The SP phenomenon started with a look at how our future visions could be much less doomladen:
Science fiction doesn’t have to be depressing – Sidmouth Solarpunk
Narratives around climate change: Eco-fiction genres – Sidmouth Solarpunk
Here’s a fabulous look into an ‘alternative future’ – where things are not quite as utopian as you might hope for:
THE FREE PEOPLE’S VILLAGE: EVERYDAY LIFE IN SOLARPUNK TEXAS
In a novelist’s alternative Texas, Al Gore became president and the War on Climate Change began. What could go wrong?
by TEXAS OBSERVER STAFF SEPTEMBER 12, 2023, 12:15 PM, CDT
Somewhere in a Texan’s alternative universe, Al Gore won the 2000 election and we’re 20 years into a War on Climate Change rather than the War on Terror. But then as now, Texas ain’t utopia and certain neighborhoods and people tend to get left out of the green revolution. Welcome to the “ripped from the headlines climate fiction story based on real-life activism” by Houston author Sim Kern.
Kern’s The Free People’s Village (Sept. 12, Levine Querido and distributed by Chronicle Books, LLC) draws from Kern’s own experience as a teacher in Houston public schools, their activism with Occupy Houston, as well as the present-day Stop I-45 movement. But The Free People’s Village takes place in an alternate 2020 timeline, where a supermajority of Democrats have passed sweeping climate regulation, transforming the country into a “solarpunk utopia”—but only for wealthy, white neighborhoods…