Solarpunk discussion
This topic is about
Glass and Gardens
Previous Group Reads
>
Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers (August 2018)
message 1:
by
Lena
(last edited Aug 06, 2018 08:29PM)
(new)
-
rated it 4 stars
Aug 06, 2018 06:41PM
Mod
reply
|
flag
Mod
Mod
Mod
Ahh, I love that! Had you read any of the books they reference in the foreword?
Mod
Mod
Mod
Mod
Caught Root by Julia K. Patt ★★★★☆
Two communities are rebuilding civilization separately, high rise vs adobe. One botanist must make the first strides towards a working relationship. Short, sweet, and romantic.
The Spider and the Stars by D.K. Mok ★★★★★
“Dedicated to Artemis, whose children reached the stars.”
I cannot believe you just had me crying fat tears over a spider! I haven’t done that since Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web.
The daughter of an insect protein farmer studies and dreams of a greater harmony, a greater world, with her charges.
Mod
Riot of the Wind and Sun by Jennifer Lee Rossman ★★★☆☆
Sweet story about a young woman getting creative to put her little town back on the map.
Fyrewall by Stefani Cox
★★★☆☆
A city facing a wild fire has to count on the granddaughter of its solar fire wall to save them.
Watch Out, Red Crusher! by Shel Graves ★★★☆☆
Injected solar cells let people themselves power a city. The side effect is that their night glow gives away their emotions; uncertainty, invitation, warning.
Mod
The Call of the Wold by Holly Schofield ★★★★☆
An old woman, running from her past, finally finds her home in a small collective where she can make a difference.
Camping with City Boy by Jerri Jerreat ★★★★☆
That was a funny story I’ve lived. You really get to know people when you’re camping. Smooth city boys and girls can just fall apart after a few days roughing it.
Lena wrote: "Caught Root by Julia K. Patt ★★★★☆ Two communities are rebuilding civilization separately, high rise vs adobe. One botanist must make the first strides towards a working relationship. Short, sweet..."
Cute, adorable spiders.
Mod
A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine by Jaymee Goh ★★★★☆
“Who would mourn the Old Rich? What had they done to deserve lament?”
This was funny if slightly bitter. When the world ran low on exploitative resources the rich buried themselves in luxury bunkers as society slowly changed for the better.
Now, in Muslim countries, when their bunkers are found the bodies are sent to a crocodile farm for disposal.
None of them want to remember when greed trumped morals.
Mod
Caught Root - so evocative, I could almost taste the dust. Sweet and such a strong start to the collection.
The Spider and the Stars - one of my favourite pieces of short fiction ever. I have a distant respect for spiders at best, but I must confess that this caught my tear ducts by surprise too.
Riot of the Wind and Sun - a slice of life in a subterranean township in the deserts of Australia. These cave settlements exist in the current day! They're still on the map for now - but we'll see how they're doing in another few years ;)
Fyrewall - possibly a little too quick for me to get as invested in this one? With the brilliant quality of the others, this one just needed to bring it harder and expand further.
Watch out, Red Crusher! - This was sad - in a community where you wear your emotions on your sleeve, one child's moment of weakness goes on to determine their entire life. A really sorrowful look at how preconceptions can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies
The Call of the Wold - after plenty of searching, balance leads a woman, finally, to what she's been searching for.
Camping with City Boy - Oh boy, this one ROCKED. Sometimes it's not until an external force acts on you that you come back to yourself and realise what you've compromised in yourself for the sake of someone else. Loved this story.
That's as far as I've got, and I'm really trying to space this collection out, rather than devouring it all in one go. It's so fantastic that that's proving really tough!
Mod
Yeah, Watch Out Red Crusher was an unexpected punch. That’s not where I had hoped it was going.
Mod
Midsummer Night’s Heist by Commando Jugendstil and Tales from the EV Studio ★★☆☆☆
I’m a fan of guerrilla guarding but not of this story.
There were many characters introduced and none of them were the point of the story. The amount of named characters was ridiculous for a short story.
And here’s what made it worse:
“Zie is pretty proud of zir scientific accomplishments...”
I hate this sentence and there were many like it. At first I thought they were typos. Then google told me they were ‘proposed binary pronouns.’
So I went back and read all the character introductions again - none were binary characters. All were written as he or she. Therefor the use of zie/zir just made it impossible to know who was talking or doing something.
But as I said character individualism was unnecessary for the story.
And the story itself? The conclusion was a lovely image of a non violent protest. It also reminded me of Pepsi commercial, the kind with Kendall Jenner only less objectionable.
None of that makes up for the time suck this story did not deserve.
Mod
The Heavenly Dreams of Mechanical Trees by Wendy Nikel ★★★★☆
Nice story about sentient solar trees using the last of their strength to bring back real trees.
Mod
Nice story about sentient solar trees using the last of their strength to bring back real trees."
Where are those - sculptures? I recognise the cover of
!
Mod
New Siberia by Blake Jessop ★★★★☆
“We learned this much conquering the Earth; we must do right or nothing at all.”
The human diaspora from a failed Earth has lead some to a desert planet where the snakelike inhabitants are pleased to let them colonize the polar regions.
This story was a glimpse into the life of one human woman and the Naga assigned to work with the refugees.
Mod
Grover: Case #C09 920, The Most Dangerous Blend by Edward Edmonds ★★★☆☆
This was a murder mystery set on a weather control station. A surprising inclusion but it was ok.
Mod
Amber Waves by Sam S. Kepfield ★★★☆☆
Story about small farms fighting big AgroCorp. Same as today, sigh.
Grow, Give, Repeat by Gregory Scheckler ★★★☆☆
A farm girl fighting for her chickens figures out how to solve world hunger by including people, their differing wants/needs, into her equation.
This story felt the least realistic and the planimals made me uncomfortable. I loath the idea even if I can’t justify it.
Mod
Cable Town Delivery by M. Lopez da Silva ★★★★☆
As towns rebuild on the shells of skyscrapers the only thing connecting them is the library. I love this idea, it reminded of The Postman.
Mod
Women of White Water by Helen Kenwright ★★★★☆
A glimpse at a close knit future community where Matriarchal elders are there to help the next generation.
Mod
Under the Northern Lights by Charlotte M. Ray ★★★★☆
Lovely romantic story to end on.
Loved this book!
Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I just started on this! Read the first two stories and already I am liking the vibe! Glad I picked this one up Lena - not sure when I can finish it though - I will do my best!
Mod
Mod
Great to see another reader ^^ Completely agree btw - those first two stories really set the (lovely) tone of this collection :)
Mod
A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine - I love the idea that, abandoned by those with the resources to hide from the problems they created, the rest of the world managed to turn itself around. Great and very inventive story!
Midsummer Night's Heist - one for the punk side of Solarpunk - very anarchist, very progressive, definitely one of the more out there of the collection.
The Heavenly Dreams of Mechanical Trees - this one was sad! There was something so touching about an almost obsolete technology gaining sentience and wanting something so biological.
New Siberia - didn't hit my buttons, though the ideas behind it were interesting. I think it was too short for what it was trying to do?
Grover:Case #C09 920 etc - not a fan of the voice used for the narrator on this one, but the story itself was good. Overall fine.
Amber Waves - I think I would like to read more of this! Agriculture is already very close to the point described by this story, and it's terrifying to realise how many of the world's food supplies are produced from copyrighted seeds.
I doubt I'll be able to hold off for much longer on this - it's a really great collection, and the combination of ecological awareness while remaining uplifting and hopeful is absolute catnip.
Mod
Loved your review/thoughts on Heavenly Dreams.
Mod
Loved your review/thoughts on Heavenly Dreams."
Thank you! I really missed this :)
Just finished Grow, Give, Repeat and had to tell you I completely agree about the planimals - they were completely unsettling. That they have no brains was repeated enough that I became suspicious that that may be just the official line..
Mod
Mod
Exactly! Yeecccch :s
Mod
Cable Town Delivery - Like Lena said, there's a bit of a Postman vibe to this one, except replace Postman with "Librarian in a kickass mech/travelling library of awesomeness". Sign me right up for that dystopian future!
Women of White Water - Love the vibe of this story. Matriarchal society with just a hint of ESP perhaps? Or maybe they just have a lot of life experience to draw from - either way, the women of this village take no prisoners but in a very loving way. Another stellar story.
Under the Northern Lights - I really, really feel like strawberries now. This was a very cute story, and a nice take on "a mysterious traveller comes to town and woos a maiden".
Love, love, love this collection, it's going to be one I come back to time and again whenever the blues start creeping in. Thank you very much for the group read, folks!
Mod
It's been wonderful starting this new group with your participation Fiona!
While everyone's still discussing Solarpunk, let me catch up with this one. Better late than never, huh? ;)Again, I won't be reading anyone's impressions before jotting down mine so that they're as pristine as pristine comes.
Starting with ....
~ On Friday, along with my friends, partners and kindred spirits from the Human Library and the Tera Fantasia Association of Bulgarian SF Writers and Artists, we'll be presenting the first awards of our contest for SF stories exploring positive futures; and then we hope to engage our audience in a discussion about the kinds of futures we envision. (The event, in Bulgarian. If you're in Sofia and Bulgarian is up your alley, be our guest too. :)
This snippet from Sarena Ulibarri's introduction to Glass and Gardens therefore comes as a timely reminder:
Science fiction has a bad habit toward homogeneity, whether it’s the depiction of a single-ecosystem planet, ubiquitous and monotone cultures, three-course-meal food pills, or futuristic silver jumpsuits for all. It would be an insult to the decentralized, localized nature of solarpunk to pin it down as only one thing. Single visions of the future ignore the cultural and ideological variations that make us human. They also ignore the interconnectivity of eco-systems, and the variations of landscape and climate that make up a world.
We'll definitely be talking about futures.
~ What kind of fairy tales does a bright future hold in store?Here's an answer from D.K. Mok's "The Spider and the Stars":
Every night, as the warmth of the day radiated back through the glass water-wall of her bedroom, Del curled up with her plush quokka and listened, enthralled, as her mother spun wondrous stories.
These were never stories of dragons and fairies, mermaids and centaurs. No, these were stories of fierce young women with flocks of tree-planting drones, firing seeds into the barren sands and rolling back the desert. Or tales of ravenous locusts sweeping across the land in suffocating plagues, and the farmers who responded by cultivating carnivorous wheat.
And the cheeses? I hear the more astute among you ask. How about the cheeses?
Rest assured. The cheeses haven't been left out either:
Xiaren followed her gaze. “Ah, I see you’ve noticed my portable domestic biogas system. Normally, biogas harvesting systems require thousands of tonnes of cheese to create a commercially viable amount of whey for anaerobic digestion. My system utilises less than twenty kilos of cheese, and generates enough gas for heating and cooking in a typical home. I call it the Fromagerie 5000!”
Xiaren swung open a panel in the tank to reveal five shelves of ripening cheeses surrounded by gurgling pipes and humming canisters. Del rocked back on her heels, the intense smell of gorgonzola hitting her with almost physical force.
“That’s…powerful.”
“I’ve specially cultivated the microorganisms to generate vastly more biogas than normal. And the cheese tastes amazing.”
Xiaren cut a gooey wedge from a creamy blue and offered it to Del, who, after a moment’s hesitation, took a bite. Notes of chilli and lychee simmered beneath the pungent flavour, and her eyes watered.
“This would make an insanely good pasta sauce.” She gave herself a moment for the sparkles to disappear from her vision. “So, why did you go into cheese?”
Xiaren shrugged. “My hometown isn’t overly fond of dairy, but we needed clean energy. And in my mind, gas is gas, whether it’s happening inside a cow or a star. Or a round of cheese.”
Del looked at the racks of peaceful cheeses, and wondered if they knew they had the heart of stars.
Though these are not utopian stories--or traditional fairy tales, as already hinted--sooo ....
“They’re about to announce the winner. Shouldn’t you be networking in the Investor’s Lounge?”
“My details are online,” he replied. “And I saw this irresistible presentation about these incredible exploding cheeses.”
Xiaren sighed. “No one was hurt. And I’ve figured out the problem.”
Mod
Fresh is definitely the way to go into this collection. Hope you enjoy it!
Thank you, Fiona! :)And I've just added another, um, delicious chunk to the excerpt above. *heehee*
Mod
Lena, the funny part is that you invited me to this group just as we were reading the entries in our contest about positive futures.The message seems to have permeated everywhere. :)
Fellow Solarpunks (:Even though I'm still at the beginning of the anthology, I added it as a write-in vote in the Science Fiction category in the Goodreads Awards:
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/1...
I already believe it deserves it. ;)
~ Stefani Cox's "Fyrewall" proposes a way to deal with teenagers. And/or feelings. ;)“Go make yourself useful and see if you can find Talia,” Daesha said to Carlos.
“What if I don’t feel like it?”
“Well, then I guess I can put that in my progress report for The Council. I’m sure they’ll be happy to hear an update on how you’ve been feeling.”
Also, this is a future where, when all is said and done, it's not a case of "much more has been said than done":
People referred to The Council as though it were a small circle of government officials, when in reality it was a chaotic mixture of, well, everyone. That was how The Council worked. You could elect someone to represent your group based almost any factor—geographic area, race, age, gender identity…the list went on. You could elect multiple representatives, and there was no limit, as long as representatives were active in participating with The Council and in fulfilling their assigned roles and duties.
So when Daesha and the teenagers stood before The Council via the holoconference she set up next to the wall tear, there were actually thousands of representatives uplinking to listen in on the conversation. And since the meetings were open to the entire city, any resident could theoretically tune in. Imagining the size of the audience that might be opening the feed from numerous points throughout the city made Daesha nervous. She swallowed to wet her throat in hopes that her voice wouldn’t wobble anymore the way it had when she’d informed The Council of the problem.
“The active fire is the biggest concern,” said one Councilmember, an older Latina woman with white-gray hair framing her face in crisp waves. “If it travels just a few miles, it could arrive at the wall and rip right through the tear. Our buildings would be immediately at risk.”
“My community is concerned with the evacuation plan,” said a mid-thirties man in a wheelchair with caramel-toned skin. He rolled closer to the device he was using to project into the meeting. “The maps are outdated, and we haven’t been keeping up with accessibility plans the way we should have been. That’s why I kept bringing it up in—”
“The Fyrewall is our only source of power,” said a member who represented the nonbinary South Asian community. They raised a leather-cuffed arm to trigger the holoconference technology to amplify their screen. “We have backup power stored up to last us for a year or two, but we’ll have to figure out how to keep the air purifiers running past that point if we want the city to stay livable.”
“Forget the air purifiers. What about the other cities who come barging down to our door whenever they sense a weakness?” asked a precocious youth member. “Selling them the Fyrewall tech and keeping the barrier flowing has been the only way to keep them away long-term, right?”
Daesha crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes for a moment. She hated Council meetings for this very reason. Too many voices, and not enough leadership. Sure, it was more fair, but it amazed Daesha that anything got done at all within this system. She suspected it was due to the multitude of citizens who ran the sub-committees for budgeting, resource management, and security. They kept the city running, while those who wanted air time made a ruckus in holoconference convenings.
~ Gregory Scheckler's "Grow, Give, Repeat" features an exceptionally smart child protagonist in an exceptionally diverse near future ... where all the other people are exceptionally mean egoists. The contrast is staggering. :(
~ M. Lopes da Silva's "Cable Town Delivery" is full of subdued exuberance. It's a fantastic future, where libraries travel from town to town, sometimes spending more than a dozen years before revisiting the same place (apparently, the Internet failed somewhere along the way); but it's even more fantastic that a librarian can be a hero just doing her job.
Mod
Ooh yes, I liked that one too. It's a bit like the travelling players that used to travel in Europe, only the books are the plays!
Mod
Kalin, I guess tower maintenance was reprioritized, so no wifi.
~ Helen Kenwright's "Women of White Water" is the delightful odd fish in the anthology. The future technology in the story acts mostly as a veneer; it is the human interactions that make its core. (And, sadly, humans don't seem to have grown up any. Well, here's one of my pet peeves with depictions of hopeful futures.) Add the lively and inventive writing, and you get an author that I'd probably look into later.
~ Charlotte M. Ray's "Under the Northern Lights" features a future like this:I had switched a few batteries into the charging hub, not because I needed to, as I didn’t use much electricity in the summer, but to have something to do. And hey, who knew if next week would be unusually cold and cloudy and dry, with no winds to speak of. Then the power-mosaics on the outside walls wouldn’t have anything to generate power from. No sun for the solar panels, no wind or water to move the microkinetics. Plus, as long as Krista stayed here, there’d be two of us who needed warm water. I set the house-AI to recalculate power usage for two inhabitants until canceled.
In which there're people like this:
“The only person who helped me build it is a little girl, Qiuyue. I doubt she’ll ever forgive me for not taking her with me, but I think her parents would have had a few problems with that.” Krista gave me a sidelong glance. The look challenged me to laugh or ridicule her next words. “My best friend is a ten-year old girl, and I miss her like crazy.”
I nodded. It wasn’t a laughing matter to me, who didn’t have any close friends at all.
How is this possible? Have those people learnt nothing about what makes them happy--or even what makes them tick?
Other than that, it's a sweet story where nothing much happens, but it's all very emotional. A bit like my life right now. ;)
