Review of Sunvault
Jan. 12th, 2018 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofgloryI just finished reading Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation ed. Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland. This the 1st explicitly solarpunk work I've tried. Solarpunk seems like it would be my thing hopeful stories with a ecological and social justice focus. However I was disappointed. I felt this volume had less ecology and less hope than I wanted and expected.
I don't know maybe the editors just have different idea about what hopeful means or we live deeply cynical culture and any story where humanity survives on a future earth is now considered hopeful. But I found these stories really really bleak. In basically all of them the Earth is in tatters. There was one I range quit because of in seemed to be endorsing cruelty to children on the theory in would make them people who lived within their ecological means. These futures didn't feel better than the present.
I also wanted more ecology, and more complex look at human nature relationships. I've learned to question the idea of wilderness and thus the idea that human nature interactions have to be about humans destroying nature but most the stories in this book don't question those ideas. I would have also loved to see some manged or created ecosystems but there was very little of that.
I did quite like "The Desert, Blooming" by Lev Mirov and I enjoyed all the art and most of the poetry and the fact that the book included both.
Overall the book was not what I was expecting and I found it a major let down. Since this was the first time I've read anything solarpunk I don't know if this typical of the genre, but I'm going to be much more wary of anything labeled solarpunk going forward.
I don't know maybe the editors just have different idea about what hopeful means or we live deeply cynical culture and any story where humanity survives on a future earth is now considered hopeful. But I found these stories really really bleak. In basically all of them the Earth is in tatters. There was one I range quit because of in seemed to be endorsing cruelty to children on the theory in would make them people who lived within their ecological means. These futures didn't feel better than the present.
I also wanted more ecology, and more complex look at human nature relationships. I've learned to question the idea of wilderness and thus the idea that human nature interactions have to be about humans destroying nature but most the stories in this book don't question those ideas. I would have also loved to see some manged or created ecosystems but there was very little of that.
I did quite like "The Desert, Blooming" by Lev Mirov and I enjoyed all the art and most of the poetry and the fact that the book included both.
Overall the book was not what I was expecting and I found it a major let down. Since this was the first time I've read anything solarpunk I don't know if this typical of the genre, but I'm going to be much more wary of anything labeled solarpunk going forward.
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