Solarpunk 101

Solarpunk is a literary genre as it is an aesthetics. It is a movement as well: it envisions a better future and constructs operational strategies to attain it.
Right from its beginnings, it has expressed a complex and open, but clear, political vision: inclusive, feminist, ecologist, utopist, anarchic, organicist; Anticapitalist, antiracist, antipatriarchal, antispecist.

Origins

2008 - First post about 'solarpunk' From Steampunk to Solarpunk in republicofthebees.

2008 - 2012 - first Solarpunk stories emerge, feel more like cyberpunk in green

Now imagine large space sailboats driven by solar radiation, production of biofuels via nanotechnology, the advent of photosynthetic humans, and, as there is no perfect society, even terrorism against corrupt businesses and governments. Welcome to the bright green world of solarpunk.” — The New Utopians

Solarpunk as a genre

At the beginning, solarpunk protagonists were like in Cyberpunk or Steampunk revolutionary Heros which repurpose the tools of the oprressor to strive for a better future.

The Solarpunk narrative, though less clearly developed, is again very similar. It revolves around a kind of Maker-hero who reappropriates technology — green technology in particular — deliberately suppressed by corporate and government interests for the sake of profiteering and social control and then applies it to the salvation of a world facing environmental catastrophe and the cultivation of a better, more sustainable, future.

Maker-Heros as a typical protagonist emerge: based in eco-villages, hacker/makerspaces, Fab Labs, and online communities they build in a grasroot like fashion alternative communities.

Maker-heroes create islands of self-sufficiency, seeding the culture of a new Post-Industrial era.

Some stories focus on describing a utopian future with the dramatic tension originating from inter-personal conflicts rather than the struggle of a minority versus an oppressing force

e.g. A psalm for a wild built

Solarpunk as a social movement

2012 - Blogpost "On the need for new futures" - Taking first steps into actually envisioning a possible utopian future

Progress/development not same as growth, and an integral thesis of solarpunk should be about decoupling the first from the second. More is not better.
We are starved for visions of the future that will sustain us, and give us something to hope for, ideas of life beyond the rusted chrome of yestermorrow or nightmare realms of radiated men eating the flesh of other radiated men.

2014 - First Solarpunk Manifesto emerges:

We are solarpunks, because the only other options are denial or despair.
Our future is about repurposing and creating new things through what we already have
Our futurism is not nihilistic like cyberpunk and it is not quasi-reactionary a la steampunk–it is about ingenuity, positive creation, independence, and community.

2015 - Many blogposts and articles tinker with the idea of a solarpunk movement, adding political and practial ideas:

We’ve learned to use science wisely, for the betterment of ourselves and our planet. We’re no longer overlords. We’re caretakers. We’re gardeners.”
The “solar” in Solarpunk is both a description and metaphor for the movement’s commitment to a utopia that is accessible to every human on earth, as well as to all of our planet’s lifeforms. No single business can capture and privatize sunlight to hoard it for itself or sell it at a cost. It’s one of the only universally accessible goods.
You’ve heard of the hacker slogan “move fast and break things”? Solarpunk should move quietly and plant things.

Questions for aspiring solarpunks

Resources