SUSAN KAYE QUINN

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Hopepunk/Solarpunk

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SUE TALKS HOPEPUNK

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.

Václav Havel, Czech dissident, writer and statesman

Definitions

HOPEPUNK (2017, Rowland): Hopepunk is weaponized optimism—intentionally choosing communalism, radical compassion, cooperation (instead of violence) as an organizing principle. Hopepunk is cozy, healing, gentle. Hopepunk is Carriger’s Heroine’s Journey (not Campbell’s Hero’s Journey). Hopepunk disrupts an extractive world by befriending the dragon, not slaying it. By building civilization, not destroying it. Hopepunk works for justice. It is inherently diverse & feminist. Hopepunk rewrites narratives so we can survive the future. Hopepunk elements can be found in any genre, but its origin story is in Speculative Fiction.

SOLARPUNK: Solarpunk is a hopepunk’s older eco-conscious cousin: it tells solutions-based stories about fighting climate change. Many solarpunk writers consider their stories to be part of their activism.

Why I write hopepunk

I’d been writing hopepunk before the pandemic hit in 2020, but that summer found me disabled with a repetitive stress injury, unable to write, and absolutely lost-at-sea amid the pandemic, George Floyd protests, looming election, and the ever-present-doom of the climate crisis.

I was desperate to envision a future that wasn’t the worst thing that could go wrong — those were right outside the window. What could possibly go… right? Not a pollyanish fairy tale, but a story of triumph that was real, believable, and most importantly, had solutions to give hope to people (me).

It was incredibly difficult to lift my head up and use my fiction-powers to imagine that better future.

But once I did, the joy-glee high multiplied when I discovered other writers doing the same thing, all of us battling the doomerism by writing our way into a better tomorrow. I wasn’t alone in this.

Because, of course… that’s the entire story.

Climate fiction is about reclaiming power and changing the system… It is a call for a diverse, powerful rewilding of stories and relationships… co-creating the future… As participants told me, if you can imagine it, then you can create it.

(Rewriting the Future: Thesis on Writing Climate Fiction, Melissa Aïnseba, Utrecht University, 2022)

Recommended Reads: Hopepunk and Solarpunk

SUE’S WORKS

POETRY

SHORT FICTION

NOVELS/NOVELLAS/NOVELETTES

NON-FICTION/COLLECTIONS

GRAPHIC NOVEL

MOVIES/TELEVISION

MUSIC

GAMES

FOR MORE RECOMMENDATIONS: see the HOPEFUL CLIMATE FICTION list on my BRIGHT GREEN FUTURES substack/podcast

About Susan

Susan Kaye Quinn is PhD Environmental Engineer turned spec fic author who writes hopeful climate fiction & solarpunk.
More About Sue

What I’m Writing Now

I’m currently working on a novel about plants and families and how we have to renegotiate our relationships with both.

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SKQ on Social Media

Find Sue on Blue Sky, Mastodon, and her blog. She also hosts the Bright Green Futures podcast.
Bright Green Futures