Solar Punk Best Novels?

[Ruin Explorer]

I think the categories in teh OP tend to be younger authors?

Yeah like Becky Chambers is 41, so like, not even an elder Millennial, a mid-Millennial.

In the TTRPG space the games I see exploring these themes are often queer GenZed or just on the line of millennial.

That's what I've been seeing, hopepunk is mostly mid-Millennial or younger thing, though I sure there are exceptions (I mean, most Gen X writers aren't nihilists, it's just a much higher proportion).

 

[Umbran]

Anything by Becky Chambers seems like it might fit into solarpunk I think.

As others have noted, I don't think it applies to all of her work. Much of her work is "cozy", and generally hopeful. But much of it doesn't speak to the specific themes of solar/renewable energy or sustainability on the planet we've got.

Most of her work might be classified as "Hopepunk", but even then, some of it is more rejecting our current, real-world status quo, as opposed to characters in the story rejecting a status quo within their fictional world.

 

[Umbran]

Cyberpunk was/is usually dystopian. Are retro-futurist genres like Steampunk and Dieselpunk usually as well?

In early Steampunk and Dieselpunk, yes. But those genres (especially Steampunk) tend to put a focus on the craftmanship and/or western-esque rugged individuality of the protagonists, and thematically that equates to power. While a cyberpunk hero is often trapped in their dystopia, I think authors found over time that a steampunk hero has options to break the dystopia through their own creativity and gumption.

Punk by itself implies anti-authoritarian, kicking against the system and status quo. That can be either hopeful or nihilistic.

Yeah. If your kicking is for naught, it is nihilistic, if it can work, it is hopeful.

 

[Autumnal]

Some anthologies:

Shine, edited by Jetse de Vries. Optimistic sf on a variety of timescales.

Defying Doomsday, edited by Tsana Dolichva and Holly Kench. Apocalyptic scenarios in which the protagonists find ways to survive. What’s interesting is that the authors and protagonists are all disabled, from blindness to depression to IBS. Despair is not to be found here except as something to overcome.

Rebuilding Tomorrow, edited by Tsana Dolichva. A follow up to the above, about what disabled protagonists do after the apocalypse is over. Really powerfully optimistic - something I reread when depressed by current events.

Accessing the Future, Kathryn Allan and Djibril al-Ayad. Another anthology of disabled protagonists finding out how to make their way in various futures.

And novels:

Islands in the Net, by Bruce Sterling. A very funny and plausible element of the background is that the older generation managed to outright abolish nuclear weapons, is very very proud of this, and the kids are totally unimpressed and sick of hearing about it. Thus the story of a world good in many ways getting better, often despite the best efforts of would-be villains.

There was a joke at the time when this book came out that it cyberstraight, or cyberbourgoisie (this was before “bougie” was in common usage), or cybernormie.

Carve the Sky, by Alexander Jablokov. It’s a future Renaissance, more or less, after the theocratic tyranny that ruled Earth for centuries has. Burned down, fallen over, and sunk into the swamp. (It’s an unusual theocracy, eerie to read this days, with a resurgent Orthodox Russia driving things.) there are messes, but they’re getting solved.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Definitional quibbling aside, Becky Chambers is fantastic. 10/10, fully endorsed. Read her stuff.

 

[Umbran]

Oh and if folks need another example - not a novel, but the story behind Wall-E is actually pretty solarpunk.

 

[Clint_L]

Well, as you can see from my tattoos, I'm pretty biased. I used to be in a punk band. For me, "punk" implies a certain attitude, and it is hard to wrap my head around some of these fusions while still seeing them as remotely punk. Like, it's not just being anti-establishment; hippies were anti-establishment but antithetical to punks.

 

[zakael19]

Well, as you can see from my tattoos, I'm pretty biased. I used to be in a punk band. For me, "punk" implies a certain attitude, and it is hard to wrap my head around some of these fusions while still seeing them as remotely punk. Like, it's not just being anti-establishment; hippies were anti-establishment but antithetical to punks.

To quote Wikipedia:

"The punk ethos is primarily made up of beliefs such as non-conformity, anti-authoritarianism, anti-corporatocracy, a do-it-yourself ethic, anti-consumerist, anti-corporate greed, direct action, and not "selling out."

"Hopepunk" was a term generally coined in reaction to the spread of "grimdark" media, which tends to be "everything is crap, you're crap, and it will be crap forever." Instead, Hopepunk said "if things are crap, we can fight back and through themes like above make a better tomorrow."

Solarpunk is focused on ecological tomorrows, often as a reaction to themes in current society (and a lot of futurism) around corporatism and ecological collapse. It says that through focusing punk themes on envisioning how a culture might move through that sort of exploitive situation, we can build a "punk" tomorrow.

To tie back to the Monk and Robot series - it's about a world explicitly built on a place where once it was a collapsing corporate polity that was exploiting resources and crushing the underclass, and reckoning with what remains. You could call it "utopian" if you want to discard the lingering things that are reasoned with, but the series drills in on like "what comes after your punk revolution and what that looks like."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"Hopepunk" was a term generally coined in reaction to the spread of "grimdark" media, which tends to be "everything is crap, you're crap, and it will be crap forever." Instead, Hopepunk said "if things are crap, we can fight back and through themes like above make a better tomorrow."

Which I think is a pretty punk attitude.