Zines

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8664337

Scrappy Capy Distro has released the first issue of Harbour, an anarchist literary journal. It has 7 pieces from 6 authors, poets, and artists. You can download it for free online, or get it on paper if you happen to live in Berlin and know the anarchist scene there.

Full Disclosure: one of those authors is me! My story Fair Game is the first prose story in this edition (on page 3 on both versions of the PDF). I'm very excited that they accepted it, especially because that means I can start posting a related comic/art project I’ve been working on in the background for several months.

In the beginning of the journal the editors say this on the subject of fiction:

Traveling to some anarchist book fairs, we noticed that most of the tables were filled with theory and there was very little fiction. This edition, and future ones, is an attempt to remedy this.

Theory is often placed above fiction as more important and serious, but we believe that fiction deserves just as much space. Not all critique of the world has to offer a complete or even partial alternative to the existent, but when we fail to tell a narrative of what possible anarchist futures could look like, it can be very hard to entice others away from the pull of capitalism.

If there ever were some collapse or successful insurrection, ideologies whose ideas were most digestible or had been most widely spread would win out. Following such change, we don’t want things to return to the way they were. We want anarchist ideas to ripple out across the populace, for them to be something easy for others to play with and understand. Stories are one way to do this.

We want to make a space — a space to imagine, a space to vent, where ideas from many different places can come together, a place where we can then leave with these ideas, to pass them on.

A harbour is a place from which to venture out.

I think there's a ton of overlap between that and solarpunk in general, and the ability to show positive, attainable futures, and to demonstrate the lived experience of those better worlds, how they work, is a big part of what draws me to the genre. Hopefully I'll have a more solarpunk story for them in the future.

Speaking of which, if you have a vision of the future you want to share, they're already planning for their Fall 2024 (Issue 2). Submissions will be open from September 1st to 30th: https://en.scrappycapydistro.info/submissions