![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brithistorian“I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it.” (Vincent van Gogh, in an 1885 letter to Anthon van Rappard)
I like this — I'm always trying to learn new things, so it makes me happy to see someone else feeling the same way.
brithistorianI just finished reading this anthology of solarpunk-themed stories, and I loved it. Most of the authors here were unknown to me, but that probably says more about me being out of touch with the current state of science fiction than the authors themselves. (Feel free to tell me in the comments which of the authors I mention I should know about [in your estimation] and which ones were unknown to you as well.)
The stories approach solarpunk from a variety of directions, examining a variety of different ideas and technologies. Some are set in a time of transition from the current world to a solarpunk world, while others are set further in the future, in a world that's more firmly solarpunk. I like that the authors aren't afraid to admit that a solarpunk world would still have problems.
Looking back over the table of contents, these are the stories that I'd most recommend, as they're the ones that seem both to have stuck with me best and to have had the most interesting ideas. - "Rules for a Civilization" by Jerri Jerreat - "Orchidaceae" by Thomas Badlan - "For the Snake of Power" by Brenda Cooper - "The Maestro of Small Things" by Francesco Verso - "Drawing the Line" by Gustavo Bondoni" - "Lizard Skin" by Lucie Lukačovičová - "The Lighthouse Keeper" by Andrew Dana Hudson
Two other stories that I enjoyed but that I rank lower because they centered on crewed space travel, which just doesn't really seem solarpunk to me were - "Have Space Bike, Will Travel" by Ingrid Garcia - "The Spider and the Stars" by D.K. Mok
Another story that I enjoyed reading but that I found myself pushing away from because of the technology used is Ken Liu's "Byzantine Empathy." I'm normally a big fan of Liu, both as a writer and as a futurist/worldbuilder, but I just can't believe that blockchain/cryptocurrency based on proof of work has any place in a solarpunk future.
This leaves you with about half a dozen other stories that just didn't really grab me strongly enough for me to want to recommend them to you but, as always, YMMV.
Before I end this longer-than-usual reaction, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the physical form of this book. It's a hardcover book produced as part of the "Beyond & Within" series from Flame Tree Press, and is produced to be pleasant to look at and to hold. It's got a foiled cover, marbled page edges, and feels comfortable to hold while reading. But there's one design choice they made that just irked me every time I looked at it: Solarpunk is one word, yet on the cover and the spine, they present it as two words, one below the other. I know that they know better — both the back cover and Verso's introduction spell it correctly — and it really bugs me that they misspell this important word, which may be unfamiliar to many readers, in the most prominent parts of the book. (Both the title page and the half-title page are based on the typography of the cover, and so also misspell the word.)
But leaving that unfortunate design choice aside, I highly recommend this book.
brithistorianToday's quote of the day is actually three quotes, all on the practice of writing history, come from Bruce W. Dearstyne's "The Progressive President and the AHA: Theodore Roosevelt and the Historical Discipline," published in the September 2025 issue of Perspectives on History from the American Historical Association.
The first two are from early 20th century historian Allan Nevins[^1] (1890-1971):
"The world at large will sooner forgive lack of scientific solidity than lack of literary charm. The great preservative in history, as in all else, is style." — from his 1938 book *The Gateway to History
"With the demise of the romantic, unscientific, and eloquent school of writers, our history ceased to be literature." — from his 1959 AHA presidential address
Dearstyne shows that these issues are still relevant by following these quotes with a quote from contemporary historian Jacqueline Jones:
By making stories about the past available to all sorts of publics, scholars seek to counter mythmaking and contribute to a broader educational enterprise — one that is essential to the future of history and, indeed, democracy itself." — from her 2021 AHA presidential address
While I agree with these quotes as to the necessity of making history entertaining so that people will want to read it, I don't think that this has to come at the cost of accuracy. If fact, I think it must not come at the cost of accuracy. If only Jones had deleted the words "stories about" when writing this sentence — thus making it clear that accuracy is required when writing history — then I could agree with it wholeheartedly.
[^1] I found it interesting to note that Nevins had only an MA in history, the same as me, and yet he was able to become president of the AHA in 1959, whereas today an MA in history is (in my experience) basically useless.
brithistorian"Inspiration is merely the reward for working every day."
— Charles Baudelaire (in Curiosites Esthetiques [1868])
Certainly not the first or only person to say some variation on this, but I think it's an aesthetically pleasing statement of the concept.
timeasmymeasure
