It’s a belief in individualism and self-sufficiency, but also in local small communities, human- and environmentally-conscious economics, and grassroots support systems.

This is a modern twist on the original punk movement of the 70s and 80s, strongly anti-authority and inherently suspicious of both government and corporatism. Wild and chaotic, but also joyful in a way that only people living on the edge of desperation can be.

Solarpunk currently has a streak of willful nonviolence (at least toward people). This, perhaps, runs contrary to the punk ethos that if The Man is going to push you down, you had better go down swinging, and knock some of his teeth out along the way. I suspect there might be a real audience for a rougher, more violent strain of eco-fiction like this, but I’m not sure it could call itself solarpunk.

The Challenges of Writing Solarpunk

The first challenge, as you might already suspect, is trying to define the boundaries of the genre and writing within them. Solarpunk invites you to choose your own adventure, and then find out whether others think you’ve hit the mark.

The second, and much bigger problem, I feel, is that solarpunk strives for a utopic vision, and utopias are dangerously boring. Nobody wants to read a story where all the challenges and difficulties have been smoothed out. That’s why so many utopias turn out to be dystopias once the protagonist discovers a few nasty truths.

Luckily, the road to utopia is rough, and there are plenty of solarpunk stories to be told along the way. I see the best place for solarpunk stories living in the time between the present and some glorious, distant future.

That brings us to the third challenge: imagining solutions to very hard, very real problems. We don’t live in a solarpunk utopia today because there are daunting technological, societal, political, and economic challenges that prevent it. Those conflicts and tensions are fertile ground for stories, but they also require some serious thought about how we should try to overcome them.

The soft sci-fi of technobabble problems and technobabble solutions don’t work well here. The readers of today are all too familiar with climate change, oligopoly, and enshittification. A story that proposes half-hearted or unrealistic solutions to these modern woes will fall flat. It’s not easy to imagine solutions (or even battle tactics) that feel plausible. And yet, this is one of the great delights of science fiction, and a reason why the genre continues to inspire the real future. People use stories to make sense of the world.

Future Positive

I hope this brief introduction has whet your appetite for more. Although it’s young, solarpunk strikes me as a genre that is shockingly well-suited to the current moment. We don’t need the nihilism of cyberpunk or the escapist fantasy of steampunk. We need something grounded and fighting mad.

Solarpunk takes the energy and anti-authority attitude of classic punk, and marries it with determined optimism and ethical technology. It is a rebuttal to the world outside the window, and an opportunity to imagine better futures.

Rod String Nail Cloth: An Afrofuturist Mixtape — Read Report

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Rod String Nail Cloth was a random library pick containing six stories and a poem. It’s slim enough that I read it in the span of a Saturday afternoon. When I grabbed it I didn’t know anything apart from the title, but I’ve been meaning to investigate Afrofuturism for a while, and a short anthology seemed like a good place to start.

As it turns out, T. Aaron Cisco was born and raised in Chicago, but now lives in Minneapolis, so there’s a hometown connection for me. It also turns out that this is self-pub, and has a whiff of punk-rock “zine” to it. Unfortunately, it also has something like 20-30 typos and formatting errors across its 150-odd pages.

These stories revolve around themes of time travel, racial injustice, environmental catastrophe, and transhumanism. There are some interesting ideas in here, and some sentences and paragraphs that really pop. However, I found some of the writing straying too far into the literary style that I most struggle with: pages spent on a character’s languid internal thoughts without giving me enough plot or setting to latch onto.

The first story, “Now, Justice,” is the biggest offender in this regard. It follows a Black inventor who creates a machine that manipulates people’s perceptions. He uses it to take vengeance on a policeman who shot an unarmed Black kid and dodged the consequences. However, we don’t get to the first mention of the machine until page 17.

The subsequent stories were tighter, in my opinion. “Thursday Addison” is a Shonen anime of a story where a cybernetically enhanced enforcer is sent into a violent, futuristic battle that she barely survives.

“The Hesitant Envoy” is a tongue-in-cheek tale where an advanced civilization pulls aside one human to ask him to justify the continued existence of the species. He has a hard time coming up with a good argument, and isn’t particularly inclined to try.

 “Lydian Mode” is about a down-on-his-luck Black musician who travels back in time to 1960s Chicago. Despite the dangers of life at the height of the civil rights movement, he discovers that there are also opportunities.

“Captain Michaela” is a poem about the titular character (maybe?) saving the universe. I’m just the wrong audience for this. While I have my favorite poets and poems, I’ve never felt drawn to sci-fi poetry.

“Rod String Nail Cloth” is the stand-out story of the book for me, an epistolary story about a person sent far back in time to fix a broken world.

In “They Burn So Easily,” an apocalyptic virus turns people into still-thinking vampire/zombie creatures called Chalkies, more strongly affecting those with paler, less pigmented skin. It’s a story about choosing forgiveness and humanity even when it may be undeserved. The conflict in this one felt a bit rushed, and I would have been interested in a longer exploration of the setting, the premise, and the relationships between the characters.

Rod String Nail Cloth is, in parts: intriguing, goofy, and a little rough around the edges. It’s not going on my favorites list, but I’m happy to have read it, and I’ll keep an eye out for Cisco’s work in the future.

It also whet my appetite for more Afrofuturism, especially in short fiction. If you have any good recommendations, leave them in the comments.