Tag: Science Fiction

Solarpunk, is it Utopian Dreaming?

“It’s hard out here for futurists under 30,” declares one manifesto. “We’re solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair.”

I read that Solarpunks do not like to be called utopian, but I think they are. In a good way, the one Cory Doctorow described in my last post. Great to know they exist. Looking forward to hear much more from them.

Cory Doctorow on Utopia

It’s not how well the system works, it’s what happens when it fails that distinguishes a utopia from a dystopia.

“UTOPIA” WILL HIT SHELVES IN 2017

“Of all the novels I’ve written, I’m most proud of Utopia. In it, I finally found a way to express all my fears about where we’re heading and all my hopes for how we might head it off. Everyone I know feels that inchoate dread that Occupy shorthanded as ‘things are fucked up and shit’, and that feeling’s given me the cold grue for most of a decade. Finally, I’m managed to get that feeling and where it comes from into an orderly narrative that — I hope — transfers it from my brain to yours. I want to make a world that works even when it’s broken down, a world where we see ourselves with a common destiny, where every person is owed a debt to, and owes a debt to, every other person.I want to make the world where our coming disasters are attended by outpourings of cooperation and empathy. Not because I find this aesthetically pleasing: because I want to live through those disasters, and I want my child to live through them. I want you to live through them, too, and your children.”

Another argument to use when people say dreaming of Utopia always ends badly. It’s No Place to reach, it’s a way to get by.

Utopian Children’s books (I)

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“For as long as she could remember, Regina Williams wanted to become an astronaut…”

Her friends just laugh at her and walk away, which leaves Regina all the more determined to pursue her dream.

It would be exactly a decade until Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, and nearly twenty years until Mae Jemison launched into the cosmos as the first African American astronaut.

Visionary Vintage Children’s Book Celebrates Gender Equality, Ethnic Diversity, and Space Exploration – Blast Off

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For all their immeasurable delight,children’s books also have a serious cultural responsibility — they capture young minds and plant in them the seeds that blossom into beliefs about what is socially acceptable, what is right and wrong, and what is possible.

No words necessary to add to that.