Autumn Equinox 2020 Future Invisible
Zapf.punkt 7
Autumn E quinox 2020 Future Invisible zapf.punkt 7 ein schlag ins Gesicht des Weltraums
3 Million Volt Lottery Ticket 4 The Invisible with Seb Doubinsky 9 Harry O's Volvo P-1800 10 Dream's Edge - Future Planet 18 Decolonizing the Future - con report
cover: Mystique & Grand Canyon photo (c) Joe Jiang. banner: Věra Chytilová in the galaxy, collage by Lex Berman. editorial: page 3 Plex:Eat (c) Christophe Gernigon Studio photo : page 9 (c) Harry O. Morris, used with permission. back cover: expedição ancestral (c) Mavi Morais
Zapf.Punkt Quarterly, No.7 (Sep 2020) Publisher : Diamond Bay Press. Editor: Merrick Lex Berman. Contact email: [email protected] Mailing Address: PO Box 380968, Cambridge, MA, 02238. Copyright: Entire contents (c) 2020 by Merrick Lex Berman. Rights hereby released to all contributors. Nothing may be reproduced or otherwise distributed without permission of the author(s). Million Volt Lottery Ticket
2020 will be remembered as the year of the long pause, when the churning madness of humanity was forced to chill out.
Are we only dreaming of an idyllic calm? During this all-too-short moment for rediscovering our environs and ourselves...
Or will we remember this year by the scream of madmen, swinging like wrecking balls through the entire fabric of reality?
Now the crows are crying over the marsh. The green reeds are fading to yellow. With confidence, the witches are weaving and stitching spells into sachet. The metalsmiths are hammering red-hot metal into blades. Yarrow stalks are being tossed under the slanting sun, where they tumble down beside the I-ching.
Smell the steam wafting up from hot coffee? Perserverence furthers. zapf.punkt 7 p. 4
we know as nations are all replaced by imaginary city-states. and in The Invisible, I wanted to make a strange familiarity, using a lot of references that could be transparent or seen in different ways.
Lex: In the Song of Synth, the action takes place in the cities of New Viborg and Samarqand. Those cities had both familiar elements and also pure fantasy. But Song of Synth is more of a druggie book, where the strange drug, synth, is experienced by the characters more fully. Whereas in The Invisible synth is kind of a wierd element floating in the background around the main character who is a cop, a police officer. from Occult Detective Tarot (c) Bob Freeman Seb: the main character, Ratner, was in the Seb Doubinsky on first story that opened my series of books in the city-states cycle. With The Invisible I Diamond Bay Radio didn't want the reader to be challenged, as much as in the Song of Synth, with its druggie thing, and with the drug-induced It was great fun to catch up with Seb hallucinations. I wanted Ratner to be Doubinsky and talk about his latest novel, challenged ethically, in many ways, and The Invisible (from Meerkat Press, 2020). poetically. I wanted him to be asking questions about what drugs are and about Full audio interview on Diamond Bay politics. Like what degree of corruption is Radio: https://tinyurl.com/yyaevuoq corruption?
Lex: What is it with The Invisible? Is it a cozy weird novel? Lex: As City Commissioner, Ratner gets involved in investigating synth, where it's Seb: I thought about it as a take on coming from and about it's influence on classical noir in novels and films. My society. He begins to theorize about what books, including the Song of Synth, are all synth is. Was it even a commodity, are quite different in style. they all take place they trying to sell it? Or were they just in the same imaginary setting, where what trying to get people to open up their minds zapf.punkt 7 p. 5
and change, politically and socially. As if the corruption you're writing about in The synth was a kind of an experiment. Invisible almost looks mild by comparison.
Seb: You've got a point here! People get Seb: There are drugs that influence my murdered for very little. vision of Synth. LSD of course. But the LSD experiments in the 60s and 70s were Lex: Going back to the main character, started as a government drug; and then Ratner, he's a big appreciator of the that whole thing kind of exploded in their Underground culture. he feels as though he face. And also in our youth there was wouldn't know the city at all if he was ecstasy. I don't know if you remember all some square, who didn't get into the music, the rumors going around about ecstasy in and the food, the wine bars, and all the the 80s and the early 90s? other things going on around town.
Lex: I was thinking of synth more in terms of the so-called designer drug movement Seb: I'm interested in ambivelent in the 80s. I think of that as the same as characters. I love the ambivelence and the ecstasy period. There had been a lot of ambiguities and contradictions that people use of pharmeceutical drugs, but people have. I wanted to create a character, who started to design their own recreational was a cop, so he had to work within the drugs. system. But I would say he's an intelligent cop. One of those who is dedicated to Seb: And then there were the raves. With something and who brings something to the raves going on, every time someone society, and who is not just into vigilante died by ecstasy or LSD it became a whole oppression. Although he knows that it thing in the news. But if you compare the exists and is part of the overall picture. number of deaths by ecstasy to heroin... The book opens with Ratner becoming City Lex: It's next to zero. It's very low. Commissioner, which is the highest position in the police force. and he knows Seb: And yet it was much more publicized! why he's there. it's not because of his qualities, which are there, but it's because Lex: Well it was literally a war on drugs. of politics and the symbol that he and the guys who were waging the war represents. were running the drugs up and down Central America to fund death squads. I was thinking in terms of the end of the Roman Empire, when the emperors were Seb: Exactly! To finance weapons. actually mercenaries. I'm fascinated by these guys who took power to save Rome. Lex: the world was so upside down then! That's what Ratner is doing. Because if it's zapf.punkt 7 p. 6
not him, the other person who would be in Seb: Yes, and they are trying to save his shoes would be absolutely terrifying! culture. To protect freedom through culture. They could be seen as naive Lex: When Ratner's former partner, Jesse clowns, or some very important people. I Valentino, is found stabbed to death; that's wanted to keep that ambiguity there, so when the whole case starts spinning up in they are both clowns and very important to something bigger. people. Seb: Although I wrote The Invisible, I'm not Lex: About Ratner, he's kind of comfortable, really a conspiracy theorist or fanatic. his friends have all become successful as What I wanted to do was to drag my artists and writers, and he can go to these character into a conspiracy theory. Where nice cafes and have long lunches with there are elements that could prove that them. there's a huge conspiracy going on. And yet, he's a very skeptical person. I wanted This is in a contrast to the main character to make The Invisible play out as a tension, of Song of Synth, Markus, who was a a network, where everything and it's hacker. Markus has a moment frozen in his opposite are said at the same time. head when he was captured by the police and his relationships were destroyed, when Lex: The name itself, Invisible, refers to an he became a traitor to his friends. And then invisible force, and a secret group of poetry he had to work for the police to save his appreciators who have a mission to watch own ass, even though he had to live with things. When poets are getting murdered, an ankle bracelet, subsumed by his status for example, that means to them that the as a criminal. That was pretty intense! world is going into a bad phase. and they watch out for these signs. In a way they But Ratner, on the other hand, is more have a conspiracy theory, and yet they're mellow, the sort of person you'd want to just this funny group of people who love hang out with at the Robespierre Cafe. poetry. zapf.punkt 7 p. 7
amount of time if you are open to new Seb: It was written with that intention. I ideas and new experiences. Not necessarily wanted Ratner to be a likeable character. I induced by LSD. But just relax! And try to wanted even people who are anarchists like figure out what is going on. me to be comfortable with Ratner, as a cop. And the second thing, which was very Seb: As a punk I was more into important, is that he never has a gun. amphetamines and all that hard stuff. For my children I don't want them to be naive, Putting Ratner in that very difficult but I also don't want them to be scared. position, he wants to know the right narration. He finds out that the official If you read my book, Missing Signal, the narrative is wrong. That there are many character sees synth as an antidote. When mysteries around the drugs. But on the he takes synth suddenly what changes is other side, the synth users might not that all the ads are blocked, visually. Every realize what they are doing themselves. ad he hears turns into white noise, and every billboard he sees bocomes gray. I wanted to keep that ambiguity. I really think that we are polluted. We are Lex: You mentioned that Ratner never completely polluted by this poison of carries a gun, and I'm always thinking consumption. It's what Henry Miller called about that aspect in stories, especially in America where violence is all ritualized.
In terms of drugs, I found that the main things like LSD, mushrooms, psilocybin, mescaline, and all this stuff were easy to experiment with in the 70s. Although they were considered to be dangerous by some people, they weren't thought of so much as poison by others, as much as something that you could just try for yourself.
For those who did try, drugs would open up channels in your consciousness to altered perceptions or states of mind that you could then relate to when you weren't high.
I didn't have to be an acid-head and fry my brain to figure out that this is really potent Albert Hoffman chick tract (c) Jack C.Trick stuff and you can learn a lot in a short zapf.punkt 7 p. 8 the "Air Conditioned Nightmare." So people Diamond Bay Radio Interviews turn to drugs, or whatever... it can be creative things... whatever people can find to escape... Stress is the tool of capitalism. Francesco Verso (201 8)
Lex: it's interesting to think of synth as an on transhumanism, climate catastrope, antidote. We need more ways to de-stress. embodiment, bio-horror and obsession. Like calling each other up and talking. So what are you working on now? Derek Murphy (201 9) Seb: There's a novel coming out next year called Paper Clip which is not a follow up on situationism, punk rock, rebellion, and to The Invisible. But it is part of an inner Sarasota Half in Dream, a documentary cycle within the city-states series, and it directed by Murphy and avialable on has a character called Vita, who appears in means.tv. The Invisible as someone who you cannot see. John McVey (201 9) And now I'm working on a deconstructed horror book. I've always wanted to try to on telegraphic codes, symbolic language, write a horror novel since I was a kid. And lost technologies as art. then I'll go back to city-states after that.
Arielle Saiber (201 9) listen to the full 47 min interview: https://tinyurl.com/yyaevuoq on Rennaissance computing, writing, and transformations from calligraphy to print.
also on Italian Science Fiction!
Subhodhana Wijeyerante (2020)
on Japanese Rocketry, public intellectuals, and his books The Stone Lotus and Hindu- mythological science fiction, Triangulum.
author, Sebastian Doubinsky zapf.punkt 7 p.9
Volvo P-1800 photo (c) Harry O. Morris
This photo was taken with an Elmo mini camera (HD17), and interchangeable Diana and French soft-focus lenses.
Sometimes I feel as though I'm lost in useless territory.
But Rachael tells me: "that's better than being found in useless territory!"
Harry O. zapf.punkt 6 p. 10
as self-destructive and insane. Dream's Edge and the Apparently, Ronald Reagan considered Future of Planet Earth Love Canal nothing more than a Disneyland ride for losers. Be that as it may, let us trip back to those halcyon years, when it seemed like we still had In 1980, Terry Carr edited the a chance, and warnings about our anthology, Dreams’s Edge, Science environmental future took many Fiction Stories About the Future of fanciful forms in the minds of science Planet Earth. This is an interesting fiction writers. book in many ways, appearing during the election year in the United States, when Reagan’s “morning in America” bromides triumphed over Jimmy Carter’s fight against our “crisis in confidence.”
If we had followed Jimmy Carter’s energy policy 90% of American homes would have been insulated, while 2.5 million of them would have solar energy panels by 1985. Instead, we ended up with the wholescale rejection of the ecology movement by a “greed is good” ideology. We ended up with wolves on Wall Street, and a phony war on drugs, while the Gipper was busy running death squads all over the hemisphere.
As for the environmental movement, instead of expanding to protects us all, we saw the closure of EPA monitoring stations and a wave of corporate “de- cover illustration (c) Don Shields regulation” that can only be described zapf.punkt 7 p. 11
The book opens with the poem Science manage to preserve enough energy (1925) by Robertson Jeffers, which resources to support the enormous provides the origin of the anthology’s requirements of an overpopulated world title: or of a sustained venture into space?
Man, introverted man… Being used to The answer to all of these questions is a deal with edgeless dreams, Now he’s qualified yes. We can do it; what’s bred knives on nature; turns them also more, we must. The problem is how, and inward: they have thirsty points in recent years science fiction writers though. His mind forebodes his own have increasingly concerned themselves destruction. with depicting the dangers and speculating about ways to avert them. The edgeless dreams that drove us onward to explore, to settle, to cultivate Carr goes on to cite many early were finally reaching a turning point, examples of science fiction dealing with and Carr’s introduction provided the ecological issues, such as The Doom of rationale for why he assembeld this London (1892) depicting the city anthology: suffocated by smog, or The Man Who Hated Flies (1929) which was an eco- Concern for the problems and prospects catastrophe caused by pesticides, and of our earthly environment comes John Christopher’s No Blade of Grass naturally to the writers and readers of (1956) in which a virus wipes out the science fiction – it is as intrinsic to the world’s agriculture. He goes on to say: genre as knowledge of physics, chemistry, the workings of politics and This awareness of the interdependence human psychology. of humanity’s welfare and that of the whole planet came from widespread In order to tell a story of life on a future public knowledge about environmental Earth… a writer must believe that we problems, spurred first by scientists’ can get from here to there – and there predictions and most effectively by are problems in that. concerned ecological groups. Most people listened to the warnings and Will we manage to avoid a nuclear war? then forget them, since their day-to-day Can we check the disruption of Earth’s lives were relatively unchanged. ecological balance, upon which human and all other life depends? Can we But boundaries lie immediately before zapf.punkt 7 p. 12
us. We’re coming to the edge of present conflagorations and live inside something – is it to be the death of our of a paranoid delusion. In this chaos, world, or an endless future? with this group of foaming-at-the mouth lunatics supporting a How I wish that people had taken such preposterous idiot as their President, considerations seriously forty years what is the likelihood that we can ago! But here we are today on another actually take the sensible path to a kind of precipice altogether. The great sustainable future? pandemic pause, that cut back all of our billions of daily commutes, and which Nonetheless, the answer is still the allowed our planet to gasp for breath, is same: we can do it; and what’s more, coming to an end. we must!
When I look around at my country it's If you can get your hands on a copy of on fire. My people are marching once Dreams’s Edge, you will find it contains again for equal rights and being shot by a kitchen sink full of thrills, tall tales, extremists. I feel as if a large number of clunkers, and diatribes. But they all fit Americans have gone stark, raving the purpose well, and provide an eery mad. They are in a frenzy to travel back future-scape, parts of which we can into a non-existent past. They ignore all only laugh at as absurd, and other
Burnt out car, Santiam Fire, Gates, OR. Photo: Bradley W. Parks. zapf.punkt 7 p. 13
parts of which we actually live in today. Frank Herbert’s story, Greenslaves, Here are a few highlights in the teaches the lesson of the greenhouse. collection. The more forms of life it has, the healthier it is. But this lesson unfolds In Frank Robinson’s East Wind, West in typical Herbert fashion, with a pulse- Wind the polluted air of Los Angeles pounding series of power dynamics became so life threatening that internal between father and son, farmer and combustion engines were outlawed. Indio, as the wilderness of Mato Grosso Even so, the rush hour air was terrible: in South America is overtaken by I slipped on a mask and started to mutated insects. walk. The buses were too crowded and it would be impossible to get an This is a bizarre and creepy landscape, electricab at that time of day. Besides, where nature itself seems to be traffic was practically standing still in encircling humankind who cannot the steamy murk. When I read this I understand their own part within the had to laugh. It was almost exactly like biosphere. the Los Angeles that I actually lived in during the early 1980s. Though the R. A. Lafferty tells tales like nobody situation does get worse: else can. Incased in Ancient Rind is typical of Lafferty’s tall tales. The I holed up in a bar, the smartest thing I characters are all larger than life. Much could have done. Despite their masks, larger. In this story, a group of people on the streets had started to balderdash-spouting immortals live retch and vomit. I saw one man light a through the ecological apocalypse. match to read a street sign; it wouldn’t stay lit, there simply wasn’t enough Fog, smog, and grog, and the people oxygen in the air. They’d be dropping perished. And the more stubborn ones like flies before morning, I thought. took a longer time perishing than the others. The protagonist of the story is an investigator looking for illegal For Lafferty, the flights of fancy enable automobiles that were still running travel to any realm; they can overcome internal combustion engines. It’s a any obstacle, and breach the canopy surprisingly fun read, despite the grim draped between life and death. circumstances. In this story, the doom of the planet is zapf.punkt 7 p. 14
experienced, but only in a farcical way; but didn’t really think of it as an those who wield their super-powers can environmentalist story. fly away, while those left weeping have tears that fall in slow motion. Just It’s true, there’s a lot of Panshin another wild Lafferty rave! ambling down the road, seeing trash that will be dumped into the woods by Occam’s Scalpel by Theodore Sturgeon, the farmer (out of sight, out of mind), isn’t so much ecological as and it’s all about how people can psychological. The question is: what if connect with the ground that they are the idea we have about saving our walking on and with the beauty of planet and saving life on Earth is Nature around them, rather than incorrect. What if we shouldn’t save it pounding the pavement on city streets. all? And what sort of person would put that idea to test? The ecological awareness comes from a countryside full of singing crickets at Well, we are not talking about an idiot night, and people sitting around by who would kill us all out of laziness, candlelight talking about topics like: narcissism, and ignorance. We’re talking about a genius, a scientist, a Is there really a Mafia? Or only a lot of surgeon. What if the scalpel cutting the people pretending? flesh revealed the subject, instead of the object? In this story, Sturgeon takes It’s a good question. Is there really such you there, and you will enjoy the ride! a thing as the United States, or just a lot of people pretending? My favorite piece in this book, is the totally unexpected work of brilliance, Is there really a Revolution or just a How Can We Sink When We Can Fly? by lot of people pretending? What will Alexei Panshin. This novelette first happen when enough people pretend appeared in Four Futures (1971) edited hard enough, long enough? by Robert Silverberg. Ultimately, Panshin’s story provides a I say unexpected, because in my first psychological dimension. It’s about reading of this story I was fascinated by what goes on inside a science fiction the autobiographical look at a left-wing author’s mind as he hangs around with intellectual writer struggling to survive family and friends to talk about on a mountain road in Pennsyvlania; writing. Which is a darn sight more zapf.punkt 7 p. 15
interesting, in Panshin’s case, than you might otherwise have guessed.
The prose in How Can We Sink When We Can Fly? is both stylish and daring. For example, Panshin starts off by talking about the nerve of the revolutionary in the first sentence and starting revolutions in the third sentence. And yet he deploys these Duck Amuck, dir by Chuck Jones words in such a way that they are like Panshin in Part One), Little John merely conversational, and a bit wanders self-reflectively around the humorous. countryside, with a vague notion of responsibility. On one of these In the next paragraph, he is referring to meditative walks in the woods, Little a book in Greek, The Price of Our John realizes, almost too late, that he Meritorious Redemption, which was cannot perform the mandatory social burned as sacreligious on Boston adjustments in order to exist in that Common in 1650. In this way, Panshin particular time and place. splashes off on his own trajectory, at once personal and speculative, in the Dream’s Edge is worth reading for true sense. Panshin’s story alone.
After twenty pages of rambling about By contrast to the pastoral message of his attempts to write the story in Panshin, F. M. Busby’s Three Tinks on question, Panshin suddenly hits on the the House takes place in an urban, idea of what he will write. In this way crime-ridden environment, where the the story is meta-fictional, like Daffy government interferes on matters of Duck fighting against the animation fertitily, employment, and automobile artist who is drawing him in Duck ownership. The protagonist is proud of Amuck (1953). his security system.
Part two takes off, as if Part One never The building hadn’t had a successful happened. It's a fable about Little John break-in during the four years we’d and his socialization in a world that he lived there, and only one killing and doesn't fit. In this Part two story, (much two rapes in the halls. zapf.punkt 7 p. 16
Reading this today, it seems to feed the reactionary demand for “law and order,” as creepy then as it is now.
The environmental aspect of Three Tinks on the House is centered on the automobile, which has become a highly regulated mode of transit. Old Route 516 was still coded blue. It was a slow, four-lane back road crowded with freeway rejects like myself.
The plot centers around the fertility issues of several families, and in retrospect, it reads a lot like a Philip K. Dick scenario, but told in a much more realistic, less far-out manner. cover illustration (c) Carlos Ochagavia
Terry Melen’s Whale Song fulfils the anthology was John Shirley’s Under the ecological mission of Dream’s Edge very Generator, which originally appeared in well, providing both a scientific and at Terry Carr’s Universe 6 (1976). the same time deeply mystical engagement with our changing climate. In this strange future, the protagonist In this story, a newly emergent group of works in a hospital environment, humans with unexpected telepathic managing a complex electro-magnetic powers are engaged in the task of device that is placed like a hood over moving icebergs that are breaking in people nearing the end of their lives. the polar regions of Earth. It is an The hood is used to generate energy engaging and often moving tale that from the entropy of the dying patients. makes one wish Melen had gone on to write other things. This, by all The protagonist faces multiple ethical accounts, is the only published piece by crises at once. Is he harming helpless Melen, unfortunately. patients, by watching the equipment deplete their remaining life? And was Another stand-out piece in this he merely playing favorites, helping the zapf.punkt 7 p. 17
patients he liked and avoiding the ones discovery, with an eye to being famous he disliked? and making the pages of Scientific American. He paused to appreciate the Street violence also plays a prominent grandeur of it all, right there in Port role in the story, though the hero is a Luis. victim who ultimately cannot defend himself either physically or morally. I should do something symbolic. Take a Under the Generator is altogether a pitcher of martinis with me. Sit in the great example of Shirley’s early years. bright semi-tropical sunlight (it’s early dry winter here). Drink the martinis Howard Waldrop raises the bar for slowly, toasting Snuffo the god of humor in his classic story, The Ugly extinction. Chickens, in which dodo birds that everyone knows have gone extinct, are Here’s one for the great auk. Mud in found to have originated, and still be your eye, passenger pigeon. How brooding, in Port Louis. The birds have symbolic. The story of the dodo ends been raised by farmers all along, who where it began, on this very island. never thought much about them, except Life imitates cheap art. Like the to note that they were either the Xerox of the Xerox of a bad novel. weirdest turkeys or ugliest chickens they’d ever seen. Oh damn, that’s fun. And at the same time terrifying and tragic. What if the The protagonist prepared to go on a trip ugly chickens are us? Thanks Howard, to Mauritius to prove the amazing as usual! zapf.punkt 7 p.18
Francesco Verso presented an excellent Decolonizing the Future manifesto on the purpose of Futurecon:
Bubbling up in the simmering pot of our How many wonderful books have we lost to incomprehensible global pandemic, it is translation because they are not being wonderful to realize that an event like translated? If you cannot pay for a Futurecon, has formed in the broth! The translation, you're doomed! You can't brainchild of many organizers, including a reach any market in other languages. This Fabio Fernandes, Ana Rüsche, Francesco calls for some action. Verso, Jan Bianchi this is the first free con that I have participated in this year which If we look at the last 100 years, with the explicitly seeks to foster radical development of the publishing industry and inclusivity. geographic expansion of English language usage, the Anglo-Saxon influence has The impetus for the con is in response to dominated the genre of science ficton. the English-language dominance of the science fiction and speculative fiction We (authors and editors from around the fields. Everyone on the panels is aware world) don't know each other. The tower of that there has been terrible neglect in the Babel has divided us and we can't English language markets for science understand each other any more. But that fiction being produced in so many other was last century. languages. Much of the discussion is centered around how to build up new This is a new century. We can see all the networks of authors, editors, translators, things happening in China, in Africa, in and even publishing ventures to help South America, and Mexico, and we have correct this problem. hope that these are the signs of a new beginning. This will be a new phase in The emphasis throughout has been to which we can discover new ways to read celebrate, uplift, and advance the great these stories, to find the stories, and to speculative fictions and their respective scout new authors and voices from all over communities of interest around the world! the world. zapf.punkt 7 p.19
Taking the Solarpunk panel as things like our climate, our food, the water, representative of Futurecon, you will get a the land, and non-human life in our shared feeling for the urgent voices entering these ecosystems. discussions in the following brief dialogue. Cat: Solarpunk is the antidote to Participants:: cyberpunk. It is a movement that attempts Aliette de Bodard (France) to reboot and refurnish our collective Fabio Fernandes (Brazil) imaginations. So that we can construct Andrew Hudson (USA) fresh ideas about the future and pathways (M) Ana Rüsche (Brazil) to get to there from here. Cat Sparks (Australia) Francesco Verso (Italy) Solarpunk is a practical eco-futurist utopianism, based on renewables, that In this session the partipicants imagines the kind of future we might discussed the literature of Solarpunk, actually want to live in. So it's anti- and what defines it. They also apocalypse as well. And it's grounded in interrogated the boundary between a tech we already have, we only need to find literary movement and an actual a way to use it. movement of people who are trying to save the planet from ecological Fabio: Solarpunk is anti-dystopia. It's the catastrophe. literature of the anthropocene. Fredric Jameson said cyberpunk is the literature of Aliette: Solarpunk is a fundamentally late capitalism, and the same applies to optimistic look at our future that doesn't Solarpunk. deny climate change and the social upheavals we are seeing today. In addition, For example logistic utopias in Kim Stanley Solarpunk offers a way for engaging with Robinson's books are not far-fetched this reality, and reaching some sort of utopias with impossible technologies. We accomodation with our planet, with other have the technology and tools we need planets... right now; it's all about how we can apply them to achieve sustainability. We have to Andrew: Solarpunk, like cyberpunk, does do vernacular design and take advantage take a technological line and then spins it of our local wisdoms. We have to fight with out into an aesthetic. And yet Solarpunk the tools we have right now. has a much different attitude. Where cyberpunk pushed human life into ever Francesco: People are trying to draw a line greater abstraction, and into cyberspace, where hopepunk finished and solarpunk Solarpunk is the opposite; it leads us back begins, but I would like to offer a few other into better relationships with material words of definition. zapf.punkt 7 p.20
For example, Jay Springett describes Solarpunk as a mimetic engine, a culturual construct and a media entity that is a tool to power the refuturing and rebranding of the future that we need at the moment.
I think it is a toolbox to construct stories that take us away from nihilistic and dystopic futures. We need an exit strategy from the anthropocene and capitalocene, and we should know that not all societies can face the situation in the same way.
Ana: Can Solarpunk ideas play a role in decision making and politics?
Andrew: In many ways, whether or not we are doomed is baked into the geophysics of Solarpunk: Histórias ecológicas e the climate at the moment. We can't control fantásticas em um mundo sustentável the outcome, but we can imagine a future where we made good decisions. We are a point of multiple interelated crises, and fiction is the correct landscape We can have the community discussions to to lay down a foundation to build upon. define what is better. We can decide to switch our energy production to solar or Because the way we look at the future, the wind. We could imagine a society where way the challenges are framed determines transformation is beneficial to people and how we search for answers and solutions, communities who are now marginalized. and will inform how we prioritize. And what Solarpunk in particular is prioritizing Cat: The future is not a given. There's no is ground-up approaches as opposed to top- guarantee that humanity is going to down. And a move away from patriarchy. survive for long. I think massive changes Because we can't just look to the past to to our consensual realities are required to move into the future. It's just not going to survive our current predicaments. get us there. Speculative fiction offers ways for embodying, telling, imagining, symbolizing Ana: How can we present Solarpunk in a different futures that allow us frames and way that will convince the leaders of understandings to get us on the right today? pathway. zapf.punkt 7 p.21
Fabio: It's all about narrative, and who Francesco: In Cyberpunk stories we controls the narrative right? For example, typically find a lone hero, which feeds into my brother-in-law is a lawyer. He once the established narrative. But in Solarpunk remarked to me over lunch: "It's not about the protagonist fights for an ideal, for who is right in the tribunal of law. It's all something bigger. Take for example, Greta about who controls the narrative. Whoever Thunberg, who fights for climate change. controls the narrative can win the process." Although it was years ago, I was annoyed And the aesthetics are quite different. In by what he said, but it turns out he was Cyberpunk they are wearing black leather right. with zippers and mirrorshades in urban settings. While in Solarpunk we can see Somehow those who support the official people planting a tree, or potting flowers to narrative (which is a bald-faced lie!) are make urban settings more lively. In still in control. And many people are still in Solarpunk, people help each other. They do thrall to this narrative. things together, like fighting for their community against gentrification. These It's like a collective hallucination, or a images completely change the narrative. consensual hallucination, which is awful! There is an idiocracy taking place, and Young people reading these stories want to when you say "I'm a teacher" or "I like to know how they can achieve this, asking read" many people scoff. They say "don't what are the tools? Through word of mouth read so much, reading will damage your and in our books we can transmit ideas to brain." But in my teaching of journalism, I them. This mimetic engine is something we think maybe we still have time to talk to must use to leverage the social network the young generation. Because I've seen and communication that we have. I really them working on so many interesting believe it is vitally important for us to games in recent years. For example, people communicate these ideas. Especially in this are creating games about the lack of water. moment, when ideas are being contested.
A game can ask the fundamental To survive, we need to have a kind of map question that our own governments of the future, even if it is mostly smoke avoid: How to solve the crisis of water and shade and rife with problems. But the resources and distribution? These games highest peak might be visible above the are not relying on the official narrative for smoke, and it can to help lead us out of the a solution. The games will permit any kind dangerous waters where we are now of solution that the collective of players can swimming. can think up to solve a problem. This is exactly the sort of thinking we need! Aliette: What we're dealing with is the long shadow of the industrial revolution. zapf.punkt 7 p.22
Essentially some countries gained great human pursuits. Ignoring and exploiting wealth by plundering their own working these spirits and their forests has led to classes and the countries that they disaster. colonized. We thus realized that in the bones of capitalism is baked the Andrew: People in many sectors, not just assumption that "we're out for ourselves," speculative fiction people, get this. They and the goal is to own as much as we can. are using these ideas to fix the landscape, to understand our ecosystem, and to make In the skeletons of Western democracies better communities. Solarpunk tells me lies the assumption that democracy is that innovation is close at hand and does the final model and capitalism is the not require making up magical imaginary only viable system. I think it is high time advances in technology or science (like FTL to question that assumption. We need to travel), all we have to do is get away from take a good look at where it's coming from the profit motive, and a lot becomes and take a good look at what the possible! consequences have been, which we see playing out. There were horrific Solarpunk offers a vision of how can we consequences even prior to our crises meaningfully improve our lives besides just today, but the Western democracies only having more wealth. How about worry when it's affecting them. envisioning a society that does not have extreme inequalities? Solarpunk helps us So we need to focus on a greater sense of think about how to fix things here, on this community and greater sustainability. That planet. Maybe we can learn about the long is what we want. And not unmitigated now from aboriginal people, who stayed in greed. Solarpunk is about building one place, who were part of ecosytems for a sustainable, equalitarian relationships. long time.
The same colonization that was imposed One thing my collaborators and I were on countries has been applied to the really intent on is to avoid singular heroes, environment. What was once a we would not solve things by shooting or mysterious, magical thing -- the punching our way out of problems. It had untouched forests, teeming with fairies to be about bringing communities together and danger -- became something that and reducing friction between the must be tamed, something that must be communities. rigidly bound. The forest was treated as something that is essentially a resource, Cat: We need to consider listening to the instead of being the abode of spirits, people who lived on the land before we fairies, and beings that should be left well lived there. enough alone or be accomodated in our zapf.punkt 7 p.23
And in our storytelling, let's get away from Cat: My hope for a new Solarpunk the hero's journey! The chosen one who technology would be a biopunk saves us all -- no one is going to save us technology awareness revolution. all! Why are superheroes popular? Because we're so frightened and think we My hope is for humanity to collectively get need magic to save us. But we have to the fact that (as far as we know) all forms save ourselves. And to do that we need to of life in the Universe are found only in one talk to each other. place: on this planet. Fabio: Ailton Krenak has worked tirelessly We have no knowledge of anything else, to protect the areas of Minas Gerais in and because of the distances involved and Brasil, with some success, but all around uncertainty in the evolution of complex the Amazon basin the situation is dire. (and/or) intelligent life, we must Agriculturists burn whole forests using the acknowledge that we are really pretty technique of queimada and then claim that special here and we need to start acting it is the indigenous people at fault. But like that. that is not the case at all, because the indigenous way is for very small controlled We need narratives that make us feel as burns that are in sync with the rest of the if we are part of this Earth ecosystem, forest. and not it's entitled overlords!
La Calera, Colomia, photo (c) EitanAbramovic zapf.punkt 7 p. 24
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