What's Solarpunk and Lunarpunk? It is something like Cyberpunk or Steampunk?
I’m going to give a picture answer first because a picture is worth 1,000 words.
Now, for the full explanation, grab a cup of tea and a blanket, shut the door and lock it, and get ready for the world’s first clear-cut answer on what the hell is going on with Solarpunk/Lunarpunk. The community needs some clarity right now, tbh.
WHAT IS SOLARPUNK/LUNARPUNK? HOW DOES IT RELATE TO CYBERPUNK, STEAMPUNK, BIOPUNK, FLOWERPUNK, ETCPUNK?
Solarpunk and Lunarpunk in a sense are very simple—but are (for now) representing three different things and that can cause some confusion.
Let’s have some fun first:
If I made up something called Bunnypunk, it would mean stories about bunnies fighting against an oppressive system in a speculative fiction world that is heavily influenced by the visual aesthetic of bunnies. So, everything would be fluffy, soft, warm, adorable, nibble things a lot, and have lots of vegetables everywhere, I’m sure. (I guess the film ‘A Bug’s Life’ could be “Bugpunk” then, amirite?)
So Cyber, Steam, Solar, Lunar, Bio, Nano, they’re all just describing the aesthetic (roughly speaking) whereas the -punk suffix is describing the type of story it tells. So, then: -punk = Uprising
For more info check here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_derivatives
Back to Solarpunk/Lunarpunk. These words mean a few different things to different groups of people:
1. AESTHETICS GROUP: To these people, these words are a neato visual style that is pleasing to look at, read, listen to or watch, etc. To them, that’s all it needs to be and anything else is extraneous. They’re here to enjoy a vivacious aesthetic in the same way you’d enjoy impressionism or cubism at a gallery.
— Relative to the Aesthetics Group:+ Solarpunk means architecture, clothing, art & beyond which is half futuristic (yet not outright sci-fi) and half-natural in a rather art nouveau visual style—yet always hybridized with multicultural influence in its various visual and tangible aesthetics (since Solarpunk at every level is inclusive of all cultures and varieties of human being in general.)
- Lunarpunk means cool-colored, darkness-referencing architecture, clothing, art & beyond which is shrouded or shadowy in style, typically referencing the darker elements of life as we know it now, especially where they relate to Earth’s Moon, its cycles, its influence, etc. Imagine a Wiccan woman, clad in bio-luminescent robes, singing a beautiful song in a minor key to herself as she wanders through the shallow waters of a moonlit pond at 3AM, looking for ingredients for an alchemical tincture to heal her injured pet wolf on a late autumn night. That would be pretty dang Lunarpunk.
2. GENRE GROUP: To these people, Solarpunk and Lunarpunk are genres, which currently need defining, so that means this group of people is literally policing how the term Solarpunk is being tossed around. See, almost every pop culture movement in the last forever has ended up glorifying or otherwise serving the Euro-Centric ideal. Put more simply, pop culture is owned by normative white people (you could spend hours reading books and articles about how Eurocentrism has since tainted significant pop culture movements in Asia, the Middle-east, the Caribbean, South America, etc. and how we can deal with this issue to make global pop culture a more diverse notion.). Now, these people are indeed invited to the party, of all things Solarpunk! But, if you notice people getting a bit testy about Solarpunk, they’re probably in this group, and making sure Solarpunk remains not only inclusive of all types of people, but influenced equally by all types of people
— Relative to the Genre Group:+ Solarpunk means A speculative fiction style/genre defined by an optimistic near-future which sees renewable energy powering the global energy infrastructure aided by a vigilant nature/technology balance that always leans in favor of nature first—all existing under the notion that all people are equal and thus treated equal, and all who cannot perform as an equal are accommodated until they can. There is, somewhere, a need to cause a stir and an uprising because, although the place is quite utopian and sustainable, there is still a problem somewhere, and usually an oppressive one—to either a group of humans, the natural world, or something similar. This is where the -punk comes in, and because Solarpunk is painted as such a Utopia critics often complain that you can’t possibly make good stories out of an ideal world. Their flaw here is that they don’t realize that humans always have a problem no matter where they are or how good things might be because they are a self-destructive species that must always be kept in check to keep from destroying all that is good.
- Lunarpunk means A speculative fiction style/genre defined by an obscured, shrouded, and/or dark near-future where the business of its inhabitants is done in secretive, cryptic or mysterious ways, accentuated by a visual style hearkening to lunar, occult, Pagan, Wiccan, Satanic, Anarchaic, Chaotic, practices, and comprised of world-building details which are more ideal for introverted, quiet, isolated or self-reliant people. Doesn’t mean an extroverted Christian isn’t part of Lunarpunk, or that someone who practices anything mentioned above isn’t part of Solarpunk. But in terms of what defines Lunarpunk as a genre, you would be more likely to see small sects of persons worshiping (or devoting to) The Self rather than The Other
Okay, we gotta go deeper before we get to Group 3.
This really all boils down to Yin and Yang, like I posted with that picture earlier. Solarpunk can’t really be a thing without Lunarpunk. In one story, it can be, but as a huge aesthetic and movement, Solarpunk can’t exist without causing Lunarpunk to grow in equal size. That’s why in my novel, I wrote a massive change in the dynamics of the Earth’s rotation to cause only half of the world to receive sunlight, the other half left in mostly-frozen darkness. Consequently, those living in the sunny half end up in a Solarpunk future Earth, whereas the very few who can survive the sunless realm of the dark side of the Earth end up in a Lunarpunk future. The moon becomes their source of light, inspiration, spirituality, comfort, everything. Naturally, this could lead to a lot of moon worship, typical of some who practice witchcraft
So why is this important? Those who know a bit about the Taijitu (Yin-Yang) will get it immediately. Those who don’t, should hit this link
With Solarpunk, we are basically extracting all of the yang out of all of humanity and turning it into a character and calling it “Solarpunk the Almighty Utopian Person, Hooray!” In and of itself, this character is doomed for it would have no yin to balance it as the very laws of existence require. Solarpunk, unopposed would destroy itself. This is why you will often see so many people critiquing Solarpunk and that it won’t work as a genre because “you can’t have a story without problems” and so on. And maybe, indeed, there are authors out there who sat down to pen a Solarpunk story and thought “wow, they were right!” but the reality is that Solarpunk can exist by itself (without Lunarpunk there to round it out in the way it does in my story), it’s just that you’d have to handle the story in a way which is so potent in elements of yin within yang energy (the dark circle within the light blob) that no one could possibly doubt that’s what’s going on. Not having a yin-yang balance is what people are worried will cause the idea of a Solarpunk Novel to fall flat on its face, and so I took the time to address how that’s avoided as a bonus section of this post for authors, skeptics or critics of Solarpunk to reference.
3. PRACTICALITY GROUP: To these people, Solarpunk and Lunarpunk are movements, meant to materialize a real-world future that fits the aesthetics of group 1 with the ideation of group 2 to create a world which is inclusive and equal toward everyone, save for harm-doers, which is powered by renewable energy sources exclusively if at all possible, usually in an effort to counteract the damage done to the planet. This group can encompass any and everyone, since, in a Solarpunk/Lunarpunk future everyone is still going to be there, so this group can be extremely broad and varied
- You might see an inventor without a place to call home trying to get back on their feet to continue developing a solar-powered industrial engine who needs your donation.- You might see a chill dude from the Rocky Mountains super stoked on the tiny house movement wanting to live a no-footprint lifestyle with an EV-only engine to drive around the world and volunteer his time to needy communities- You might see a “ProtoSol” trans woman campaigning for political change in accordance with “Solunarpunk” ideals. - You might see a paraplegic poc engineer developing a prototype for a solar-powered assisted mobility system (a cybernetic prosthetic leg, in other words)- You might see a differently-abled wheelchair user drafting architectural blueprints and renderings for accessibility parameters for our future “Solunarpunk” cities so that no area is any less accessible to any type of differential ability.- You might see a board of neurodivergent people volunteering their time to assist legislators in changing judicial policy on how to handle neurodivergent or non-normative behavior in relation to the justice and penal systems. - You might see a little person (with dwarfism, that is) contributing to a think-tank where city planners of a “solunarpunk” future would ensure all height variations are accounted for in city planning elements such as public transporation, etc.
All in all, the practicality group is working to put Solarpunk and Lunarpunk into the real world ASAP, usually because they feel it’s one of our last chances at turning this planet around before it’s doomed. On this level of thought, the only difference between Sol and Lune is the Aesthetics and Genres mentioned up above. This is because, in reality, every Solarpunk action has an equal and opposite Lunarpunk reaction, and both sides of this aesthetic are equal and committed to holding the world up while it heals, like two crutches to a person trying to walk again after an injury. They’re just very differently colored “crutches” made of different materials, but they’re the same height, and the same strength, and they love working together to help their human.
I hope this exhaustive, comprehensive guide answered your question and just as importantly, anyone else’s who might stumble across this. There’s not much tangible Solarpunk anything in the world yet despite a few years of think-tanking (so little, in fact, that our Wikipedia page was revoked), so things like this with perceptively-defined characteristics can be really useful to a loose affiliation of brains trying to pool together to organize a coherent meta-brain that can hold itself together and accomplish its goals.
Any edits, questions, comments or concerns about this post can message me any time. Please reblog to share this information with whoever could benefit—I took a couple hours to make sure I did this the right way! Thanks and follow The Carbon Coast blog for updates on my novel, follow Photosynth-SolarpunkMusic for my Solarpunk Music project, and I’ll be here any time for talk and questions.
p.s. An important “See Also” is “Ecofiction”. Ecofiction is Solarpunk’s older sibling, that just spends their days trying to please everyone, being a pushover with no real goal or ambition, yet still gets all the attention from the family because they’re always just there when people need them. Solarpunk loves Ecofiction, but on a day-to-day basis, it’s hard to get along, because Solarpunk doesn’t settle for something that’s just “set in a natural setting” or “details the outcome of global warming apocalypse” or some other loosely nature-affiliated speculative fiction. Solarpunk knows exactly what it wants from life, and just because it hasn’t gotten there yet, and is still living at home with its parents, it’s only so much longer before it finally gets recognized for all the positive ambition it has had for a few years now!
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