Cyberpunk: Then and Now
thedorkweb.substack.com
thedorkweb.substack.com
"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."
It's more appropriate to call it "Solarhope"
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.
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.
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.
Her works are the best place to start
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?
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:
But the devil is in the details. IMO, execution trumps trope.
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)
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.
But yeah - the absence of Gibson is pretty conspicuous.
SRD ( Samuel Delany ) and other new wave authors are certainly Cyberpunk influences.
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.
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.
(Richard Morgan: Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies)
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.
These http://www.openculture.com/2018/09/long-tomorrow-discover-mo... and https://www.neondystopia.com/cyberpunk-books-fiction/the-leg... discuss the influences that The Long Tomrorow had.
On Moebius in general, https://www.moebius.fr/?lng=en is a good starting point.
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.
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.
The books were very positive and inspiring: space exploration, communism that worked, a very interesting world to live in.
As nine_k commented, I hope they open Soviet Sci-fi with its interesting aesthetics.
Strugatsky eventually turned from optimism to more pessimistic and tragic future like in “Beetle in the Anthill” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetle_in_the_Anthill
Definitely read this article while listening to LORN’s ANVIL as the author suggests.
Listen Zombie, believe me. It was a real cyberpunk novel in 1970s.