Yeah, most often when I need a tool it is to fix my house or to maintain the trees. For that I would want a tool library.
Love that. Thanks for sharing. I can also say they sometimes light up this Ferry Building in Christmas colors, which happen to be the colors of the Palestinian flag. When I project Free Palestine then, it is color coordinated and makes it seem the city is in on it.
Also trying to speak to homelessness here.
Let me know if you have suggestions for short phrases that could excite people enough to investigate solarpunk.
I’m delighted you enjoyed your visit to New Tollan. I recommend Solarpunk Creatures and Solarpunk Summers anthologies.
Thank you! Will get to work on the next story soon.
Thanks for beta reading. That is essential to the writing process.
Illustrator Bochica uses knowledge to make the world a better place, to help people express the utopia inside them. He is a social muralist, who supports war-victims communities in Colombia. Concerning the cover art, he wrote the following:
*The technique used was mixed, acrylic and ink on canvas. Painting this piece was a real challenge—synthesizing and imagining a culture made of many ancestral cultures. The arch was inspired by art nouveau but also by Hindu art, while the figures reference both southern and northern Native American cultures. The pillars are like “totems” of Native American origin, but the figures are inspired by Indigenous peoples of South America and the South Pacific, from Easter Island, the Maori, through the Incas to the Mayans and Aztecs. These columns also reference the legend of “Huitaca” from the muysca people, which speaks of a demon who ascended and became the owl—a symbol of wisdom and knowledge in many cultures. In this case, I wanted to refer to the novel’s great library. The circles are inspired by the sun but are also inspired by speakers, referencing the “voice of the people” and social organization within solarpunk.
At the top, there’s a kind of staircase inspired by the “chakana,” an Incan symbol representing the connection between the human world and higher realms.
The mermaid is inspired by “Yemaya,” who is an Orisha or goddess in the Yoruba culture from Haiti.*
Didn’t plan on publishing my solarpunk novel this week. But it feels like the time for a story that’s radically hopeful.
We outlive capitalism. In a post-scarcity society, people do things not out of desperation but for joy. Xavi loves nothing more than putting on a silicon tail and swimming as a mermaid. She performs for children. Xavi encourages them and their parents to protect the clean water of the city’s canals. A community treasure, she is the first person who comes to mind when excited doctors develop a surgery to turn someone into a merperson. Xavi pioneers it, pushing the boundaries of transhumanism.
Then the mermaid goes missing.
A local citizen detective discovers Xavi had texted them “help” the night before, when their devices were silenced. The Citizen Detective Society mobilizes across the globe. They hope to crowdsolve the mermaid’s location and soon. Every passing hour reduces the probability they’ll discover her alive.
You can find the ebook on this indie site as well as the two more mainstream ones.
I appreciate you being clear this isn’t solarpunk. It is contorting economics to try to make it humane.
Please be clear in your post these are by the Lemonaut.
dragon wings solar Generators 💚💚💚 I will point out that even here, people are not deploying those blimp wind turbines, which are supposed to be good for emergency power.
We had a fun discussion last weekend. Feel free to join us anytime. This is an anthology, so you can jump in, read that week’s stories, and hop on the call. Here is a new link in case the last timed out. https://discord.gg/x25VrwFC
Yes, solarpunk is political. And while capitalist would-be-lords try to buy out elections, it is important you oppose them by voting. Locally, vote for candidates who support solarpunk values such as public transit and green infrastructure.
If you, like me, have the misfortune of living in the USA with its death economy, we need to vote and register others to vote for a candidate who is part of that bad system: Kamala Harris. A corporate Dem is at best a bandage for the open wound of fascism. Harris is not a solution. But if you don’t vote for her, that wound is going to get even more rotten.
A projection in Oakland that reads “liberation requires community.” What ways have you found to build community?
In a post-scarcity solarpunk future, I could imagine some reasonable uses, but that’s not the world we’re living in yet.
AI art has already poisoned the creative environment. I commissioned an artist for my latest solarpunk novel, and they used AI without telling me. I had to scrap that illustration. Then the next person I tried to hire claimed they could do the work without AI but in fact they could not.
All that is to say, fuck generative AI and fuck capitalism!
Thanks! Added it. And now I’m aware where to input the alt text for the future.