I have an essay titled Solarpunk: A Container for More Fertile Futures in the inaugural issue of Solarpunk Magazine – which is out today.

The essay is about the importance of solarpunk as a container and memetic engine rather than a concept rooted in prescriptive definitions of genre.

It’s basically a 2k word summation of the various talks and ideas I’ve been giving about solarpunk in the last year or so. Regular followers of my blog/work will be familiar with its general argument.

The magazine contains 7 short fiction pieces, 4 poems, 4 non fiction articles and loads of art: with contributions from Starhawk, Clarke Miller, Oyedotun Damilola, micah epstein, an interview with Kim Stanely Robinson, and more.

You can pick up a copy for $6 here or find a yearly subscription for $30 in their shop.

It is remarkable that there is now big enough market (and audience) for Solarpunk stories that a bimonthly magazine dedicated to it can get massively over funded on kickstarter. Andrew Dana Hudson and I are fond of reminiscing that when he sold his story Sunshine State with Adam Flynn in 2015 (and won an award for it) there was no market for Solarpunk at all. Great stuff. Here’s to the light!

Update 22.30pm: Instagram user @specncer.r.scott made a cool carousel of extracts from my essay:

Update 12.Mar.22

The text is now online

Many like terms well-labeled, put under glass and pinned to a board. But solarpunk is an idea that refuses to be pinned down. One of solarpunk’s early emergent principles was polyphony—a texture consisting of multiple simultaneous lines of independent melody. Another early and integral principle was and remains inclusivity.

Solarpunk has always welcomed new voices joining the chorus, every addition bringing a new layer of texture. Sometimes we are in chorus or in harmony, and occasionally dissonant with one another.

After nearly 8 years as an admin on the solarpunks.net Tumblr, I have come to some conclusions about what solarpunk is to me—although of course, one cannot speak for other solarpunks, only as a solarpunk.

Big thanks to the magazines Co-Editors-in-Chief, Justine Norton-Kertson and Brianna Castagnozzi and Non fiction editor Ariel Kroon for the invitation to write for Issue #1!