Solarpunk Presents

On this episode of the podcast, Ariel chats with Dr Tanis MacDonald about her upcoming course in winter 2025 on hopepunk. What exactly is so punk about this kind of hope? Can hopepunk even be said to be a genre in its own right, or is it an aesthetic or lens that we can use to think through just why the characters are deciding to have hope in bleak situations? 

Tune in for recommendations of hopepunk novels (and poetry!), ruminations on political hope, the centrality of relationships and radical empathy to these stories, and more. Plus some academic theories informing the formulations of hope, of course. 

Links:

• Tanis MacDonald | Author of Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female
• Watershed Writers with Tanis MacDonald | Podcast on Spotify
• Hopepunk, explained: the storytelling trend that weaponizes optimism | Vox
• Companion Species Manifesto
• The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
• S2.9 Reframing Narratives With Ecocriticism, With Dr Jenny Kerber

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If you’re a no-kill animal shelter or an animal rescue group and you’ve got more rescue animals than kennels to keep them in, or you’ve got dogs or cats with health or behavioral problems that need sorting out to make the beasts adoptable, what are you going to do? You’re going to call an animal fosterer like Rena Curtis to take that animal in, de-traumatize it, teach it some manners, and get its health problems sorted out so it can go a-courtin’ its forever people. Tune in as we discuss this hard, sometimes frightening, occasionally heart-wrenching, but ultimately satisfying work, why there are so many more dogs and cats than homes to put them in, and what we can do to change that situation.

You can follow Rena on Instagram at @sockmonkeylove33

To learn more about the animal rescue organizations she has fostered for, visit https://www.yavapaihumanetrappers.org/ and https://yavapaihumane.org/

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This week on Solarpunk Presents, we’re bringing you an interview with Andy Gross, one of the brilliant minds behind Fully Automated! A Solarpunk TableTop RPG (Role-Playing Game). Don’t worry, you don’t need to know game jargon to follow along for this one - solarpunk storytelling comes in a lot of different forms, and this is yet another kind for people to use to imagine a kinder, greener future that strives towards a utopia … of sorts.

RPGs get a reputation for being all about fighting. How does that work if the RPG is solarpunk? Or utopian even? What is an RPG, in the first place? What is the usefulness of a solarpunk RPG? Join us as we discuss these questions and more.

Art used in episode cover is by https://patreon.com/seanbodley and...

Links:

You can find Fully Automated at https://fullyautomatedrpg.com/

The Sogorea Te Land Trust: https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/

Solarpunk 2050: http://solarpunk2050.de/ 

Solarpunk Pioneers Fund: http://solarpunk-pioneers.org/ 

Coyote & Crow: https://coyoteandcrow.net/ 

Lunar Echos: https://affinity-games.itch.io/ 

Neon Black: https://notwriting.itch.io/ 

Legacy: Life Among the Ruins: https://ufopress.co.uk/legacy-life-among-the-ruins/ 

Fighting for the Future: https://www.android-press.com/product-page/fighting-for-the-future-ebook 

“Murder in the Tool Library” by AE Marling: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/murder-in-the-tool-library-a-e-marling/1144354144 

“Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto” by Aaron Bastani: https://www.versobooks.com/products/476-fully-automated-luxury-communism 

“Four Futures: Life After Capitalism” by Peter Fraise: https://www.versobooks.com/products/59-four-futures

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This week on Solarpunk Presents Podcast, Ariel chats with Selena Middleton, Publisher and Editor of Stelliform Press, all about publishing eco-fiction. What is eco-horror, and how does it relate to solarpunk fiction? What are the hallmarks of a good solarpunk story, according to Selena? How does history fit into visions of the future, and what does character have to do with it? Join us as we discuss all this and more.

Links: 

Stelliform Press website

Depart! Depart! by Sim Kern

Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri

Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris

The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer

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Now streaming: some hot takes from your solarpunk aunties. Ariel and Christina consider why wallowing in negative feelings is just so delicious ... as opposed to wallowing in, you know, acts of kindness and feelings of compassion, which are just a bit more solarpunk. We live in an age of outrage, it seems: cancelling, social media mobbing, cyberbullying ... but also drawing attention to human rights violations, or dodgy political happenings, or just straight-up illegal goings-on! How can we tell whether our outrage is justified or not? How can we avoid emotional manipulation? Can we think of outrage as a solarpunk tool?

Links:

• What is Affect Theory?
• Cultivating Emotional Literacy

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On some very serious level, it’s just not solarpunk if it’s not about a community taking action to make the world a better place. Individualism: it’s just so wrong. It’s fair to say that, not just in solarpunk, but in our cultures, “community” is right up there with “children” as an idea of something inherently good, moral, and wonderful. Community is worshiped as an answer to our problems. But Christina gets a sinking feeling every time she reads a solarpunk story that idolizes community.

In this episode, Christina tries to figure out why she’s so suspicious of community and so afraid of being suffocated by the rules, regulations, and norms of community. Join us for our Season 5 closer in which she and Ariel peek at community’s darker sides, like infighting, conformity, the potential for ostracizing people who don’t conform, and the fact that the existence of a community automatically creates a them.

Links: https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/losing-a-beloved-community

Important announcement: We will be going on a short break for August, but stay tuned for season six in September!

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Join us for the final interview of this season, as we talk with Michael DeLuca, publisher of Reckoning, a yearly journal of creative writing on environmental justice, and author of The Jaguar Mask. Michael, impressed by the creative uses of cast off technology in the Global South, would like us to also adopt old tech. He recommends that we follow their lead and adapt old tech to suit our needs, as well as find creative new uses for old tech. We should do better than just be passive consumers of the tech that is sold to us more to the needs and convenience of the companies that produce it than to ours. 

You can follow Michael via his website (mossyskull.com), Mastodon (@[email protected]), and Bluesky and X (@michaeljdeluca). 

Here are some links relevant to our discussion...

...about the hand-cranked laptop

...concerning the (reindeer) who ate all the food on the island

...regarding a degrowth strategy to reach net zero carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere

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In this episode, Christina talks with Star Ngei, a maker/hacker who helps raise awareness of Global South technology and innovation through the NGO Global Innovation Gathering (GIG), which hosts a network of makers and makerspaces throughout the Global South. Although it’s hard to generalize across a space as culturally, politically, economically, and geographically diverse as the Global South, Christina and Star discuss how the access of people in the Global South to tech is limited compared to that of people in the Global North and so they have a more creative, non-linear approach to technology. They’re far more open to modifying a piece (or pieces) of technology to fit their specific needs, rather than just using it as it comes out of the box and merely specifically for its intended use. Christina and Star also talk about climate change and what the Global North can learn from the Global South in terms of dealing with it. Lastly, they talk about building community and how, if you’re interested in working to decrease global inequality by helping people in the Global South, the best place to start is by striking up a relationship with a community there first. Unless you want your efforts to be a waste of your time, their time, and resources, don’t just give a group of people in the Global South what you think they need, find out what they think they would find useful.

To join, support, or learn more about Global Innovation Gathering, check out https://globalinnovationgathering.org/

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This episode’s guest is Dr Anne Pasek, Canada Research Chair in Media, Culture, and Environment, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Studies and the School of the Environment at Trent University. Dr Pasek is co-founder of the Low Carbon Research Methods Group, and she talks to Ariel all about what Low Carbon Research is (and can look like!), the “carbon footprint” of academic research, new innovative ways for research to respond to the climate crisis, the importance of zines, and even hosting her own solar server in her backyard!

Links:

Dr Pasek’s personal website

Low Carbon Research Methods

EMM LAB

Solar Protocol

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