Solarpunk, utopian and anti-capitalist fiction for imagining brighter futures

Novels with political under- and over-tones that have captivated me recently

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“The future will only contain what we put into it today”, linocut print by myself

In the 222 days since I worked a full-time job, I've been able to fit in a lot of reading. I like listening to audiobooks while driving and hiking and I finally gave in and let my parents buy me an e-reader after years of swearing by paper. A few months ago I told you about some of the non-fiction that I was reading. Now, it's time for fiction to have its turn.

I’ve been especially enjoying the genres of futurist, utopian, solarpunk and anti-capitalist fiction. Instead of completely escaping from reality, these books offer an alternative future with imaginative solutions to current problems.

In Practicing New Worlds, Andrea Ritchie calls this type of writing “Visionary Fiction” and identifies it as “one tool for sparking, reinvigorating, and exercising our imaginations to the fullest extent possible in the face of claims that the abolit­ionist futures we seek to manifest are impossible.”

“Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.” Art by Ashley Lukashevsky, quote by Ruha Benjamin

Quoting Walidah Imarisha, Practicing New Worlds goes on to explain:

All real substantive social change has been considered unrealistic at the time people fought for it—until those people changed the world to make it happen. With visionary fiction, we start with the question “What is the world we want?” rather than “What is a win that is possible and realistic?” . . . This is why visionary fiction and other imaginative spaces are key to true liberatory change—because we must be able to imagine something different before we can build it, and we have lived all of our lives within systems that tell us radical change is an impossibility.

This is something that I think is missing from most leftist spaces. For the longest time, I never internalized that being an abolitionist means creating the world that makes prisons obsolete, not just being against the institution. I knew that I supported abolition in theory, but it wasn’t until this clicked that I felt like it was a viable strategy that I could get behind. So I wonder, how many folks are our movements missing out on because we’re not platforming alternatives? While it’s easy to say you’re against something, the work of envisioning and building the future is something that we all need to be part - and stoking our imaginations with fiction is one way to get started.

All of the books I’m including here are unique in their styles - some encompassing all of these visionary genres, and some just a few of them. Here’s a little glossary I came up with:

• futurist 🔮 - taking place in the future

• utopian 🌈 - taking place in an idealistic society where everything is designed to be harmonious, just, and fulfilling for all people

• solarpunk ☀️ - a sub-genre of utopian literature, solarpunk fiction takes place in a sustainable, eco-friendly future where humanity lives harmoniously with nature, often featuring renewable energy, green cities, and with a focus on social equity

• anti-capitalist 🌹 - the characters and plot tell a story that illustrates the pitfalls of capitalism and shows resistance and possible alternatives

Some quick advice: For a long time, I’d avoided most “science fiction” that wasn’t Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park…) because descriptions of imaginary technology often feel too complex and confusing. I want to note that I still struggle with this sometimes. My strategy for times I feel bogged down is just to keep going. It usually doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of the story if you let your eyes skim a few bits until you feel engaged again.

“We invent the future together”, linocut by myself

The Monk and Robot series (book #1, book #2), by Becky Chambers 🔮☀️🌈🌹

If you’re looking for cozy descriptions of slow-living in eco-cities and a house-wagon pulled by a solar bike then look no further. These books take place in a world where humans have retreated from half of the planet (see also half-earth concept), leaving the other portion to nature and self-aware robots. At the beginning of this book, a human monk and a robot meet for the first time in centuries. As they go on a journey across the wilderness, the reader sees them grow to understand each other and the nature of being human. This book reminded me that even if we solve all of our climate and equity issues, we will still have questions about who we are as people. Instead of these “unsolvable questions” leaving me with anxiety, the book expanded my understanding of utopia as more of a process and less of a destination. These short and sweet books make for easy reading and are perfect as someone’s first foray into solar punk literature.

The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson 🔮☀️

It’s the year 2025 and we’re seeing catastrophic effects of climate change - from heat waves that wipe out whole cities, to refugee crises that are bigger than we’ve ever seen. “The Ministry for the Future” is established as a UN body to investigate a variety of climate solutions. This book is a bit long, but I found that I could skip chapters on topics that didn’t interest me as much. I appreciated the diversity of solutions that were offered and the development of the characters as they wrestled with ethical questions. I also found the trajectories of the different countries around the world to be very believable, making the whole timeline feel plausible and giving me hope for a similar outcome in my lifetime. While I wouldn't say the book is explicitly anti-capitalist, the solutions offered definitely wrestle with the capitalist imperative of resource extraction.

Everything for Everyone, by Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O’Brien 🔮🌈 🌹

As someone who considers themself a social scientist, I loved the oral history format of this book which brought the characters and complexity of the story to life. These interviews take place in the 2060s, following a global insurrection that has redefined society all the way from work to family, gender, healing, justice and more. This book reminds me that the work we’re doing now paves the way for a better world in the future. Through history we’ve seen that change often happens slowly for a while, and then all at once. Bonus, the format of this book also makes it easy to read or listen to in segments - imagine savoring it as you would an investigative podcast. Of all the books I’ve mentioned here, this one felt the most realistic - possibly because of its proximity to our current year and specificity to the US.

Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow 🔮☀️🌹

Imagine walking away from society as we know it. Now imagine a whole subculture of people doing this. Imagine that in a high-tech future of dystopian surveillance. While my current unemployment experiment feels like a rejection of social and economic norms, it's nothing compared to what the “walkaways” give up in this book - and having that tiny comparison of my own has made it all the more fascinating.

To be honest, I’m still only halfway through this one, but my imagination has been captured by the non-hierarchical ways the walkaway society is structured, the changing understandings of the individual, and the ethical-philosophical questions that arise. If you’re into coding you’ll probably especially enjoy reading about the innovative ways their programs are coded to avoid competition between contributors.

“Activism is my rent for living on this planet”, linocut print by myself

Bonus:

The Free People’s Village, by Sim Kern 🌹🔮 *

This one doesn’t quite fit the theme, but I wanted to include more than four books in this post and this is a good one! The * is because this story actually takes place in 2020, but it’s in an alternate timeline where Al Gore won the 2000 presidency and climate change has been "solved". But it actually hasn’t been solved, because capitalism took its inequitable course and marginalized people have been predictably excluded from the profits. This book tells the tale of an inner-city solidarity occupation that is so realistic in its depictions of leftist subculture that I believe it can teach us a thing or two about how we understand and organize our movements. While it’s not the same flavor of hopeful as the above books (I really cried at the end), maybe it fits in the theme as a reminder of how our future needs to be inclusive of everyone - and until then, the struggle isn’t over.

What other books should be on this list? Up next for me are:

• Three Californias Trilogy (Kim Stanley Robinson),

• Parable of the Sower (Octavia E Butler)

• The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin)

Getting ahold of these books

I added affiliate links to all the books I mentioned above because that’s what bloggers do. In the off-chance that you decide to purchase one of these books and use a link above I’ll receive a handful change as commission. I used bookshop.org because this is a more ethical alternative to Amazon.

Borrowing these titles from your local library (or library-linked app like Libby or Hoopla) is also a great option. The more we use our libraries, the better-placed they are to advocate for funding to expand important services to our communities.