Category: nebulas (Page 2 of 2)

This is a question that came up a few times in the chatrooms and Zoom meetings of the Nebulas (which were fantastic, by the way, even if afflicted with Class-E lifeforms and even if I still don’t know how to make the laser bat stop lasering). Even the folks hip to the solarpunk jive weren’t too sure about solarpulp, so here’s some of my thoughts.

When I first started out, I described Doña Ana Lucía’s story as “solarpunk.” There have been a few people who’ve tried to describe solarpunk, including me. But something was …different… about To the Future! as compared with 2312 or Sunvault. So I started calling it “solarpunk plus” and then, as the 30s/George Lucas influence became clearer, “two-fisted [tales of] solarpunk.” Finally, I realized what it really was: “solarpulp.”

And I realized it wasn’t the first time I’d written it, either.

The Solarpunk Manifesto mentions that

“6. Solarpunk embraces a diversity of tactics: there is no single right way to do solarpunk. Instead, diverse communities from around the world adopt the name and the ideas, and build little nests of self-sustaining revolution”

The Solarpunk Manifesto

Let’s imagine solarpulp as one of these little nests. There’s enough room and work to be done for everybody, I’d rather use my shovel to dig irrigation works than swing it at you. With that said, what then is solarpulp?

I wrote a story called “Fire Marengo” for a long-gone sailing magazine contest. It concerned Eli Shipley, able-bodied sailor, as he squares off against the twisted Sheikh of the Seas and two mad terrorists to rescue his friend Tchang and get out. This was in 2009, long before I or almost anyone else had ever heard of solarpunk, so it’s …different. The realistic wonder-tech is there in the form of the SS Sophie, a junk-rigged catamaran made of two former oil tankers. There’s the “astonishing unveiling of the new landscape” trope that’s the hallmark of solarpunk today, in the first sight of the Sheikh’s oil refinery-cum-palace. And casting a blonde, blue-eyed Welshman as the wicked Sheikh is punk as fuck, not to mention Eli’s destruction of his palace.

But it lacks the optimism of proper solarpunk: it’s a post-Peak Oil world where, as a friend said, “a fellow has to be clever to survive.” And Eli takes this in stride without question — he’s not book-smart, but he is a clever fellow when pushed up against the wall. And that’s the other thing that separated “Fire Marengo” from solarpunk.

It lacks restraint.

This isn’t a short story where the climax is two people talking around a table, or about one small victory against climate change, or a misunderstanding with high stakes. This isn’t a detailed study of psychological realism. This is an action story with larger-than-life characters duking it out and sneaking around and carrying on against a backdrop of punishing famine aboard the Sophie and gluttonous richesse in the Sheikh’s Palace as Japanese-made genejacks scuttle underfoot. Eli Shipley is a simple man of broad strokes, fighting like hell for shipmates and wishing he were ashore with one of them, a toke, a beer, and a big bowl of chili. He is a common man, a man of honor, he talks as a man of his age talks. And it is very much his story, a sailor’s yarn of a story, that he’s telling.

Doña Ana Lucía Serrano, in To the Future! and “Doña Ana Lucía Serrano y la Caja de Venuswood (Lady Ana Lucía Serrano and the Venuswood Box)” and her other adventures, does have the optimism of solarpunk. Almost moreso – she lives in what 99% of human history would call a utopia, where no one dies of hunger or exposure, no one remembers absolute poverty, lifespans reach 160 and the living is rich, and she’s studied enough history to know it. Her world still has a whiff of PROGRESS! to it, as if you’d gotten women the vote, banned the devil liquor, bought a car, and stock prices just kept rising. Safe enough to live in? You bet your bippy, mac.

And yet, her utopia banned war, but still suffers organized crime. The Crisis of Prithvi, where her father served humanity, was proof that humanity could still be monstrous and barbarous if pressed (and proof we can be noble and heroic if pressed, too). Their obsession with Earth and biology is near-pathological, and in the shadows, everyone plots to take the whole ball of wax or plots to take their ball and go home, come what may. Not to mention the lingering, life-support vestiges of colorism and bigotry.

It’s not too safe. Not too dull to be worth living in.

La Doña herself is a multisensory, simulflowing, highly-trained paragon of human accomplishment. She can climb up the bark of a tree or a crenelation of a havela while solving orbital mechanics in her head and keeping time by reciting San Juan de la Cruz. She is swordmistress, tango dancer, seductress, professor, adventuress, and noted scholar. She holds herself to an iron-clad set of standards, from as frivolous as her shade of lipstick or source of coffee to as profound as spending every Easter with her family or attacking only those who are armed and aware of her presence. She is best in her Six Worlds, and good enough for any world, certainly good enough for ours.

And she, too, is larger than life, large as Zorro, large as Doc Savage, large as Princess Aura and the Domino Lady.

I’ve been sitting on a quote here, that’s too long to include, but too important to leave out. This is the quote, bits of which I’ve kept in mind this entire time. This is a famous quote from Raymond Chandler, and some of you already know what it is just from the context.

Here it is, the heart of the article:

“He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.

If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in.”

Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

This, I think, is what distinguishes solarpulp from solarpunk. Like solarpunk, we have a sustainable civilization (or at least notes toward one), optimism (even guarded optimism) as a claimed weapon, a “post-“ (capitalism, colonialism, cynicism) perspective, inclusivity*, and a desire to both imagine a future you’d want to live in, and get us halfway there.

 Where we diverge is:

1. Solarpulp is about the story. It’s not about setting up themes or setting out technological ideas — though both are fun — it’s about telling a rip-roaring yarn that will make the audience cheer. Inspire them to go out and be the change you see in the world.
2. Solarpulp is about action. Solarpunk stories can be contemplations, but solarpulp needs to move, to struggle, to seek out, to accomplish, to adventure. There must be doing, or there is no pulp.
3. Solarpulp is about larger-than-life characters. The twin quotes are “he must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world,” and “if there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in.” These are the people who inhabit solarpulp.
4. Solarpulp is about ideas in action. Doña Ana Lucía lives for historicity. Eli Shipley stands for shipmates, for crew. The Sheikh has lived with his monopoly so long, he’s forgotten how to fear. Doc Vikki lives the yankee Dream, it’s why she’s disturbingly sociopathic. They may or may not talk about them, but the larger-than-life characters are motivated by big ideas, and they struggle for those ideas against each other.

Alright, so that’s what solarpulp is. Where did it come from?

If solarpunk can collectively point to 2312 as the seminal work or grandfather-piece, then solarpulp can certainly point to Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. Larger-than-life characters? Ask the druidic Lady Deirdre Skye or the twisted Sheng-ji Yang or aggrandizing Nwabudike Morgan. Action? If the other players don’t get you, the mindworm boils will. Ideas in action? The living embodiments of seven human philosophies duke it out on a hostile and strange alien world through building rival civilizations. About the story? Oddly enough for a Sid Meier game, yes, a thousand times yes. And if you haven’t played it, I won’t spoil it. It’s too …transcendent.

How about the optimism? Through human ingenuity (and maybe ecological harmony) you can alter the face, and fate, of Planet. Sustainable civilization? You don’t even have to play Deirdre to learn quickly the necessity, and means, of doing so. Inclusivity? The Mario faction is led by an Indian man, the militant rifle-thumpers by a Latina. Post- thinking? Separation from Earth has radically changed all the balances and now such forces are curtailed or contained, depending.

Ah, but does it have that one essential trope of solarpunk, that unveiling of the new landscape and the new reality it represents?

Ever seen a wonder movie?

I reached back from Alpha Centauri’s starting point, to liberally strip both George Lucas and his inspirations in the pages of Dent and Republic reels of everything that wasn’t nailed down. I reached for Dune, of course. I reached forward to the post-Buffy, post-TV Tropes awareness of tropes and their manipulation, specifically reconstructing all those adventure tropes I love. I reached out toward my sailing experience and my time in China.

Solarpulp requires none of this, although “a story about everything I thought was cool when I was fourteen” isn’t a bad place to start. As long as you keep it noble and bright, having your “best in their world and good enough for any world” hero(ine) struggling for and with her ideas — always on the move, always in the thick of the action — against that sustainable, inclusive backdrop that left the old –isms far behind, you’ve got solarpulp.

And I want to read it.

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*Indeed, one of the punk ways that I solarpulp is by taking folks underrepresented in the original pulps, like Latinas, working-class Jews, bisexuals, and Quebecois, and giving them starring or strong supporting roles as heroes and villains. Like Americana’s America, everyone has always been welcome here, especially if they weren’t.