Solarpunk is realistic optimism about the future; so too is Lunarpunk… but differently.
Kenneth Silber of the arts magazine Splice looks at the two:
The Lure of Lunarpunk
A new sci-fi subgenre and style mixes darkness with optimism.
I first became aware of solarpunk through Twitter mentions by economist-blogger Noah Smith, who’s incisively examined the combo of nature and urbanism that characterizes the solarpunk aesthetic. In literature and art, solarpunk has an optimistic vibe, emphasizing sustainable, humane futures; in contrast to cyberpunk’s dystopianism and steampunk’s nostalgia. The suffix “-punk” is affixed to sci-fi subgenres like “-gate” to political scandals, but carries an implication of the protagonist as rebel, which is in some tension with solarpunk’s upbeat tendencies.
Lunarpunk is a recent offshoot of solarpunk, one that similarly depicts improved societies emerging from environmental and sociopolitical crises, but with a different philosophical spin and artistic look. Lunarpunk puts an emphasis on individualism over the communitarian ethos common in solarpunk; it highlights loners who think and act in a recovering world, while still blaming capitalism for much of what went wrong. Like solarpunk, lunarpunk imagines environmentally-friendly technologies; but lunarpunk also seeks the spiritual and mystical, showing future science converging with the supernatural or occult. Unlike the earth colors and daylight of solarpunk imagery, lunarpunk offers nocturnal scenes and strange glows.
Solarpunk is intriguing to me, but has a certain sameness to its visuals, such that I’ve contrasted the field less-than-favorably to the works of Frank Lloyd Wright. Lunarpunk’s images convey a greater sense of mystery, an atmospherics evoked by a collection of bottles I saw in a cave used by World War I soldiers under Arras, France. Disney’s theme-park rendition of the Avatar planet Pandora seems lunarpunk, even if the term’s not used there. Night skies, dark forests and the growing inflow of astronomical imagery all offer inspirations for lunarpunk. If people return to the moon anytime soon, that too will provide material for this aesthetic.
Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology (Android Press, Jan. 24) is a collection of stories and poems offering a sense of this subgenre…