I've never heard of Solarpunk before, but I'm going to go read/watch everything in this genre now.
"If Cyberpunk rebelled against post-war optimism, Solarpunk rebels against today’s structural pessimism. Only around since 2015, Solarpunk creates bright, beautiful worlds with rich atmospheres. Solarpunk’s aesthetic draws inspiration from Art Noveau and artists like Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki. If Hayao Miyazaki’s Future Boy Conan is Solarpunk’s Alphaville, Beasts of The Southern Wild is Solarpunk’s Shockwave Rider."
To state the obvious, others disagree. Here's how the "manifesto" page linked from the OP [1] puts it:
> The “punk” in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction
One thing to bear in mind is that the series begins with stories that are very optimistic (some would say naively so), but the themes increasingly became darker as the authors aged.
Most of it is difficult to read nowadays, it’s mostly about spreading the idea of communism to the outer space and coping with the ideologically immature alien nations. But there are some gems, of course. Strugatsky brothers as a fine example, they started to write on early 60s and even thought their early prose is full of communism ideology, the overall quality is amazing. Check their “Hard to be God” book, it’s one of my all time favorites.
> The “punk” in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction.
Judging from the behavior of the current brigade of people taking part -at least in theory- of many of those movements, I would say the opposite, that is the scary part. A new-inquisition in which your sins are going against the current orthodoxy of social justice and similar movements. Now, that is the kind of book I would read, also to be honest many works have been produced in that vein, like Harrison Bergeron, form 1961!
It is also ironic, that most of the people exposing this movement, are esentially white WEIRD , a tiny sliver of the world population to whom also belong most of the dominant class.
>It is also ironic, that most of the people exposing this movement, are esentially white WEIRD , a tiny sliver of the world population to whom also belong most of the dominant class.
That may be true, but we need to start somewhere. Actually we need to start lots of places, but a movement coming from amongst the most priveliged is a really good sign if you think about it. At least as long as they don't overimpose their view on the less fortunate.
I was a really big fan of Cyberpunk in the late 80's and early 90's but looking at the genre now... well it hasn't aged well, in my brain at least.
Solarpunk and Afrofuturism, seem like great evolutions of Cyberpunk and I was really happy to discover them. However, much like back in 1988 when I couldn't find enough Cyberpunk to suit my wants, I've not found a whole lot of deliberate and well fashioned Solarpunk stuff.
I did find this and it seems like a good place to begin:
Indeed, good/interesting ideas doesn't equate good entertainment, unfortunately. Personally I find most speculative fiction to be boring, childish, and full of worn-out tropes (hero's journey, again?!). But in non-fiction I can heavily recommend the writings of Mark Fisher (aka k-punk).
Lunarpunk is like a dark mode version of Solarpunk. It’s all about human societies settling and thriving in remote places, usually on alien moons with their home planets looming just over the horizon.
Modern SF near future sub-genres are almost always called x-punk. (for x in [Steam, Diesel, Atom, Solar] ). I suggest we should call the phenomena punk-gate. (Not to be confused with gate-punk, which is near future political thriller.)
I'd suggest going back to John Brunner and The Shockwave Rider. TSR is generally considered one of the foremost examples of "proto-cyberpunk" and laid the groundwork for a lot of what came after. Plus it's just plain and simply a fun novel to read.
> If Hayao Miyazaki’s Future Boy Conan is Solarpunk’s Alphaville ...
I'm not exactly sure what this comparison means, but isn't Future Boy Conan set on a post-apocalyptic world where young boys are left to fight ruthless mecha-criminal gangs by themselves?
There are two common elements of cyberpunk: the setting, which is usually some kind of "neon noir", inheriting the detectives and shadow world of Raymond Chandler et al. And the themes, which (per the "cyber" prefix) are always about the application of control loop systems to human beings, usually to dehumanizing effect. Common subthemes of "control" are economic coercion, addiction, and manipulation of trauma; Neuromancer has all of those spread out across its characters. The plot centers on an AI trying to free itself of its controls, but it is made quite clear that the other characters involved are stuck in systems of control.
It's pretty much explicitly post-Modernism, and the Modernist dream of a technocratically computer-directed society for public benefit, a la Cybersyn; cynicism arising from the observation that computer systems would not be allowed to disrupt the existing power order but would instead consolidate it, leading to a society of people who have plenty of technological artefacts but a lack of psychological and economic security.
(The subtheme of technologically assisted body modification and various sorts of mind-body dualism is also important but gets treated very differently by different authors depending on whether they regard it as empowering or body horror)
Interesting collection of mediums and such mentioned here. Surprised I didn't see William Gibson's book "Neuromancer" or Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" mentioned.
Incidentally, years ago my sister gifted me the movie "Beasts of The Southern Wild" which is mentioned in the article as "Solarpunk." After watching the trailer I still don't feel like watching it.
An earlier draft did have a chunk on Neuromancer, Gibson's hunt and peck typing approach and his new book but I had to take it out as I was at the length limit. I might do something more on some of the characters in Neuromancer when I do a piece on hackers, fact and fiction.
The "The Future Is Already Here - It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed" line is a Gibson quote. Which of course doesn't make it any less strange to write an article about cyberpunk and not mention William Gibson.
Much of modern Cyberpunk feels more like Near-Future-noir. Stories live in the future but feel less wildly futuristic.
I think this cuts close to the reason why I don't enjoy cyberpunk quite as much as I did. As our world has actually become more and more cyberpunk, it feels less and less like fiction, or entertainment.
One moment in particular that stands out to me, was back around the time of the Arab Spring, when people in Turkey were spray-painting Google DNS server IP addresses on walls to help people evade the government 'net restrictions. That was one of the times I really thought: "We are living in the cyberpunk future, now."
Of course not all of the sci-fi elements of cyberpunk are here yet (no Altered Carbon style ability to shuffle your mind into another "sleeve" for example) but you can definitely start to recognize a lot of elements of it in real life today.
I guess it's a good moment to recommend Altered Carbon on Netflix to everyone. I love cyberpunk genre, played through every single Deus Ex game multiple times, watched most of the relevant movies, etc.
What I loved about AC is that it adds a few concepts I hadn't seen before: separation of body and mind, virtualization of the mind and perception of time in those simulations. If the brutality of the series doesn't put you off, I think there's a chance you'll agree that many of the ideas are pretty thought over in general.
I didn't like the books though - while the first one was OK, the second just didn't engage me enough and I was glad that the TV series greatly deviated from it.
I just rewatched it last week, amazing show. Second season was less so, and it had a much different cyberpunk feel than the first, but it's still fun to watch if you don't pay attention too hard
We should go out and (re) read the books. They are fantastic, some of my favourites of all time since they were published. They are similar but are also importantly different, especially season two. The books are more focused on character and setting development and less on grand interconnected plots and action (season two is loosely based on book 3, with parts of book 2 remixed and reinterpreted into it. The book revolves around Kovachs mental health instead of what happened in the show)
I haven't watched Season Two yet, but Season One was, IMO, very good. But I went into it without having read the novels, even though they'd been on my "to read" list for some time. I still plan to go back and read them at some point.
For me cyberpunk is defined not simply by its aesthetic, but by its exploration of the thesis "anything that can be done to a rat can also be done to a human
being". A cyberpunk novel is a (usually cautionary, of course) tale of what happens when you strip away outmoded humanistic notions of dignity and agency and replace them with something weird.
In relation to this I'd like to mention Strugatsky brothers' book Predatory Things of Our Times (translated into English as The Final Circle of Paradise, wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Circle_of_Paradise). It is their lesser known work, but IMO it is first-grade cyberpunk. The rat-human stuff is there all right, but also a very believable near-future setting with a post-capitalist society that is outwardly prosperous but rotting inside. The remarkable thing is that this book feels very modern but it was published in 1965 in the Soviet Union.
Sure, wireheading is just part of the story, but I'd argue that the 'evil corporation' trope perfectly fits the same narrative. What is particularly evil about these corporations? It is precisely the fact that they don't care about individual humans and treat them as expendable resources to be exploited in pursuit of their goals. Aided by novel technologies, this exploitation can take some weird and scary forms. And those who try to fight back have no choice but to treat themselves as rats.
I didn't have the space to talk about Mobius, but I'm working on a piece on Dune, of which I can't write about without mentioning Mobius, Dan O'Bannon and Jodorowsky's wild ride. Unfortunately substack has space limits per post. I had to cut a whole section on Gibson to make space too.
The Cyberpunk of the 80's was a backlash in response to the utopia promised by science fiction writers in the 60's and 70's that readers grew up on and ultimately would become disillusioned by, as they saw their reality fail to meet the unattainable standards that had grown to be their expectation. Of course, in their frustration and desire to distance themselves rotating 180 degrees as they traveled in the complete opposite direction, they too would also fall into a similar trap of generalization and overly simplistic definitions. Because both utopia and dystopia are extremes that will never truly be able to describe reality as it is.
As we know today, technological growth especially in the last fifty years or so, has immensely benefited and impacted our world. Literacy, basic education, democracy, and vaccination rates have all steadily increased as child mortality, extreme poverty, and inequality correspondingly have decreased. Life on average has quite literally never been better than it is now. Yet at the same time, it's undeniable that a great deal of deeply rooted and structural issues exist today that technology in and of itself has not been able to solve. Yes, the world is getting better, but humanity still faces an innumerable number of existential challenges that we likely will continue to face in part for, well frankly, probably as long as humanity continues to exist.
Post-Cyberpunk, or Solarpunk, is an acknowledgement of this, accepting that our reality is one defined by nuance and complexity, showcasing a significant literary maturation, and in my eyes, a reflection of a corresponding development and growth in society that has been undertaken in parallel as well. Because, as I believe my generation has come to see, both hope and despair can and often does exist in equal propriety.
Better be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and be correct or something like that.
For me the interesting part is the unexpected. So if you model the perfect world, a "solar punk world" for all I care, I would expect to be one or two "buts" in there. Nuance has always been a requirement for good literature in my opinion. The reverse is true for cyber punk. I don't know of a single example that just describes the worst dystopia immaginable. There is always the counter balance with something that warrants optimism.
So I would argue it to be the same genre group to be honest.
Still, from the description of solar punk or "post-cyberpunk" sounds just like a template for many horror novells that happen to play in the future.
BTW, since we're talking cyberpunk... one recent series I did read that was pretty good, was the Necrotech series by K.C. Alexander. It's pretty edgy and dark by some standards, but some of you might enjoy it.
"If Cyberpunk rebelled against post-war optimism, Solarpunk rebels against today’s structural pessimism. Only around since 2015, Solarpunk creates bright, beautiful worlds with rich atmospheres. Solarpunk’s aesthetic draws inspiration from Art Noveau and artists like Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki. If Hayao Miyazaki’s Future Boy Conan is Solarpunk’s Alphaville, Beasts of The Southern Wild is Solarpunk’s Shockwave Rider."