Solarpunk is a minor niche thing that gets too bogged down in political discussion. Cyberpunk benefits from being (at least not directly) political and more aesthetic for 95% of content.
The "punk" in "cyberpunk" isn't about aesthetics any more than punk rock is. The punk element wasn't just in the relationship of the fictional characters to their settings; it was in the relationship of the writers to mainstream science fiction. William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, Rudy Rucker--they were very deliberately responding to the more utopian, and by then rather dated, science fiction of the 1950s and before, the Heinleins and Clarkes and Asimovs. Cyberpunk is manifestly about the contentious relationship between individual freedom, corporate power, and state control.
Solarpunk arguably is a minor niche thing, but any artistic/literary movement that calls itself "-punk" better damn well be political. Otherwise, it is rather missing the point. :)
Yes, I’m aware of its origins, but as I said, for the overwhelming majority of people, cyberpunk is an aesthetic genre, not a political one. The same is not true for solarpunk.
This is easy to observe on the respective subreddits.
it doesn't have to be political because it's already here, just without the metal arms and cyber-eyes. you're not debating the future since it's now just a standard local / state / national discussion topic.
FAANG tech bros making 600k and on the other side of the city is the largest homeless population in the US. Human street poop and fiber optic connectivity as the two largest challenges in my brothers neighborhood.
should we ban online social media platforms from being used by under-13s?
does google or FB have to pay for ads in Canada? etc etc
Is it though? I think I've seen one page shared multiple times. Where are the iconic books and stories and movies about solar punk? What are the salient ideas from it that will stick with us for decades?
> solarpunk is a surprisingly hard setting to write in. Not enough conflict
Ha. Where man goes, conflict follows.
A "perfect" world in total harmony is boring. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood would be pillaged by neighboring warlords on first contact, if it wasn't first subverted from within by the resident entitled 12-year-old furry. Even in a natural utopia, nature abhors a vacuum.
Cults strive to maintain a facade of harmony. The conflict is readily apparent to insiders. It just appears as though there is no conflict to outsiders.
There was a solarpunk-ish epoch in the game Chrono Trigger (Zeal). Everything was peaceful and harmonious. This enlightened age was brought down when its scholars researched tech they shouldn't and birthed the harbinger of the apocalypse.
If there's not enough conflict, you're not looking close enough at what's going on at street level. Write a story from the perspective of a cop, a farmer, a plumber, or any other blue-collar job in this world. People need to eat and drink. What happens when that's challenged? They can't live in their own shit. What happens when pipes collapse? They fight over dumb things. Where and how?
Wherever two people coexist, there are politics. Where three exist, there are factions and intrigue. Where there's four, one is expendable...
Let me rephrase - a protagonist society whose strategy is outgrowing rivals through less wasteful use of resources and peaceful coexistence only 'wins' on a time scale that's hard to write about.
