Good morning to everyone! I have an exciting guest post from editor Phoebe Wagner who is promoting a new anthology surrounding the Solar Punk genre. Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation comes out today! It promising outlook on the future of out world, instead of the doom and gloom dystopian vision we are all used to. The guest post that Phoebe has put together for us is all about the genre of Solar-Punk and what inspired the anthology we are celebrating today. I loved this piece, anything that introduces me to another genre of books to enjoy is great!, and I hope you enjoy it too. First a few details about the book and its editors, then onto the guest post!
Book Synopsis for Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation
Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation is the first English-language anthology to broadly collect solarpunk short fiction, artwork, and poetry. A new genre for the 21st Century, solarpunk is a revolution against despair. Focusing on solutions to environmental disasters, solarpunk envisions a future of green, sustainable energy used by societies that value inclusiveness, cooperation, and personal freedom.
Edited by Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland, Sunvaultfocuses on the stories of those inhabiting the crucial moments when great change can be made by people with the right tools; stories of people living during tipping points, and the spaces before and after them; and stories of those who fight to effect change and seek solutions to ecological disruption.
Contributors include Elgin Award nominee Kristine Ong Muslim, New York Times bestselling author Daniel José Older, James Tiptree, Jr. Award winner Nisi Shawl, World Fantasy Award and Campbell Award winner Lavie Tidhar, and Lambda Literary Awards finalist A.C. Wise, as well as Jess Barber, Santiago Belluco, Lisa M. Bradley, Chloe N. Clark, Brandon Crilly, Yilun Fan and translator S. Qiouyi Lu, Jaymee Goh, José M. Jimenez, Maura Lydon, Camille Meyers, Lev Mirov, joel nathanael, Clara Ng, Sara Norja, Brandon O’Brien, Jack Pevyhouse, Bethany Powell, C. Samuel Rees, Iona Sharma, Karyn L. Stecyk, Bogi Takács, Aleksei Valentín, T.X. Watson, Nick Wood, and Tyler Young.
About the Editors – Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland
Phoebe Wagner grew up in Pennsylvania, the third generation to live in the Susquehanna River Valley. She spent her days among the endless hills pretending to be an elf, and, eventually, earned a B.A. in English: Creative Writing from Lycoming College, where she also met her husband. She is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. Follow her on Twitter: @pheebs_w.
Brontë Christopher Wieland is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University where he thinks about how language, culture, and storytelling shape the world around us. In 2014, he earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Mathematics and Linguistics. His fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Online and Hypertext Magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @BeezyAl.
Synopsis and Bios taken from: www.upperrubberboot.com/
Solarpunk Musings by Phoebe Wagner
In 2014, Adam Flynn published “Solarpunk: Notes toward a Manifesto,” and a new –punk genre came to life. While the idea had been growing due to a Portuguese anthology in 2012 and through social media, particularly Tumblr, Flynn’s notes provided a groundwork, something to point back at and a place to start for newcomers to the many-faceted world of the speculative fiction “–punk” genres.
In his essay, Flynn looks to the bigger, more settled cyberpunk and steampunk to explain how solarpunk differs: “Our futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it avoids steampunk’s potentially quasi-reactionary tendencies: it is about ingenuity, generativity, independence, and community.” He goes on to describe the aesthetic and world of solarpunk as “age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles)” and “creative reuse of existing infrastructure (sometimes post-apocalyptic, sometimes present-weird).” Indeed, solarpunk went to the hands of the people and now with a literary journal, four anthologies, and two successful Kickstarters, solarpunk is here to stay.
When Brontё Wieland and I started tossing around the idea of editing an anthology together, we were both disillusioned with the dystopian trend in SF. While dystopian worlds and stories offered the opportunity to explore different ideas of destruction and how our current trends in politics, environment, capitalism, globalism, and so on might play out, the stories seemed too hopeless. Growing up, science fiction and fantasy were hopeful places—for me at least. Stories like Star Trek: The Next Generation encouraged innovation rather than leave the viewer feeling helpless. When I stumbled upon solarpunk through the active Tumblr community, I knew I’d found the positive, inspiring, yet deeply layered genre I wanted to explore.
For now, the interest in solarpunk seems to be growing. Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk & Eco-Speculation was successfully funded through Kickstarter, and a second Kickstarter for two solarpunk anthologies through World Weaver Press (one translation of the 2012 solarpunk anthology published in Portuguese and one upcoming solarpunk anthology) suggest there is a demand from the speculative community. I hope more writers will continue to work in the genre and that it will grow to the heights of cyberpunk and steampunk. For me, solarpunk differs from the other –punk genres in a key way—it imagines change that can be actualized. The possibility for real change makes the genre so relevant today and for the near future.
Pick up a copy of Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation here: Upper Rubber Boot Books / Amazon UK / Goodreads
Thank you for stopping by to check out the exciting, and new to me!, genre of Solarpunk. Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation is released today (29/08/17) so go get yourself a copy 😀 Please show your support for Phoebe’s work in the comments. Thank you all again for taking the time to read and share this piece. I love being able to support authors any way I can and everyone who shares this helps me achieve that goal. Until next time, Happy Reading!
Always Trust In Books 
Very interesting. I had never heard of Solarpunk either but it sounds intriguing.
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