Afrofuturism and Solarpunk

This is a blog for my Commonplace Book for weeks 6-11, discussing various writings and their meanings. All images edited and taken from Artbreeder.

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https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-clean-up-hoarder-house-mira-mesa-2016jun01-story.html

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2019/12/12/milwaukee-hoarder-house-being-cleaned-out-and-razed-city/4409733002/

https://estatesales.org/university/how-to-handle-hoarder-estate-sales

https://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/news/greenwich-hoarder-home-where-mummified-body-found-/3476511/

Images found at these links, in order

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By his things you will know him

This was another story I really liked in this class. The way it ended created a hole in my stomach. Bruce started out with such a hatred for his father, and it slowly developed from an emotional constipation to something he couldn’t stop thinking about. I thought it was a human part of him that allowed him to feel bad even for his father, who was an indecent human being.

The ending made it clear. Bruce was cut from the same mold. He didn’t think he needed the help. He thought that hoarding his father’s things was the right way. It came so suddenly. It was as if the ashes themselves possessed Bruce. 

The story ends so suddenly after. I’m left to imagine that he cut himself off from Hennie. That his life twisted and he dies just like his father, not discovered until a week after. Dying with all the junk around him in a big empty house.

This story didn’t even leave me with a huge technology feel to it, even though it did have it in the middle of the story with the catalogue system. I found that it was more of an exploration on character, and how Bruce’s identity changed so quickly after his father’s death. It was evil in a way, how we see his demeanor change in the span of a few paragraphs.

When stories like this can make me think, stay in my head and leave me with those lasting emotions, that’s when I know I like them. I can’t exactly describe how this story makes me feel. It feels stronger than hopelessness. It feels like how I imagine it is to lose someone to addiction. To see a pebble fall down a well.

This story is most disconnected from all the others I’ve done, but it contains that futuristic/sci-fi aspect that most of them have. The use of technology in death like the Black Mirror episode. The use of technology to further one’s dreams like the Gadget.

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San Junipero

This Black Mirror episode wasn’t anything like I expected.

I have not watched Black Mirror, but I’ve heard a lot about the show from my sister. The basic idea I got from it was “technology evil” and “bad things happen from weird technology”. (There’s more to it than that but that’s the bare bones I’ll call it).

In this episode, though, we got LGBT rep, we got funky decades music and clothes, we got radical technology.

The idea of decade hopping and meeting people and getting to live young and party for a long time is very attractive. I was constantly expecting something nefarious to happen, but the ending seemed happy. The ladies got to spend their time after death (death? uploaded to the internet?) to be happy, and we get that shot of the server room showing their new place in the material world.

It felt strange. I was expecting that bleak depiction of technology. For the Sci-Fi genre, I expected this to turn into some sort of evil computer or something akin to that. But the story had its ups and downs with the characters’ relationships and ended up on a relatively happy note.

The technology in this story was somehow simultaneously easy to understand and also had mystery to it. You could tell what it did but it didn’t go into how the brain functioned with the technology. I thought it was interesting how expansive it got, from being able to switch times you visited and be able to continue brain functions after death in that simulation. Maybe the darker side to possibly glean from this story is that you can essentially never die, and will continue to exist in that world for eternity.

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The Man Who Sold the Moon

The characters in this story were so likeable for me. Greg, Pug, and Blight were all characters I connected with over the course of the story. These characters felt far from any clichés and seemed like actual realized characters on the page.

I loved the connection these characters had on the paper. The starting friendship as Greg and Pug met, and the sad realization that they met through Greg discovering he didn’t have cancer and Pug getting diagnosed later in their relationship.

The Solarpunk aspect of this story is constant throughout the plot. Whether it is Greg and Pug’s continued working on the Gadget to sending it to the moon, it was all pleasantly sci-fi. There was opposition in the people who didn’t want the moon to be touched. There was camaraderie in the drugs and the partying with people sleeping in large snuggle piles. Everything felt strangely human. I could see myself there, even though I’ve never experienced a lot of what those characters saw and felt.

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Fyrewall

This Solarpunk story follows Daesha, a young woman who has the important job of maintaining the Fyrewall. In this Sci-Fi world, the Earth had warmed up to a dangerous degree. Daesha’s grandma develops a technology to protect their city from the heat and raging fires.

This world is very similar to the Sun in the Heart world. There was no mention of the sun changing in this story, but the prevalence of heat and its destructive qualities on the world are what make the stories alike.

Daesha isn’t as in tune with the invention as her grandmother was. She doesn’t understand how to repair it when she finds out it has been damaged. She gains an idea to fix it when she is tasked to watch over two problem children.

She learns that fire can repair the shield and mend the holes. This concept seemed interesting to me. In a world where fire and heat has become such an issue, the author decided it would also serve as a solution. This duel meaning, as I understand it, is meant to showcase that some things are not as black and white as we see them.

People are not inherently good or evil, like the troubled kids in the story. The kid who pick pockets and the girl obsessed with fire aren’t malevolent. They help Daesha in the end.

The fire causes issues with the Earth in the beginning, but humankind overcomes its issues, and the heat serves as the answer to a huge problem.

Fire itself doesn’t mean to cause harm or good. It is an object, incapable of good or evil thoughts. Humans like to put things into categories and get upset when something doesn’t fit.

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Sun in the Heart

This story was a lot more positive. It took the idea of a world ending catastrophe and created a new technology to help humanity. The use of this technology combined with the initial fear of the sun’s wrath blended in an interesting way. The sun could have been the cause of humanity’s end, but instead it was turned into something to help. Technology was created to help the people survive, and rely on the sun to live.

The characters in this story aren’t as complex as the others in my opinion. Where this story shines is the worldbuilding.

The sun has become so hot and powerful that all plants and animals are dying out, and humans are being inflicted with a horrible skin cancer. The only way to continue life was with a nanotechnology that allowed humans to withstand the rays, and even photosynthesize as to not have to eat or drink as much for energy.

A question raised by the main character in this story took my attention. Are they even considered human anymore? The protagonist’s own father died at around 90 years old, and now, it is said in the story for humans to be able to live twice as long. Has the technology gone too far as to destroy what makes them human.

The father remembers being a child before getting the implants, and loving the taste of peaches. He can’t taste them anymore since getting the surgery. He questions his self.

I believe that humanity isn’t as simple as that. Our emotions and connections with people are what make us unique. Even if a person is born without an arm or leg, and has a prosthetic, that doesn’t make them less human. It is our minds and our capabilities to love that define our humanity.

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A Catalogue of Sunlight at the End of the World

It is interesting to me that Solarpunk is set to be a more happy take on Sci-Fi, because my impression from these stories is that they are bleak or somber. This story detailed several important moments of sunlight or starlight in the main character’s life. It detailed his family and wife, who died to cancer, and how humanity was boarding a large ship to escape Earth.

It said the world was ending, but not how. My assumption was by destruction of the world’s resources, or lack thereof. The story is set very far in the future, so it would be plausible by then that the Earth’s plants and animals resources are used up. There is even a small bit about how plant seeds were being stored in a vault. To me, even though humanity is getting a second chance as they travel into space to continue living, the world still seems sad. I felt that the story’s focus was on the main guy’s life, and how he was content being left behind. He was content with his life, and didn’t need to go with his family. He stayed with his dead wife and his house and cat. He is happy. But I felt sad by the end.

He will die alone. He doesn’t see it that way. He believes that he is with his wife. He can video chat his kids and grandkids for a little while. The human connection is there, but I still only remembered the negative from the story, despite all the positives.

I think it is inherently human to make connections and stay with other people. I think the ending and all the flashbacks of this man’s life is what makes this story stand out. His life wasn’t perfect. His wife passed away. The Earth was dying. But he found the happiness in it all. I think this story helps people understand their viewpoints and understanding of existence.

You put yourself in his shoes. You wonder if you would go on the ship or stay behind. You wonder if your life was fulfilling enough to settle.

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The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex (corruption)

“We don’t,” Kahn looked around, surprised. “No one wants to know a high profile cephaloid of any kind has died on Earth. So they didn’t. The video of the fall no longer exists in any system.” 

“But they can track the body—”

“—already fired off via an old school rocket aimed at our sun. That leaves no evidence here. Nothing happened on Earth. Nothing happened to you.”

“Very big, alien destroyers,” David Kahn said, in a level, but clearly terrified voice. “We at the Greater New York Bureau of Tourism highly recommend you do whatever the being or beings currently in contact with you are asking, while also, uh, acknowledging that we have no idea where the missing being they are referring to is. Please hold for the President—”

I took both of these quotes from the story to potentially analyze the government in this world. It struck me that besides all the sci-fi elements, the one thing that remained human was the drive to hide problems and shift blame.

Humans are flawed creatures. We do things that are illogical and wrong. Some of us have mental problems. Some of us don’t understand how to communicate properly. It is a running stereotype that the government is a body of these people that get drunk on power, and because of basic human nature to make poor decisions, corruption occurs.

The actions in the story about the bureau trying to cover its tracks and sweep an alien death under the rug because of the flaws of the world (or, rather, no safety locks on a cab door) feel uniquely human and realistic. It feels like a parallel to a real life situation, where something happens that get people upset, and the government tries to focus on something else to avoid addressing the real issue.

We could take shootings for example. People with mental issues bringing guns into schools and other public places to kill others. This has happened over the years, and each time outrage from society follows. Protests of stricter gun laws. The news covers these events and argue what these gun laws could do to help.

Nothing happens. We don’t have an alien threatening us with a planet destroying weapon to get things to change. We don’t have a Tavi to tell the truth. We don’t have contact with other worldly alien races to change the whole of society and its economy. All we have are politicians set on being elected again. And both sides are equal in gridlock, and nothing changes.

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There were more shadows descending down out of space. Larger and larger vessels moving through the atmosphere far above.

The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex by Tobias S. Buckell

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The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex

I loved this story. I think it was one of my favorites in this semester.

It is the first story to start off the Solarpunk and Sci-Fi modules, but I realized as I was reading that it felt like a bridge between the Afrofuturism and Solarpunk genres.

The main protagonist Tavi is never explicitly described as being black, but I got the same vibe from the stories in the Afrofuturism genre. Due to his job being a cab driver and the run down place he lives in, it reminded me of a lower class individual that is treated poorly and unfairly.

The amount of sci-fi elements in this story creates a whole mural of imagery. The flying cab cars, the crashed space station, the different aliens.

All of it led to this futuristic crowded city with hovering highways and glowing lights. though not much of it is mentioned in this story, my mind went to the state of the environment in this story. The oceans are mentioned by the octopus alien near the end, but other than that there is no mention of Earth animals or plants. I am led to wonder if this futuristic world is actually a paradise, or if the advancement of technology destroyed Earth’s natural lands. The talk about oxygen made it sound sparse and unnatural, as if plants no longer existed and all the gases in the atmosphere were being pumped and created from some factory. I couldn’t help but imagine a very industrial world.

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Afrofuturism: How these stories connect

Dirty Computer. Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints in the City Beneath the Still Waters. The Winds of Harmattan.

These three works of art express their meaning through their leading characters and the issues they face. Communities of people have faced prejudice and hatred for far too long. Even in the year of 2021, a new rise of Asian hatred and hate crimes has come up.

These stories showcase characters, flawed and human, battling the hate and judgment of the people around them. Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints in the City Beneath the Still Waters (shortened to SSDH from now on) in particular shows a mythical beast that can fill any living things with thoughts of hatred and malice. Tookie, the main character, fights through these feelings at the end and is able to defeat the beast alongside his dragon companion.

Dirty Computer is the name of a short song and album. The Dirty Computer seems worthless and broken, but still exhibits thoughts and shows a longing to be fixed and useful. A flawed machine, broken, and deemed useless and not worth fixing. The onlookers say the computer is flawed, because that’s what they see. They don’t look deeper in to understand that character is more important.

The Winds of Harmattan tells the story of a young woman with the magical ability to fly, although she’s not great at it. She is in tune with her spiritual and special side of her, but the rest of her village look at her and her weird traits/actions and hate her. They talk ill of her, judge her, and accuse her of witchcraft. She isn’t a bad person, but the people around her look at her superficially and make horrible assumptions about her character.

These stories try to explain problems within the black community through a sci-fi or fictional lens. They want to get readers to understand their hardships through their worldbuilding and character obstacles. These three stories are great examples of the genre.