Recommend some Solarpunk or Hopepunk books for my book club!

[BookTenTiger]

I'm in a Science Fiction and Fantasy book club. The last few books we read happened to be pretty depressing, and so I'm looking for a way to switch things up. I have always been curious about Solarpunk and other adjacent, more hopeful sci fi, but I know little about the actual books in the genre.

For those of you who have explored the genre or know of some good books, what do you recommend?

 

[Umbran]

A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers.
A Prayer for the Crown Shy, also by Becky Chambers.

I think Star Trek is actually early hopepunk, so most of the franchise will do in a pinch.

 

[MarkB]

For those of you who have explored the genre or know of some good books, what do you recommend?

I've never heard the terms. Hopepunk sounds straightforward, but what is solarpunk?

 

[Umbran]

I've never heard the terms. Hopepunk sounds straightforward, but what is solarpunk?

Ecological hopepunk. Stories about building a sustainable world.

 

[MarkB]

Ecological hopepunk. Stories about building a sustainable world.

Hmm, Dennis E Taylor's Bobiverse series might work, then. They're not without conflict and ups and downs, but they're very much about building a better galaxy.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers.
A Prayer for the Crown Shy, also by Becky Chambers.

Came here to recommend Becky Chambers. Both of these series, especially the Wayfarers books (which starts with A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet) are fantastic and should help be something of an antidote to waves hands generally toward the state of the world

Her other novella, To Be Taught, If Fortunate, is a little more bittersweet, but still fantastic.

Not solarpunk or hopepunk (or sci-fi at all), but The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman is an amazing novel that came out last year about resilience and hope in dark times. Highly recommended as well.

 

[zakael19]

Chambers has been covered, so no need for me to reiterate her.

The Goblin Emperor - my favorite book of the century to date. Implicitly about hope and compassion.

 

[dragoner]

I created Solis People of the Sun partially with a solarpunk vibe. Some of the books I credit are The Dispossessed by LeGuin, often thought of as the first solarpunk book, also Blue Remembered Earth by Reynolds is on my list. Often one finds Binti by Okorafor, and The Windup Girl by Bacigalupi. Butler's Parable of the Sower makes most lists. Beyond sustainability, solarpunk also looks to a "whole Earth" society, as well as equity.

I found the manifesto by Flynn early after he wrote it 2014, so it has evolved a lot.

https://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Not solarpunk or hopepunk (or sci-fi at all), but The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman is an amazing novel that came out last year about resilience and hope in dark times. Highly recommended as well.

Reading it now based on you previously recommending it, and it's great so far!

I think Star Trek is actually early hopepunk

100% yes.

 

[jian]

Hmmm. Hopepunk is about hope in the face of everything in the world right now, I suppose, and the belief that we should and can resist and overcome.

In that sense, Charlie Jane Anders’ YA space opera series, Unstoppable, is very much hopepunk. It tells the story of a group of disparate basically-Starfleet cadets (including a few from Earth, which has just been introduced to the galaxy) as their apparently utopian galactic society fragments along its smug fault lines in the face of fascism and have to fight to rebuild it and redeem the promise of a better day. The books are Victories Greater than Death, Dreams Bigger than Heartbreak, and Promises Stronger than Darkness, and they’re all excellent.