Solarpunk Reflections

Solarpunk, as it is often said, is a budding genre, still unexplored and trying to breach the mainstream narratives. If its most frequent (and often less informed) critics point to the lack of conflict, an aspect that is indeed underdeveloped in this genre's works is the power (or lack thereof) of its hieroglyphs.

What's a hieroglyph?

Every literary genre contains elements that are instantly recognizeable to anyone, even to non-readers: from fantasy's corrupted kingdoms and monster-infested dungeons to scifi's robots and spaceships, from the neon-flooded night cities of cyberpunk to the savage seas and great galleons of pirate stories. These aren't just recurring tropes, but embody the very spirit of each genre.

The term has been popularized by Neal Stephenson, founder of Project Hieroglyph, whose words I quote verbatim:

Good SF supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place. A good SF universe has a coherence and internal logic that makes sense to scientists and engineers. Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and William Gibson’s cyberspace. [...] such icons serve as hieroglyphs—simple, recognizable symbols on whose significance everyone agrees.

Solarpunk is, physiologically, still in the phase where its very own hieroglyphs are being developed; some are already established, while others are still in embryonic form and others still are less explored than they should be. Here I'll try to give you an overview of the current hieroglyphs, in an attempt to foster a reflection on what's currently working and what could work better. The disclaimer here is, as always, that I haven't read all solarpunk literature, so my analysis is based on what I managed to absorb and analyze so far. You're welcome to point out counterexamples and exceptions if you have any.

Established Hieroglyphs

These are the most well-known and explored, both in artistic representations and narrative ones. You can find many of these symbolic references in the Solarpunk Seed Library, as the title itself already shows.

• Solar panels & wind turbines — It goes without saying, renewables have been the first aesthetic element that kickstarted the whole genre: they embody the ideal of a future in which energy is collected passively, without compromising whole biomes with mines, drills, platforms, pipelines and smog blankets. Blue tiles and white blades dominate the backdrops of several illustrations and stories. But despite their omnipresence, it's also part of what's missing from the genre: rarely they're put at the center of the narrative or plot, confined to be little more than tools on the background. I'd love to read a story about panel technicians who have to install PV infrastructure in a village where people have conflicting interests.
• Seeds & plants — The other face of solarpunk is the natural and vegetal one. This hieroglyph conveys the aspects of patience and growth, not economically or industrially but philosophically and personally; it is not by chance that this symbolism lends itself particularly well to gender and identity analogies. At times, though, and especially in works of USian origin, the exploration is limited to the individual dimension, neglecting the collective and ecosystemic ones.
• Bikes — Every genre has its own iconic means of transportation: horses in fantasy & western, spaceships in scifi, rusty tanks in postapocalyptic, trains in historical fiction, taxis in noir and so on. So the bike is THE iconic locomotion of solarpunk by every metric, yet I haven't seen anyone delve into the bonds that the characters form with this tool, be those emotional, economic or logistic.
• Libraries — The epitome of shared resources. It embodies the most noble values of knowledge-building, accessibility and services to citizens, but also as a place free of prejudices and theater of cultural exchanges. Yet it is still underrated, and using this hieroglyph is often limited to its relationship with books as items or products and little more.
• Ruins — Solarpunk imagines a new world, and in order to do that it needs to move away from the old one. Ruins, sometimes dilapidated, others recuperated by the community, are the embodiment of this concept: severance from the past and its traumas, be them healed or yet to be processed. Ruins are the only hieroglyph that is shared with other genres (adventure and archaeological fiction), although its symbology is completely different since it moves away from the ideas of danger or glorious pasts.
• Table in the garden — Symbol of conviviality and rest, it's more often part of visual representations and not as much narrative ones. At times I've seen it take shape of a quarter party or town festival, sign that the hieroglyph is yet to take a definite shape.

Underexplored Hieroglyphs

• Fungi & mycelia — This hieroglyph is often used in essays as an analogy for networks of shared resources, decentralization and decomposition of old to reintroduce its components and reimagine them in new shapes that are accessibles and useful to the community. Yet, at least in my experience, fungal language rarely appears in artistic and narrative representations, perhaps due to its proximity to fantasy and fairytales.
• Animals — A great deal of solarpunk stories feature animals as a dated hieroglyph: that of Nineteenth Century nature. An unknowable, wild but noble “other”, often powerless, helpless and in need of salvation or protection. A truly solarpunk reinvention of this hieroglyph could be of species living on the same level as humans, with agency and communications channels of their own. I think only Multispecies Cities has attempted this, to the best of my knowledge, but I'm yet to read that anthology.
• Wikis — A hieroglyph that is already everywhere in our lives, and yet surprisingly absent from every medium, perhaps due to its visualization challenges. Starting from Wikipedia to the countless sites dedicated to videogames, fandoms and other pop culture corners of the internet, wikis are the prime virtual template for showcasing public domain knowledge. They already are a central element of our generations' shared culture, just like newspapers and radio were at the beginning of last century and TV news in the postwar period. However, it seems they're a tough nut to crack when it comes to penetration in media; perhaps we haven't, as creatives, yet realized how powerful, relevant and all-encompassing they can be in our everyday lives.
• Calabash — The economist William Ruddick makes extensive use of this legendary item in his essay Grassroots Economics: a large, emptied gourd is used as a container of tools and food that members of the community make available for each other, well-known in many African and Asian cultures. It's an ancient symbol, but at the same time new for us westerners; I wonder how many more Global South cultures have similar ones laying around, waiting to be reinvented and reimagined in a solarpunk light.

Conclusion

I'm not an authority on the genre as a whole; after all, I've been dabbling with it for just about two years and I'm not even a published author. You're welcome to correct me if the above examples are incomplete, prejudicial or just plain wrong; I'll correct if I need to.

As a reader, though, I've yet to find works that are really masterful, something that puts forward one or more intersecting hieroglyphs that are polished, appealing, powerful and easily legible even to those outside our solarpunk circles. So let's think about what we're missing (and I'm including myself here!) on our path to the narratives we're looking for.

My goal would be to have something akin to the generation ship hieroglyph in scifi: although it was a very polarizing one, many authors tried their hand with it, each deepening, extending and at times contradicting each other in an effort to better the narratives around that hieroglyph and carve a path towards understanding the very real consequences on humanity in a fictional future where that technology exists. They created a conversation on ideas that lasted for decades and surpassed generations. If we, as authors of solarpunk, manage to have such hieroglyphs as our backbones, then we'd become the mature genre we all wish to write and read.

• Andrea “Clockwork” Barresi