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this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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Solarpunk
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Does Scavengers Reign count as solarpunk?
It struck me as a bio-oriented rather than the electronics-oriented solarpunk, but whatever makes you happy
I thought part of the philosophy of solarpunk was finding ways to use technology in harmony with nature. That seemed like a big theme of Scavengers Reign to me.
May I also strongly suggest The Culture Series.
It answers the "what if the (real) AI singularity happens" but instead of the typical "and then we all die" its just that the Minds are actually just cool with us. And I realised after about 4 of the books that the humans are like pets for this curious hyper-intelligences that kinda enable the humans to become better people, if at the loss of some cultural identity.
The Culture is The Borg, but you want to join them because their shit is dope. The luxuries and comforts of The Culture leading to the demise of other societies as they absorb in.
It also explores a lot of interventionism (or when not to) in some of the stories. One is a short story set at the time of the cold war. Which is interesting since earth barely ever is relevant in The Culture novels. Its just another backwater that has pre-spacefaring humanoids on it.
It explores a lot of quite dope concepts, and the visual imagery of the destruction of Vavatch Orbital, and down in the tunnels on Schar's World happening in Consider Phlebas.
The realisation I had a few days later that it went past me that the god that inhabits Schar's world wasn't even the one to create it, this god-like-being is like a hermit crab and just wants to be left alone.
The way that seeing space from a starships perspective was described in Excession when one of the humans is basically given Meat Fucker/Grey Area's perception was dope.
Its some damn strong good scifi with hopium undercurrents even while entire societies perish (willingly, intentionally). As VR simulations of sentient life is created to give societies a real hell to send people to. As people live and die whole lives inside the VR hell to break in and then break out to prove its existence to bring about its destruction. The unsettling creeping sensation of realising you're in a simulation, but not because the simulation is imperfect, but because at the bottom of your vision, in big block red letters, it reads "SIMULATION". Or in a moment where we're looking through a soldiers eyes as we slowly realise he's a human mind re-bodied into a turret during a simulated battle. Or later, when the same soldier is squeezing through the cracks in between grains of sand and rock as an amoeba.
I was also high as fuck while reading a lot of this series.
I could espouse its praises for hours, but it would be quicker to read the novels.
Literary sci-fi at its best. Look to Windward is my absolute favorite. Player of Games is also amazing.
The Culture is the absolute best case scenario for humanity. It is my comfort reading for this reason.
All I can say is that I read the stories, enjoyed them, and gave them away in a freeshop for others to read. :)
thanks for the recommendation
Becky Chambers ! all of her books ! It lighted a spark in me that refuse to die. The Fosdem 2026 only make it more obvious. Things don't have to be this way. The wayfarers serie is gold, each book have a different person as the focus so read "the long way to a small angry planet" and see if you want more.
"Stories of monk and robot" is amazing. A friend gave me the book for a few weeks than took it back. I buyed it four times xD, i gifted three.
We may feel so powerless, doomed by such stupidity, we may feel like the solution is obvious to everyone but thoses in power. But intead of another round of horror-news that maybe this time will wake up everyone and foster change. It was stories of better times, of self-consciousness, of a hope so obvious, so amazing that allowed me to smile again.
Keeping a look out for these for my next read
Solarpunk is not just in its art form! If we are going towards cyberpunk dystopian, we can make solarpunk happen too.
As somewhat of a predecessor of that genre i can absolutely recommend Ernest Callenbachs "Ecotopia"!
Love solarpunk but as a movement it has been doing really poor. Most of writing is YA fiction and non-fiction is either academia focused or just poor quality. There are some decent internet resources but the "permaculture" keyword yields much better information on mostly the same subject if you're looking to practice solarpunk.
One cool fact I can share is that solarpunk is very much winning here in South East Asia where many permaculture strategies like solar panels etc are very popular because it's simply outcompeting the alternatives and have an inclusive, hobby-like vibe.
For me Solarpunk is just another concept in a tool box of change. You have Permaculture, Half-earth/Eco Socialism, Degrowth, Circular/Library/Gift/Solidarity Economy etc. — all of them have different aspects of a social, just and ecologically oriented society in mind, they all play nicely together and it’s like choosing a flavour or stacking building blocks. Imho Solarpunk could be a sub category of Degrowth and Degrowth could be a sub category of Solarpunk — both are possible, it just depends on the way you look at them.
Maybe thats the problem of it trying to be too many things and thus lacking strong identity to gain critical mass.
Solarpunk is about world building. We need massive changes, thus we have to do many things at once.
As a movement, it's still in its infancy. You can checkout the SLRPNK.net Lemmy instance for various communities focused on real-life impact including:
!community_community@slrpnk.net
We stole the sun from the sky To power the machines of our invention To spite the gods that have abandoned us
That sounds awesome
That's... why I'm here.