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justalittlesolarpunk · 14 days

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I’ve teased it. You’ve waited. I’ve procrastinated. You’ve probably forgotten all about it.

But now, finally, I’m here with my solarpunk resources masterpost!

YouTube Channels:

Andrewism

The Solarpunk Scene

Solarpunk Life

Solarpunk Station

Our Changing Climate

Podcasts:

The Joy Report

How To Save A Planet

Demand Utopia

Solarpunk Presents

Outrage and Optimisim

From What If To What Next

Solarpunk Now

Idealistically

The Extinction Rebellion Podcast

The Landworkers' Radio

Wilder

What Could Possibly Go Right?

Frontiers of Commoning

The War on Cars

The Rewild Podcast

Books (Fiction):

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness The Dispossessed The Word for World is Forest

Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

Phoebe Wagner: When We Hold Each Other Up

Phoebe Wagner, Bronte Christopher Wieland: Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation

Brenda J. Pierson: Wings of Renewal: A Solarpunk Dragon Anthology

Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro: Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World

Justine Norton-Kertson: Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology

Sim Kern: The Free People’s Village

Ruthanna Emrys: A Half-Built Garden

Sarina Ulibarri: Glass & Gardens

Books (Non-fiction):

Murray Bookchin: The Ecology of Freedom

George Monbiot: Feral

Miles Olson: Unlearn, Rewild

Mark Shepard: Restoration Agriculture

Kristin Ohlson: The Soil Will Save Us

Rowan Hooper: How To Spend A Trillion Dollars

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing: The Mushroom At The End of The World

Kimberly Nicholas: Under The Sky We Make

Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass

David Miller: Solved

Ayana Johnson, Katharine Wilkinson: All We Can Save

Jonathan Safran Foer: We Are The Weather

Colin Tudge: Six Steps Back To The Land

Edward Wilson: Half-Earth

Natalie Fee: How To Save The World For Free

Kaden Hogan: Humans of Climate Change

Rebecca Huntley: How To Talk About Climate Change In A Way That Makes A Difference

Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac: The Future We Choose

Jonathon Porritt: Hope In Hell

Paul Hawken: Regeneration

Mark Maslin: How To Save Our Planet

Katherine Hayhoe: Saving Us

Jimmy Dunson: Building Power While The Lights Are Out

Paul Raekstad, Sofa Saio Gradin: Prefigurative Politics

Andreas Malm: How To Blow Up A Pipeline

Phoebe Wagner, Bronte Christopher Wieland: Almanac For The Anthropocene

Chris Turner: How To Be A Climate Optimist

William MacAskill: What We Owe To The Future

Mikaela Loach: It's Not That Radical

Miles Richardson: Reconnection

David Harvey: Spaces of Hope Rebel Cities

Eric Holthaus: The Future Earth

Zahra Biabani: Climate Optimism

David Ehrenfeld: Becoming Good Ancestors

Stephen Gliessman: Agroecology

Chris Carlsson: Nowtopia

Jon Alexander: Citizens

Leah Thomas: The Intersectional Environmentalist

Greta Thunberg: The Climate Book

Jen Bendell, Rupert Read: Deep Adaptation

Seth Godin: The Carbon Almanac

Jane Goodall: The Book of Hope

Vandana Shiva: Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture

Amitav Ghosh: The Great Derangement

Minouche Shafik: What We Owe To Each Other

Dieter Helm: Net Zero

Chris Goodall: What We Need To Do Now

Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Stephanie Foote: The Cambridge Companion To The Environmental Humanities

Bella Lack: The Children of The Anthropocene

Hannah Ritchie: Not The End of The World

Chris Turner: How To Be A Climate Optimist

Kim Stanley Robinson: Ministry For The Future

Fiona Mathews, Tim Kendall: Black Ops & Beaver Bombing

Jeff Goodell: The Water Will Come

Lynne Jones: Sorry For The Inconvenience But This Is An Emergency

Helen Crist: Abundant Earth

Sam Bentley: Good News, Planet Earth!

Timothy Beal: When Time Is Short

Andrew Boyd: I Want A Better Catastrophe

Kristen R. Ghodsee: Everyday Utopia

Elizabeth Cripps: What Climate Justice Means & Why We Should Care

Kylie Flanagan: Climate Resilience

Chris Johnstone, Joanna Macy: Active Hope

Mark Engler: This is an Uprising

Anne Therese Gennari: The Climate Optimist Handbook

Magazines:

Solarpunk Magazine

Positive News

Resurgence & Ecologist

Ethical Consumer

Films (Fiction):

How To Blow Up A Pipeline

The End We Start From

Woman At War

Black Panther

Star Trek

Tomorrowland

Films (Documentary):

2040: How We Can Save The Planet

The People vs Big Oil

Wild Isles

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

Generation Green New Deal

Video Games:

Terra Nil

Animal Crossing

Gilded Shadows

Anno 2070

Stardew Valley

RPGs:

Solarpunk Futures

Perfect Storm

Advocacy Groups:

A22 Network

Extinction Rebellion

Greenpeace

Friends of The Earth

Apps:

Ethy

Sojo

BackMarket

Depop

Vinted

Olio

Buy Nothing

Too Good To Go

Websites:

European Co-housing

UK Co-housing

US Co-housing

Brought By Bike (connects you with zero-carbon delivery goods)

ClimateBase (find a sustainable career)

Environmentjob (ditto)

Businesses (🤢):

Ethical Superstore

Hodmedods

Fairtransport/Sail Cargo Alliance

Let me know if you think there’s anything I’ve missed!

#solarpunk #hopepunk #cottagepunk #environmentalism #social justice #community #optimism #bright future #climate justice #tidalpunk #turbinepunk #resources #masterpost #books #films #magazines #podcasts #apps

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aemarling · 2 months

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Projected at X-Twitter in San Francisco.

Solarpunks must be skeptical of anyone saying it’s important to buy something, like a Tesla, or buy in, with cryptocurrency. Capitalists want nothing more than to co-opt radical movements, neutralizing them, to sell products.

People shilling crypto will tell you it decentralizes power. So that’s a lie, but solarpunks who believe it may be fooled into investing in this Ponzi scheme that burns more energy than some countries. Crypto will centralize power in billionaires, increasing their wealth and decreasing their accountability. That’s why Space Karen Elon Musk pushes crypto. The freer the market, the faster it devolves to monopoly. Rather than decentralizing anything, crypto would steer us toward a Bladerunner dystopia with its all-powerful Tyrell corporation.

Promoting crypto on a solarpunk podcast would be unforgivable. That’s not quite what happens on S5E1 “Let’s Talk Tech.” The hosts seem to understand crypto has no part in a solarpunk future or its prefigurative present. But they don’t come out and say that, adopting a tone of impartiality. At best, I would call this disingenuous. And it reeks of the both-sides-ism that corporate media used to paralyze climate action discourse for decades.

Crypto is not “appropriate tech,” and discussing it without any clarity is inappropriate.

#solarpunk #cyberpunk #activism

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

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The Lost Cause prologue, part III

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a solarpunk adventure about "the first generation in a century that doesn't fear the future." It comes out on Nov 14, and its early fans include Naomi Klein:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

Amazon won't sell my audiobooks, so I made my own, doing the narration this time around. I'm running a Kickstarter campaign to pre-sell the audiobook, ebook and hardcovers, including signed, personalized hardcovers – I hope you'll consider backing it:

http://lost-cause.org/

This week, I'm serializing the prologue to the book.

Here's part one:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/06/green-new-deal-fic/#the-first-generation-in-a-century-not-to-fear-the-future

And part two:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/07/met-cute-ugly/#part-ii

I woke at noon, the house hot because Gramps had left the blinds up in the front room, and ever since the big live oak had been cut up and taken away for blight, we’d lost its shade.

I used the bathroom, pulled on shorts and a tee, and went looking for breakfast, or brunch, or whatever.

“Gramps?”

He didn’t answer. That was weird. Gramps was a late riser and he rarely got up before ten, and then he took a long time to get going, listening to his podcasts and drinking coffee and sending memes around to his buddies with his giant tablet, with the type zoomed way, way up. He didn’t like going out in the heat, either, so in the summer he rarely left the house before four or five, once the sun was low to the hills. He’d left his coffee cup in the sink and his tablet on the table, so I knew he’d gone in a hurry. He hated dirty dishes and hated dead batteries even more.

I put his stuff away and thawed out some waffles and got a big iced coffee from the cold-brew jug I kept in the fridge and started the process of becoming human.

I gobbled my first waffle before the emotional weight of the previous night settled on me. Those emotions were way too big, so big that they all layered on top of each other, leaving me with nothing but numbness.

I did the reflex thing and pulled out my screen, giving myself a brief sear of shame for my mindless screen-handling, just as I’d been trained to do in mindfulness class. That was enough to prompt me to run through the checklist: Do I need to look at my screen? Do I need to look at it now? What do I hope to find? When will I be done? I answered the questions (Yes, yes, news about last night, when I’ve looked at two or three stories), and then unlocked it, but didn’t look at it until I’d poured myself another glass of coffee.

Two hours later, there was no coffee left and my eyes hurt from screenburn. I dropped my screen, came out of my trance, and stood up.

I’d gone viral. Or rather, Mike had.

My post had been picked up, first in Burbank, then statewide, then nationally, then internationally. Amateur comedians had edited the footage into highlight reels, moments chosen to demonstrate just how idiotic and hateful he was. Someone made a White Nationalist Bingo Card whose every square had a quote from Mike Kennedy. There were lots of jokes about inbreeding, hillbillies, musket-fuckers and ammosexuals, master race masturbation, senility, removable boomers—all the age-and class- based slurs that we weren’t allowed to say in school, but that everyone busted out as soon as we were off the property. It was pretty gross, but on the other hand, I couldn’t exactly argue with them. Bottom line was, Mike Kennedy had been up on that roof for no good reason, and he’d been ready to kill me to let him finish his stupid, senseless project. So yeah, fuck that guy. I guess.

I was pleased to see that I came off as a hero, with strangers around the world praising me for my cool head, saying I’d saved his life.

I put my plate in the dishwasher and wiped up my crumbs and checked the clock on the kitchen wall—I’d always loved its plain analog face with its thick and thin lines, the yellowing AC cord that came off it. It had belonged to Gramps’s own parents, and it was the only thing in the house I considered anything like an heirloom.

It was coming up on one and if I showered fast and ran, I could make my physics class. I decided to go for it, had the fastest shower in history, pulled on whatever was on the top of my dresser drawers, and sprinted for the street.

I was just jogging up to the entrance to Burroughs when I got a screen chime, which stopped me because, like all the students, I’d installed the school app that turned off audible alarms while I was on property during school hours. It wasn’t mandatory, but the punishment for having an alarm in class was confiscation, so . . .

I pulled out my screen as I panted by the doorway, mopping my face with my shirttail. It was a text from Burbank PD, informing me that Mike Kennedy was headed for a bail hearing in two hours, and I was entitled to present a victim impact statement, either recorded or in person. I’d known that the police could override the school app (there was a kid in my class whose parole office sometimes paged him, and the fact that he audibly dinged was just part of the package, I figured—a way to remind us all that this kid had fucked up bad), but I hadn’t expected them to ping me, let alone on school property.

I tapped out a quick thanks-no-thanks, and headed to physics.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/09/working-the-refs/#lost-cause-prologue

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

#pluralistic #books #science fiction #solarpunk #clifi #the lost cause #kickstarter #audiobook

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arielkroon · 1 year

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Hi there, I'm Ariel Kroon, and this is my Tumblr thing. I'm an independent scholar and a freelance academic editor, and so I'm going to be crossposting from my blog (when I blog). I'm hoping this won't take me down too many rabbit holes, but you never know.

I did my dissertation on post-apocalyptic Canadian science fiction published between 1948-1989, so expect me to post about obscure SF as well as my Opinions on apocalyptic discourse, the apocalyptic imaginary, cyberpunk and solarpunk. I use an intersectional feminist lens, as well as thinking with ecocriticism, affect theory, queer theory and gender studies, and I have a weakness for/history in feminist philosophical thought and also (xtian, protestant, crc, dutch-settler) religion.

I'm a third-generation Dutch immigrant, settler scholar on the trad. territory of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and Neutral peoples and it feels weird to disclose this because I'm also a millennial who grew up with LJ and non-anonymity online makes me feel really squeamish and vulnerable, but that's a privilege a lot of people don't get these days. Expect me to wrestle a lot with the discourse/idea of reconciliation in so-called Canada, cause I'm complicit as hell but I'm trying to do my best to be a conscientious race-traitor.

I also struggle with chronic fatigue, chronic pain, brain fog, short term memory issues, executive functioning, and I am on the road to figuring out what I suspect is the fact that I'm on the spectrum, so sometimes I don't really have the spoons or grace for being the best ally I can be. The discourse of the perfect activist is one I want to push back against, as someone with multiple disabilities; the excuse of being "too disabled" to ignore the suffering of others is, I think, a harmful myth that many of us - intentionally or not - tend to buy in to and I want to also push against that.

Disability studies isn't something I'm very familiar with at all, since my disabilities manifested after a car crash in 2019 (which exacerbated all the underlying issues I was busy masking / repressing while being in grad school, because I suddenly lost the ability to keep up my coping mechanisms). I look forward to learning more about pretty much all of these things, by the way.

Speaking of being very new to a field, I'm co-host of Solarpunk Presents Podcast (@solarpunkpresentspodcast); come along and learn with me and Christina De La Rocha about people doing their best in the present with an eye towards a better future world for all.

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storiesfromthefuture · 3 years

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many of the technologies and practices that solarpunks draw into their imaginings already exist: solar and other renewable energy, urban agriculture, or organic architecture and design. Like sci-fi authors, solarpunks remix the present to produce an alternative future. SOLARPUNK WRITING CONTEST currently accepting submissions *Short stories (up to 5,000 words) & artwork *No contest entrance fee! *Stories will be read on the "Stories from the Future" podcast. *Stories will be included in our next anthology. www.StoriesfromtheFuture.co May the Future be with You!

#solarpunk #positivefuturism #storiesfromthefuture #writing contest

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stationarcadia · 4 years

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Welcome, Anyone.  Metal Steve Productions is proud to present; Station Arcadia. Station Arcadia is a queer audio drama podcast set in a dystopian world where steampunk, cyberpunk, solarpunk and diselpunk societies all exist side by side. The radio host, a nonbinary lesbian named Kass, broadcasts diverse stories from across the land that together, tell the story of a revolution, and hope in the face of a dying world. Interspersed throughout these broadcasts is live audio footage that focuses on four different protagonists - one for each society. As the world unfolds over the course of the broadcasts, these four characters embrace challenges, make mistakes, and continue on their own journeys.  Station Arcadia’s pilot episode, By The Wayside, is available today on all podcast streaming services. By The Wayside follows a technology scavenger from the cyberpunk society of Talsoria. You also meet 16 year old Memorie, and listen as fae attempt to find out just where those Talsorian Revolutionaries are hiding… Learn more at https://www.stationarcadia.com/, or listen find your favourite streaming platform for episode one at https://pod.link/stationarcadia

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joeyeschrich · 2 years

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An interview on Solar Futures, a podcast presented by Solarpunk Magazine, with me and my coeditor Clark A. Miller about our books The Weight of Light and Cities of Light.

#solarpunk #Solar Futures

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canvaswolfdoll · 4 years

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CanvasWatches: Carole & Tuesday

A charming SciFi anime focusing more on the cast’s day-to-day lives than some major sociopolitical conflict that requires laser gun diplomacy? Set on a Terraformed Mars with brick and mortar solarpunk aesthetic? I can get into that.

The fact that Carole & Tuesday is a science fiction story came as a surprise, as most of the buzz and promotion that crossed my social feeds focused on the street performance aspects. Then, surprise! Tabletop fast food ordering and pizzerias that grow their tomatoes in house![1] Which is the sort of speculative fiction I’m enjoying nowadays: normal life with the fantastic acting as seasoning to spice up the world around them.

I’ve never paid special attention to music. I listen to music obviously, but rarely in any sort of analytical capacity. It’s pretty sounds that help fill in the background while I write, or to convey emotion in a musical, or to mark the start and end of a show I’m watching. I’ve never sought out music to listen to when looking for entertainment, it’s always a byproduct of whatever media I’m engaged with at the moment. Heck, these days, when I’m too lazy to set my car radio up to play a podcast, I just drive in silence.[2]

I sometimes feel I’m missing something by not engaging with the art form in a more conscious manner, and I only recently became aware that albums are a carefully curated thing instead of a collection of the performer’s most recent songs, so… yeah. Kind of a cultural blindspot.[3]

This tangent doesn’t even end with a neat little note of how Carole & Tuesday had inspired me to consume music in a more deliberate and contemplative manner. The soundtrack includes plenty of insert songs I happily threw on my background noise playlists,[4] and what few albums I seek out are video game and anime soundtracks.[5]

Carole & Tuesday was chiefly directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, who’s name was made with the Jazzy Space Epic Cowboy Bebop and Hip-Hop Samurai Series Samurai Champloo. It was probably inevitable he would produce an anime where music took front stage instead of informing tone.

Carole & Tuesday takes inspiration from Pop, but is unafraid to feature and mix other genres, such as Opera and Rap.[6] What’s really exciting is the decision to have the insert songs performed in English.

Historically, when diegetic music is present in anime, the song is performed in Japanese, and most dubs make the smart decision to leave the japanese audio and subtitle them. I may prefer dubs for my various reasons, but I wouldn’t dare ask for the policy on subbed music to change. Carole & Tuesday took an international view to its production, and thus used the most widely spoken language when no one (reasonable) would begrudge the use of Japanese performers.

Netflix picked up the show as part of their continued haphazard attempts to seize the genre with an attitude out of the early 2000s, and the company tapped to record the English dub did an admirable job matching voice performances believably similar to the singing voices.

Which may be the first time that speaking actors were hired to fit the singers.

The story takes place on Mars in the future year of… 50 years after humanity started migrating to Mars. I cannot find a year cited, which is the smart and wise choice and I am super annoyed I’m not going to be able to make jokes about the production's attempts and failure to predict the future.

50 years after starting to migrate over to the red planet, humanity has terraformed large swathes of Mars into a Solarpunk paradise. Earth is apparently not in a great state as refugees are desperately making their way to the planet, but Earth remains offscreen for the entire run. Fortunately no one has any giant robots,[7] so the two planets aren’t at war. While Mars has been made hospitable enough, the atmosphere does occasionally mess with the genetics of residents.

That’s just background details, however. The story is really about the titular duo. Tuesday is introduced fleeing the mansion of her politician mother, hopping onto a cattle train like Kiki, and riding off to Alba City with only a quitar and robotic luggage to keep her company, where she stumbles upon Refugee Orphan Carole busking with a keyboard. The two have a jam session and decide to become a musical act.

Meanwhile, famed child star Angela Carpenter[8] is setting to transition from a modeling career to an exciting career singing. Her mother pulls strings and utilizes her connections to team up with Tao, a genius of Artificial Intelligence Design who is willing to use his technology to provide Angela with computer generated music and lyrics.

Thus we have the start of a sci-fi John Henry Tale where the battle is not hammer and steel but instruments and voice.

I say ‘the start’ because while the two teams utilize different methods to produce their music, their methods are never weighed against one another. In fact, there’s barely a one-sided rivalry, as Angela is jealous of the titular duo’s ability to enjoy their career, and our two heroes take only a polite, professional view of Angela’s rising career.

Carole and Tuesday are both weighed down by a common problem with anime protagonists: they’re just nice. There’s a certain fear when writing protagonists, especially females, of accidentally making them off-putting that the writers overcorrect and don’t let the hero make mistakes or have much personality, to the point that Carole and Tuesday have very little agency.

Instead, it’s Gus, the ex-rock star manager the duo acquire, that does the leg work and takes risks while Carole and Tuesday just sing nice songs then sit back while the plotlines orbiting their rise to success are resolved by the men.

The show also can’t choose a lane, playing with several story threads that could carry full 24-episode stories by themselves, but instead are dealt with as lightly as possible.

We start with the story of a run-away from decadence and a refugee bringing their world views together, but that instead goes into a tournament arc disguised as a talent contest, then the drama of navigating the music industry, before ending with the presidential run of Tuesday’s mother causing public unrest. Carole and Tuesday don’t make a meaningful choice that affects any of these stories.

Meanwhile, Angela gets a story of asserting her identity while already in public view, facing dangers both external and internal on her journey.

Surprisingly, this is the first show in a while that I didn't resent for transitioning out of the episodic, playing with the premise portion. While Carole and Tuesday were attempting to get their big break, bopping around misadventures trying to get contacts, gigs, and filming a music video, Angela looms in her plotline, building up to the inevitable rivalry.

Angela is introduced just before her mother, Dahlia, starts reworking Angela's career from modeling to singing, hiring Tao, renowned AI designer, as Angela's producer. Angela experiences mild paranoia from Tao's standoffish nature, machinery, and making a holographic simulation of Angela. So Angela had a more consistent narrative during the first arc.

Introductions out of the way, it's time for everyone's favorite trope: the tournament arc! In the form of ‘Space!'s got Talent’ Generic Brand Named into Mar's Brightest. The main duo meets their rival, backstage drama ensues, some very good music is performed, and things are set up to technically give both Carole and Tuesday as well as Angela a win at the end.

With publicity achieved, Gus starts getting to work preparing the girls' debut album and booking appearances, as well as meeting other artists and (briefly) Carole’s father. We learn about Gus’s past client, Flora, who dropped Gus as soon as she found success, then found herself without a support base and spiraled into depression and addiction. Carole and Tuesday remain upbeat and optimistic.

Meanwhile, Angela starts getting harassed by a stalker and feeling helpless and poorly supported by those around her. Tao takes point on stopping the stalker when the police fail, ultimately taking him down before the stalker could pull a Mark David Chapman.

The story bleeds into the final act, as the presidential campaign of Valerie Simmons, Tuesday’s mother, moves forward in prominence. The AI algorithm Valerie is utilizing suggests she take an anti-immigration stance, which the woman follows in an attempt to further her career. Musicians are getting harassed by law enforcement, Tuesday’s brother Spencer is becoming uneasy with being an accessory to the campaign, and starts meeting with a reporter with information that Valerie’s campaign manager orchestrated a terrorist attack to villainize immigrants. Spencer and the reporter argue over how many chances to give Valerie, and agree on Spencer taking the evidence to Valerie, and if she doesn’t back down, then they’ll leak the scandal. Valerie, seeing the crimes committed for her benefit, gracefully renounces her candidacy. It’s very heart warming.

Carole and Tuesday write a protest song, and gather friends to sing it. This protest song has no observable impact.

Meanwhile, Angela learns she’s adopted, and her mother suffers a heart-attack shortly before Angela is set to win a Martian Grammy, and Angela spirals into depression and prescription drug abuse, to the point of collapsing at the end of her Grammy performance, being rushed to the hospital and missing her mother’s passing and funeral. Angela is adrift. She has no family, no support, and is just lonely.

Tao, who was working to sabotage Valerie’s campaign and burning as many bridges as possible after being targeted for refusing to assist the campaign, appears in Angela’s hospital room to drop a bomb: both he and Angela are designer babies, and though Tao must go into hiding now, he does intend to look out for his little sister.

Angela joins the performance of Carole and Tuesday’s protest song.

If it’s not already clear, I feel the story of Carole and Tuesday themselves was pretty lacking.

So, how would I rework this? Step one: we’re either cutting Carole and Tuesday, or combining them into a single character and making Angela the second. With the second option, Angela can maintain her backstory, but take Carole’s introduction of fleeing her family mansion and attempting to strike out on her own, meeting up with Carole and forming an act. To maintain the final arc, Carole would need to be reworked into the abandoned daughter of Tuesday’s late father, making her the half sister of Spencer and something to be hidden by Valerie Simmons’ campaign.

We then intermingle the two plotlines: Gus maintains his managerial position, and eventually convinces Angela to use her connections and mother to get her career jumpstarted, Ms. Carpenter still brings in Tao to write music, and now we can lean more into the AI-written music versus human compositions subplot as well as creative differences, which can lead to an arc where Angela and Carolday split to attempt solo careers, each taking a different manager.[9] Dahlia still has her issues and passes away, Angela her depressive spiral, but now Gus gets pathos by being there to help his client out of self-destruction, and the final number can also be a reconciliation of the main musical duo. The song can even be a combination of AI and human composition.

Carolday, meanwhile, discovers her relation to the anti-immigrant candidate and has to decide if she wants to finally have a family with Valerie and Spencer or stand up for her beliefs and assist a politician in bringing the campaign down. The resolution of the political plot can remain a happy compromise, but Carolday gets a slightly more active role in it.

The animation and world-building is great, and Angela’s arc is very strong. But the writing was too afraid to let either Carole or Tuesday dip into unlikeability that they become props to their own storyline, which is made further unfortunate as their supporting cast that do make decisions are mostly men.

The series is also riddled with a lot of good starts. Many short vignettes or minor details that could be made into full animes by themselves. Show more of Carole and Tuesday’s attempts to break into the music industry while also trying to pay bills and put food on their table. An expansion on the other competitors at Mars Brightest.[10] Heck, expand the roster of the competition and dig more into backstage drama. Carole’s father, who was sent to prison and found his wife dead and daughter sent to another planet upon his release, could carry a story of his own on his back! Valerie’s presidential run and the plight of Earth immigrants given more attention. Heck, even the story of how Earth, the origins of the human species, fell into being a third-world planet people are desperate to leave.

I’d even watch a series about the solarpunk pizzeria that grows their own tomatoes.

The music is really good, however, featuring many artists and styles, and those by our main duo wouldn’t sound out of place on a car radio or licensed on a primetime television show.

It’s a good show, but not an eternal classic. Maybe a second choice for someone digging deeper into anime. However, if its placement on Netflix means it’s someone’s introduction to Anime, that wouldn’t be terrible. Give it a watch if you want something to wind down for bed, or want inspiration for your own speculative fiction.

Kataal kataal.

[1] Solarpunk’s neat. [2] Mostly because I lost all my preset stations last time I took my car in for fixing, and I don't actually know any to punch in. Also, I use youtube for music when writing. [3] Also means I’m wholly unprepared to find music when I finally get a podcast project off the ground. [4] The soundtrack is very present on Spotify, which is nice. [5] I am finding myself increasingly intrigued by vinyl records, however. Probably a bit extravagant, and difficult considering my narrow interests. [6] Presumably to annoy fans of both. [7] Bam! Gundam reference! Anyone have Bingo yet? [8] Though I could swear they never use her last name on screen. [9] I’d find it amusing if Angela takes Gus and Carolday teams up with Dahlia, but the rest of my outline works better if Angela remains with Dahlia. [10] Though this one’s not a major loss. Typical tournament arc stuff.

#CanvasWatches #carole and tuesday #anime #CanvasReviews

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thetransintransgenic · 7 years

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WESA Pitsburgh Special Reports

#Solarpunk #Liberal Propaganda #Yes I DID find another 5-minute-news podcasts from random places in America in fact!#it's wholesome-eco-liberal-memes or something!#I did a bad job photomanipping this so let's just pretend the yellow and black obvious around the edges is subtly acknowledging the build-yo #I did a bad job photomanipulating this so let's pretend the yellow and black obvious around the edges was deliberate #it's subtly acknowledging that the build-your-own-infrastructure instinct which is the main thing behind ancapism is also present here #and the initial forays into this waste-water recycling field were necessary to do while possibly violating existing standards and codes #but that that is a tacitly communally-accepted break from the rules and that it is possibl #to not only come back to supporting communal-bureaucratic-consensus but in fact possible to violate the letter of the system #AS PART OF A SINGLE ACTION which supports the system in total #... but actually I just did a bad job in GIMP #Look it's okay for one I quickly slapped together myself okay?#goSH I can't understand WHY I wasn't able to find an eco-liberal meme ball template already!#it came as a complete. shock. I tell you

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solarpunkpresentspodcast · 12 days

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youtube

In 2023, the inaugural Solarpunk Conference was held in virtual space, bringing together over 150 attendees, 18 presenters, and creating a palpable sense of the solarpunk community. This episode, Ariel chats with conference organizers Charles Valsechi, Lindsay Jane, and Kees Schuller about the genesis of the conference, the inspiration for its theme, as well as a little preview of what they are hoping to see at the 2024 Solarpunk Conference: Rays of Resilience.

You can go to https://www.solarpunkconference.com/ to check out The Solarpunk Conference, access The Solarpunk Conference Journal, and buy tickets. You can also check out the channel @solarpunkconference on YouTube for recordings of last year’s presentations, and stop by Lindsay Jane's channel @TheSolarpunkScene for more solarpunky content!

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mackincaid · 6 years

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A few open submission calls for minority and marginalization themed markets

Note: This list was written in July 2018, and features markets that are not permanently open, so if you’re seeing this list ages after that time, these markets may be closed.

Not a writer? Some of these projects are available for you to read/listen to now, or are crowd-funded; if they sound interesting, check them out to back the projects and get your copy! Some are also seeking illustrators, comic artists, and podcast readers.

Also, most of these markets don’t actually restrict submissions to marginalized writers, they’re just asking specifically for stories featuring themes of marginalized identities, and obviously own stories are ideal. Without further ado, here are the markets!

Unlocking the Magic

Deadline: 1 November 2018 Payment: $300 per story, plus royalties Seeking short fiction 3000-6000 words.

In fantasy, we read about how people with mental illness are more susceptible to magic, closer to breaks in reality, more likely to be able to see the unseen. These stereotypes are harmful and contribute to keeping people from seeing the good in getting help, taking their meds, or talking to someone. This anthology is about changing the narrative and telling stories of strength and perseverance, of getting help despite the darkness. Not the myth that getting help will kill creativity and magic. Not the story our society tells about mentally ill people: that art and magic must come from suffering. I want stories that show what can be accomplished when we take care of ourselves and seek help. I want stories that show the reality of being mentally ill within a fantasy setting. I want to see how mental illness and its treatment affects the magic that lies within all of us. I want to read realistic portrayals of mental illness in magical worlds.

Fantasy only (no Science Fiction or Horror, although horror elements may be present in the story). Urban Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Steampunk, and other genres of fantasy are all encouraged. Read the full submission guidelines here.

Bikes in Space: Trans & Nonbinary Edition

Deadline: 15 November 2018 Payment: “A percentage of net profits from the Kickstarter project used to fund the book will be split evenly between contributors, if the project is successfully funded. This payment will be at least $30 per story, plus 10 contributor copies per printing.” Seeking short fiction 500-8000 words.

For this issue, we’re looking to feature trans and nonbinary writers writing trans and nonbinary characters. At least one trans or nonbinary character should be a protagonist and centrally featured, though they don’t have to be the POV character. Their gender can be integral to the story or can be mentioned in passing, but please make the theme clear. Stories can be in any science fiction or fantasy – ish genre: high fantasy, hard SF, space opera, fairy tales, solarpunk, spec fic, slipstream, you name it—anything but fanfic. Note that we aren’t looking to ‘bury your gays’ (or trans/nb characters). All stories must contain bicycles—the story doesn’t need to be about bicycling, but this element must be central enough that removing it would change the story significantly. Same goes with feminism. Read the full submission guidelines here.

Nightlight Podcast

Deadline: No deadline, open and ongoing Payment: $75 for short fiction, $35 for flash, poetry, and reprints Seeking short fiction 4000-5000 words, and shorter flash fiction is also welcome.

Are you Black? It doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re from, or where you are now–as long as you’re Black and you write horror, you are welcome to submit! Read the full submission guidelines here.

Spoon Knife 4: A Neurodivergent Guide to Spacetime

Deadline: 30 September 2018 Payment: 1 cent/word Seeking short stories under 10,000 words, and poetry

We’re basically looking for work that examines and explores two fundamental ideas: time and space. Moreover, we want work that engages with themes of neurodivergence, queerness, and/or the intersections of neurodivergence and queerness. Read the full submission guidelines.

Not Just A Pretty Face Anthology

Deadline: 30 September 2018 Payment: $25 CAD + electronic contributor copy Seeking short fiction 2500-5000 words.

(This is a women only anthology to coincide with WIHM 2019) Behind those sparkling eyes, curvaceous figures, and pouting lips, lurk some of the darkest minds horror has to offer. These women are not just a pretty face and they’re out to prove it. Are YOU one of them? Send us your best, most horrific story and show the world woman are made of more than sugar and spice. Read the full submission guidelines here.

(On a personal note, this is a token pay anthology and I found the description of it kind of yikes? But your mileage may vary; I wanted to include it since it’s a women-only antho.)

Flame Tree Press also has an upcoming call for submissions on the theme of Afrofuturism (and pays professional rates), so keep an eye out for that one to open up if you’re a writer of that subgenre!

#writing markets #short fiction markets #writers markets

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foxhenki-blog · 4 years

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Amphisbæna

Metaphysics are abstract theory. They exist within our mind. They are how we condition ourselves as chaos magicians to a particular discipline or practice. They are also are route through deprogramming, a necessary step before taking on the next discipline. This new sub-project to Lovecraftian Magic builds on what was learned through the critical esoteric reading of Lovecraft’s oeuvre-as-grimoire. The Simonomicon Workings are a record of internalizing one of the most famous incarnations of the imaginal grimoire, the Necronomicon. What lies below these words are, as stated, a preliminary metaphysics based on the clues given by ’The Editor’ in the material introducing the grimoire proper.

We begin with the dedication:

“to the Demon PERDURABO, without whose help the presentation of Book would have been impossible.” (Simon, IX)

Perdurabo is the pseudonym for Aleister Crowley. Here, Simon is treating and invoking him as a demon. This begins the work by acknowledging the connection found between Lovecraft and Crowley in The Thing on the Doorstep. All of the magical tech found in this tale of the Azathothian Witch, Asenath Waite, can be applied as precursors to using the Simonomicon in one’s practice.

The lessons from The Thing on the Doorstep are many. I will attempt to summarize them here in order to establish a firm foundation for our work with the Simonomicon.

Magic works better when it is predictive, as opposed to reactive. Asenath Waite played the long game when it came to achieving power. Magic needs a plan and forethought. Forethought begs for an exploration of the princeps that lead to the praxis. Magic is not reactionary, it is preventative. The protagonist of ‘Doorstep’ is one Edward Pickman Derby. This vector into Pickman’s model is a metaphorical gate into the Dreamlands, where all meaningful spirit contact from the Simonomicon takes place.

Edward Derby, an ailing child, is an archetype for using the imaginal, or the life of the mind, as a key to freedom in a world that cannot be understood or controlled. Asenath Waite, Derby’s consort, is traced back to Innsmouth and it is eluded that she possesses the same bloodlines into the race of the Deep Ones as all others in that town. This makes her the perfect angel to preside over the preliminary metaphysics of the Simonomicon. At Waite’s side, Derby is initiated into occult practices. He talks of meetings deep in the woods where secret doorways lead to vast staircases and into vaulted subterranean worlds of impossible geometry. This is an image one should hold on to throughout, one that is reinforced further, below. Within these imaginal chthonic spaces a malefica cultivated through the practice of Journeying and turned onto the elitist and imperial forces of our world, with the aid of the Simonomicon, is unleashed.

It should be no surprise if these preliminary practices result in encounters with woodland-based cryptids such as Razorshins, Willamalones, Windigos, and Dingballs. Razorshins appear as humanoids with sharp shin bones and an insatiable thirst for liquor. Willamalones are squirrel-like and posses knowledge of natural poisons, especially fungi and lichen. They only pose a danger if one falls asleep in the woods, however. Windigos are pervasive throughout Canada and the Northern United States, wherever there are long swaths of wooded land. They appear as unusually tall men, typically wearing clothes made from animal skins, and having a grayish, greasy appearance. They eat humans and to eat food offered by them results in yourself becoming a Wendigo as well. Dingballs look like cougars, but with a skeleton tail. They sing in a human voice to lure their preferred food to them, using their sharp tails to crack open skulls and dine on one’s brain.

Turning again to Asenath Waite, a critical examination of The Thing on the Doorstep reveals it to be a parable of gender dysphoria and the power that comes from embracing your true self, whatever that may be. Asenath Waite is a man trapped in a woman’s body who uses Lovecraftian Magic to embody his true gender. The origins of the Simonomicon, as will be revealed, are deeply entrenched in the world of LGBTQAI+ persons and their open battle against colonization and imperialist rule. It is at this point in ‘Doorstep’ that it is revealed that Edward Derby, in an attempt to stop the fish-witch Asenath Waite from inhabiting his physical body, travels to New York to meet with Perturbado himself, The Beast 666, Aleister Crowley. It is with Crowley’s help that Edward is able to maintain his true gender and personality in the face of the Deep One’s magic.

The Simonomicon was first published on December 1st, 1977 and this day should be marked with auspiciousness and ritual for those that own and wish to work the tome. It is mentioned by ‘The Editor’ that:

“the [Simonomicon] is… the connection between two separate clauses, between a fascinating past and a darkly-mysterious future.” (Simon, XI)

This is the first indication that it is this grimoire’s time has fully arrived, as we are living in that darkly mysterious future, presently. Summerland is also mentioned in the introductory text, a reference to the afterlife the bookmaker responsible for the 31st addition has retired to. Summerland is commonly known as the Theosophist afterlife. As is the way of Gnome School we look further back to the Spiritualist Andrew Jackson Davis. Davis lived during Lovecraft’s time (1826 - 1910), HPL would have no doubt been aware of his work.

Summerland is mentioned in his work ‘The Great Harmonia,’ which was published thirty years before Lovecraft was born. A digital copy of the original can be found at the Hathi Trust and is worth a look to develop a grounding in a foundational Lovecraftian Magical Aesthetic relevant to working the Simonomicon.

Another piece of predictive text in the Simonomicon is presented when it is stated that:

“Owners — and Users — of the [Simonomicon] will be well prepared to deal with both the social and spiritual unrest… that will take place in troubling times.” (Simon, XIII - XIV)

The Simonomicon is the grimoire for the Viruspunk age.

Viruspunk, a term coined by Miguel Connor - the host of Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio - on an episode of the Rune Soup podcast with Gordon White. White further extrapolates the meaning of Viruspunk, juxtapositioning it against Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and Solarpunk.

White states that Viruspunk is associated with bringing opposition or trouble to Biopower and Biopolitics, likely referencing the work of Foucault in Security, Territory, Population. White goes on to bring more clarity to the term when he writes that:]

“Viruspunk… must be explicitly biopolitical. It must explore the formulation of the body through the imposition of biopower…” (Retrieved from https://runesoup.com/2020/05/viruspunk-is-biopolitical/)

One does not have to look far in order to find more ties between the Simonomicon and our Viruspunk present. For example, The Editor states that:

“The interface between the [Simonomicon’s] software and your own personal hardware will reveal the demonic computer for what it really is: the machine that will bring about the era of liberation for every sentient being.” (Simon, XIV)

This is a clear Viruspunk-aware statement, using the metaphor of human-computer interfaces as a method of enlightenment. It paints the Lovecraftian Magician as either a user of, or a soldier against a type of spiritual app, a system of code written in human and spirit DNA, which creates a synergistic interface.

As is established in the dedication to Perdurabo, the Simonomicon draws on many spirit-forms or saints that had possessed recent human lives or those brought into existence specifically through human activity. When speaking about the bookmaker who’s craft brought the one of the editions of the Simonomicon to the light of day, it is said that this bookman was:

“lured into the Magickal Childe bookstore in Manhattan one day by an incarnated thought form we may only refer to by his initials, B.A.K.” (Simon, XV)

This passage identifies an egregore that may be attracted by future workings of the Simonomicon. We can also expect the spirit or minions of the late occult book maker Herman Slater [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Slater] to be drawn by it's working. This association makes the Simonomicon a powerful weapon against racism as Slater’s path to the occult was in reaction to theologically driven anti-Semitism. Slater was also made ill by bone tuberculosis, so his spirit’s connections to widespread illness should make it a sympathetic parter in the Viruspunk age. Eddie Buczynski, Slater’s partner, can also be found hovering nearby during concentrated efforts utilizing the Simonomicon. The grimoire is a talisman for the LGBTQAI+ community — an active protective shield against all types of prejudice and xenophobia. This is also in line with Lovecraftian Magic as all of the practitioners in Lovecraft’s fiction are anti-colonial archetypes, immigrants, gypsies, African-Americans, Native Americans, Irish, queer, transgender, etc. It is through the offices of this occult bookstore that the manuscript copy of the Simonomicon found its publisher. This is the same method of transmission found in so many mentions by Lovecraft of the original imaginal grimoire, the Necronomicon.

The Simonomicon possesses the same powers imparted to the grimoires of the hedge witches and clever men, those powerful traffickers in magic that used their books not for their spells, but as sentient power items that cast their own magics. It is stated by The Editor that:

“the book is… an amulet, a protective shield, that guards its own from the machinations of evil. Extraterrestrial or primevally elemental, alien beings or subconscious repressions, they are powerless against us if we consider deeply the message of this book.” (Simon, XVIII)

And with this statement the unique chaos magic power of literature is extended to Simonomicon Workings. The Editor makes mention of the tale ‘There Are More Things’ by Jorges Luis Borges. This short story was dedicated by Borges to Lovecraft. Examining it in some detail reveal it to be a potent vehicle for applying to our work with the Simonomicon. It begins as many of Lovecraft’s tales do, with the protagonist’s recollection of a fondly thought of, if distant, relative:

“I learned that my uncle Edwin Arnett had died… on the remote frontier of South America. I felt what we always feel when someone dies — the sad awareness, now futile, of how little it would have cost us to have been more loving.” (Borges, 437)

This quote encapsulates what all of us, save for the plaguemongers, are feeling now for those we have lost personally, for those our friends have lost that we might not have known, and for those that strangers separated from us by the fog of cyberspace have lost. For all the lost we gain only awareness of how little love costs us all. It is this feeling that drives the Viruspunk to pick up weapons such as the Simonomicon and employ its technology against the plaguemongers and their imperialist hoards.

Borges also makes exquisite references to forgotten works of science, philosophy, and art perfectly mimicking Lovecraft’s own tropes in this same vein. A useful example can be found in the following:

“Hinton’s treatises… attempt to prove the reality of a fourth dimension in space, a dimension the reader is encouraged to intuit by means of complicated exercises with colored cubes.” (Borges, 437)

The mention made here refers to the Tesseract or Hypercube. Even a novice will recognize the significance of the Hypercube to Lovecraftian Magic. Its contemplation can be a cleansing breath before and after working the Simonomicon. ‘There Are More Things’ brilliantly weaves the subtlest of literary devices into its densely packed tapestry:

“My uncle was an engineer. Before retiring from his job at the railway, he made the decision to move to Turdera… the architect of his home there [was] his close friend Alexander Muir… The Red House stood on a hill, hemmed in to the west by swampy land… Instead of flat roofs where one might take the air on a sultry night, the house had a peaked roof of slate tiles and a square tower with a clock…” (Borges, 437)

The manor house near the moor and the implementation of a tower are well known tropes from the Lovecraftian Magic project, and are employed masterfully here by Borges. The mention of Alexander Muir can only be a placement of the well-known Canadian architect in Borges’ universe:

“My first step was to go and see Alexander Muir… He greeted me at the door of his house in Tempurado — which predictably enough resembled my uncle’s, as both houses conformed to the solid rules of the good poet and bad builder William Morris… Our conversation was flinty; not for nothing is the thistle the symbol of Scotland…” (Borges, 437)

The Muir of British Columbia was indeed of Scottish origin and of the same demeanor as the Muir described therein. Aside from houses designed as William Morris poems there are also dreams in ‘There Are More Things’ that give us more clues into how we must cultivate our taste to merge effectively with the Simonomicon. Borges protagonist recalls:

“That night I couldn’t sleep. Toward sunrise I dreamed of an engraving in the style of Piranesi, one I’d never seen before or perhaps had seen and forgotten — an engraving of a kind of labyrinth…” (Borges, 440)

Piranesi is perhaps most famous for his engravings of a fictional underworld of prisons containing impossible geometries. It is here that we join up again with Derby’s experiences in the vaulted abysses beneath the thick woods of Maine in ’The Thing on the Doorstep.’

Here is Derby’s recollection again:

“Edward’s calls now grew a trifle more frequent, and his hints occasionally became concrete… He talked about terrible meetings in lonely places, of Cyclopean ruins in the heart of the Maine woods beneath which vast staircases lead down to abysses of nighted secretes, of complex angles that lead through invisible walls to other regions of space and time, and of hideous exchanges of personality that permitted explorations in remote and forbidden places on other worlds, and in different space-time continua.”

Continuing the dream in ‘There Are More Things’ we find ourselves presented with a:

“stone amphitheater with a border of cypresses, but its walls stood taller than the tops of the trees. There were no doors or windows, but it was pierced by an infinite series of narrow vertical slits. I was using a magnifying glass trying to find the Minotaur. At last I saw it. It was the monster of a monster; it looked less like a bull than like a buffalo, and its human body was lying on the ground. It seemed to be asleep, and dreaming — but dreaming of what, or of whom?” (Borges, 440)

The monster not dead but dreaming, Borges appropriately ties classical monstrous archetypes with Lovecraftian dreams. Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons also give us a glimpse into what Samuel Coleridge described to his friend Thomas de Quincy as a series of visions achieved during fever delirium.

Following this dream, which does not enjoy further exposition, The protagonist enters The Red House designed for his uncle by his friend Muir, but now inhabited by the unknown. When encountering the furniture made for the new owner, the protagonists points to another classical reference:

“From some page in Lucan, read years ago and then forgotten, there came to my lips the word amphisbæna, which suggested… what my eyes would later see…” (Borges, 442)

Lucan was a Roman Poet from Córdoba, Spain. His final legacy is one of anti-Imperialism in the Roman context. The amphisbæna is a lizard or serpent with a head at the top of its neck and another at the end of its tail. Lucan mentions it in his epic poem Pharsalia, Book 9, verses 714 - 733:

Sole of all serpents Scytale to shed In vernal frosts his slough; and thirsty Dipsas; Dread Amphisbæna with his double head Tapering; and Natrix who in bubbling fount Fuses his venom. Greedy Prester swells His foaming jaws; Pareas, head erect Furrows with tail alone his sandy path; Swift Jaculus there, and Seps whose poisonous juice Makes liquid bone and flesh: and there upreared His regal head, and frighted from his track With sibilant terror all the subject swarm, Baneful ere darts his poison, Basilisk 5 In sands deserted king. Ye serpents too Who in all other regions harmless glide Adored as gods, and bright with golden scales, Are deadly here: for Afric air inhaled Bestows malignant gift, as poised on wings Whole herds of kine ye follow, and with coils Encircling close, crush in the mighty bull. Nor does the elephant in his giant bulk, Nor aught, find safety; and ye need no fang Nor poison, to compel the fatal end.

The Amphisbæna is the symbol for the Viruspunk.

Instead of the infinite Ouroboros swallowing itself, the amphisbæna is a symbol of two entities in one body, confronting the other. On the microscale, this is the virus and the human battling for supremacy. For one victor this results in death of both of the heads, for the other, if results in one of the heads being bitten off — the victor alive but forever wounded. On the macroscale the same is true for the Viruspunks themselves and their fight against the poppet plaguemongers and their imperialist puppeteers.

Having formed the mental image of The Red House’s new owner, Borges’ protagonist postulates on the amphisbæna’s motivations:

“What must the inhabitant of this house be like? What must it be seeking here, on this planet, which must have been no less horrible to it than it to us? From what secret regions of astronomy or time, from what ancient and now incalculable twilight, had it reached this South American suburb on this precise night?” (Borges, 442)

Here Borges captures the empathy required for engaging properly with the spirit-forms of the Simonomicon. They come to us when we call, but only because they need something from us or from our planet, as Borges writes. It is an exchange. The unknowable qualities of these spirit-forms are all related to their needs, that which drives them to engage in humans. Knowing what they seek is the key to opening the gates that they guard. Further, Borges’ mention of the incalculable horror living in The Red House in an otherwise normal suburban neighborhood marks Simonomicon Workings with a very Lynchian feel of the abnormal hiding in plain site — this is also a very Viruspunk feeling — of attempting to live out a normal life while death, misery, and totalitarianism close in on you in an invisible wave. Instead of hiding from the regime and its gaslighted zombiekin, the Viruspunk looks straight on.

“Curiosity got the better of fear, and I did not close my eyes.” (Borges, 442)

In working the Simonomicon, the Viruspunk does not turn away from life, no, she turns to face it. She is the first responder, the front line worker, the one person wearing a face mask in a sea of plaguemongers buying novelty t-shirts, rainbow slushies, and drinking oceans of ale and liquor like so many razorshins.

“This book… contains the formulae for evoking incredible things into visible appearance, beings and monsters which dwell in the Abyss, and Outer Space, of the human psyche.” (Simon, XXIII)

Successful workings of the Simonomicon are tied to visual manifestations of spirit-forms, extraterrestrials, and shadows pulled directly from the Lovecraftian Magician’s mind. Visual manifestations, however, can happen in dreams — humankind’s most visual realm of existence and one which fits directly into the niche of the Lovecraftian Magical aesthetic.

The Editor, in the nesting labyrinthian prefaces of the 31st Anniversary edition of the Simonomicon quotes Job 3:8 in an effort to show the pervasiveness of the Deep Ones, Dagon, and the primeval entities called upon in the grimoire:

“Let them curse it that curse the day, who are skillful to rouse Leviathan.” JOB 3:8

When examining Job in detail it is revealed that the full passage is a lament by Job for having ever been born. Such as in Job 3:23 “Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?” He is asking those that can rouse Leviathan to curse him and the day that he was born. In one reading this could give legitimacy to the power of cursing by those that employ it and traffic with ageless masters. In another reading, one can see a curse as a type of cleansing in their hands, wiping clean Job’s base human nature and supplanting it with a sublime one. Furthering his argument, The Editor states that:

“The Leviathan mentioned in Job, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, is the Hebrew name given to the [chaos-dragon] Tiamat… there was in existence a cult… who worshipped or called up the Serpent of the Sea, or Abyss… [The chaos-dragon] is well known to cult worship all over the world. In China… the [chaos-dragon] is given a place of pre-eminence… The Chinese system of geomancy, feng shui… is the science of understanding the ‘dragon currents’ which exist beneath the earth.” (Simon, XXIX)

When it comes to rituals of space, none of more precise or potent than feng shui. Instead of (or in addition to) a magical circle, one’s altar (especially) and the room or landscape one performs Simonomicon Workings in should be optimized to attract the favor of the chaos-dragon Tiamat using the principles of this most ancient science.

One key difference between working classical grimoires and the Simonomicon is how the entities are dealt with once summoned. According to The Editor:

“there are no effective banishing for the forces invoked in the [Simonomicon] itself… The deities and demons identified within have probably not been effectively summoned in nearly six thousand years. Ordinary… banishing formulae have… proved extremely inadequate…” (Simon, XXXI)

Banishings are typically of Christian origin and, in fact, possibly a Christian invention dating back to Solomon. The spirit-forms of the Simonomicon have no frame of reference and possibly no working knowledge of the entities used to compel them to banish. There have been experiments conducted by Simon and those close to him that have proven effective. From the text:

“Solar formulae have proved… effective in successfully banishing [Simonomicon] demons and intelligences.” (Simon, XXXVI)

This allows the Lovecraftian Magician to bring in possibly the closest living cousin of the imaginal grimoire, the Greek Magical Papyri, and its implementation of prayers and petitions to Helios as a method to properly banish spirit-forms from the Simonomicon. These experiments should only be conducted when absolutely necessary, however, for the true intent of the Viruspunk is to unleash the unlimited cosmic horrors into our universe so that they may devour and destroy the endless and ever-growing pathogen that is imperialism and their biopower as manifested in the passive and mindless march of their plaguemongering hordes. This is explicitly stated by The Editor when discussing the morally agnostic approach the Sumerians took towards using magic against their enemies:

“Pazuzu was a prime example of the type of Devil of which the Sumerians were particularly aware… [Whose] purpose was to ward off the spiritual — and psychic — circumstances which would precipitate a plague… ‘Evil destroys evil’…” (Simon, XXXVI)

The spiritual and psychic circumstances that have brought about the 2020 pandemic are those of the conservative and tyrannical political forces around the world. The spirit-forms of the Simonomicon are a powerful antidote and their summoning against these plaguemongers is the core driver of the Viruspunk. This is the most important component of our preliminary metaphysics.

Evil destroys Evil.

Simonomicon Workings are directed against the enemies of the Viruspunk and are laid out in meticulous plans using the predictive analytics of the Tarot, scrying, and other methods of divination. We embrace our devils, look straight into the abyss of impossible geometries, and call loudly for those entities that existed before time, calling for them to wipe out colonization, imperialism, and the orcish hordes of plaguemongers barring our way to the sublime.

References

‌Borges, J. L., & Hurley, A. (1998). Jorge Luis Borges: Collected fiction. New York: Penguin.

Lovecraft, H. P. (2011). The complete fiction. New York: Barnes & Noble.

Simon (2008) Necronomicon. Lake Worth, FL: Ibis Press.

#Preliminary Metaphysics

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

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The Lost Cause prologue part IV

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a rollicking solarpunk adventure about defending the Green New Deal from seagoing anarcho-capitalist wreckers and white nationalist militias; Bill McKibben called it "a chronicle of mutual aid that is politically perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful":

The book comes out on Nov 14 from Tor Books and Head of Zeus, and I'm running a Kickstarter campaign to pre-sell the ebook, hardcover and (especially) the audiobook (Amazon refuses to carry my audiobooks, so this is the only way to get them into readers' hands); you can back it now:

http://lost-cause.org

To whet your appetite, I'm serializing the book's prologue, which really kicks things off:

Here's part one:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/06/green-new-deal-fic/#the-first-generation-in-a-century-not-to-fear-the-future

And part two:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/07/met-cute-ugly/#part-ii

And part three:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/09/working-the-refs/#lost-cause-prologue

And now, part four:

A couple of my friends were working on an AP science project— they’d made an enzyme they thought would break down polyethylene at room temperature—and I’d promised that I’d help them after school. Walking home past Verdugo Park, I ran into some more friends sitting in the grass and chatting, so I sat with them, watching the kids on the playground and the dog-walkers and the swordfighting class boffing each other with foam swords, and hours slipped by.

By the time I headed home, the sun was low and the day was finally starting to cool off. I remembered that I’d forgotten to pull the blinds before going out and imagined how hot and stuffy the house would be. Maybe Gramps had gotten back early enough to lower them. Otherwise, I could lie in the backyard in my hammock and do some reading while I waited for the house to air out some.

The blinds were drawn. I went in through the back door and dropped my bag on my bed, stripped off my tee and pulled on a fresh one, and headed to the kitchen for a snack.

“Gramps?”

He didn’t answer, which I figured meant that he was playing his podcasts through his hearing aids. They were supposed to be smart enough to pass speech through, but they struggled with people shouting from other rooms. I grabbed some more iced coffee and went into the living room.

Gramps was sitting in his spot on the old sofa, staring out the window. “Gramps?”

He didn’t look around. I moved into his line of sight and then drew back. His face was set in a mask of rage I hadn’t seen since I was a kid and came to live with him, the face he’d make before he’d hit me. He hadn’t hit me in a long time, not since he’d raised a bruise where one of my middle-school teachers could see it and she’d called CPS on him. They’d made him do a month of mandatory anger-management classes.

“Gramps?” I reached for him but didn’t touch him. He was quivering.

He fixed his gaze on me. Glared.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

He stood up. He was shorter than me now, and couldn’t quite straighten up, but it still felt like he was towering over me. “Kid, you know exactly what’s wrong, and don’t pretend otherwise.”

Oh.

“Gramps, he could have killed me. I saved his life. I know he’s a friend of yours—”

“Shut the fuck up about that, kid. Don’t talk about my friends. Don’t talk about who I know and who I don’t know. You know what that dumb asshole Mike Kennedy is up against? Forty years. Seven felony counts. Most of ’em to do with you: kidnapping, assault, attempted murder. Death penalty shit. Don’t think that the DA isn’t going to use that, the feds have got a hard-on for anyone who doesn’t toe the line on their Green New Deal bullshit. They’re gonna tell him that either he testifies against his friends or he’ll get a lethal injection. Kennedy’s no genius, either. He’ll cave. You just watch.”

“Gramps—”

“Shut up, I said. You think saying my name on your viral video is gonna help anything. Shit, kid, why didn’t you just turn me in yourself?”

“Come on, Gramps. I didn’t plan this, Mike did.” I wanted so badly to leave, but Gramps was between me and the door. “Tell you what, let’s go visit him. They’ll let him have visitors in lockup, right?”

Gramps sagged back down into his chair. “Kennedy’s not in lockup. They let him go an hour ago.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that sounds good, right?”

He shook his head and gave me a disgusted look. “No, kid, that doesn’t sound good. That sounds like he ratted everyone out already. In which case he’s a fucking dead man.”

I took a deep breath. Gramps was clearly on the brink of losing it altogether and telling him he was being overly dramatic would definitely push him right over the edge. “If that’s true, then maybe you should talk to your other friends, or maybe him—”

“Just shut up, okay? Don’t talk about shit you don’t and can’t understand. Look, if Kennedy sold out his friends then he’s got what’s coming to him and besides, there isn’t a damned thing in the world I could do to stop it. But what’s more likely is that he didn’t say a word, but they’ve put him on the street so that people get the impression that maybe he did, and now he’s in fear for his life and the only way to save his skin is to run back to the station house and start talking. It wouldn’t be the first time they tried that stunt. And the fact is, it doesn’t matter which one it is because he’s gonna get shut up before he can do that, because everyone understands what’s going on here and what’s at stake. So me calling that sad sack now would just make me the last person who spoke to the victim before he turned up dead.”

“That’s terrible.”

“No, kid, that’s life. What’s terrible is that my own grandson is involved in this ugly stupid mess, and that every dumbass on the internet is trading clips with my name in them, doxing me, associating me with this ridiculous garbage.”

Now I was starting to get mad. “I didn’t do it on purpose, you know. Your friend threatened to kill me. I didn’t tell him to get up on that roof or fill his Super Soaker with hydrochloric acid.”

“Yeah, you didn’t, that’s true.” He picked up a beer from the table next to him, finished the last swallow, set it down. “You didn’t. But you were and you did and now—” He shook his empty beer. “Ah, shit. Brooks, listen, you know that my friends are okay, but some of their friends . . .”

I knew. I’d sometimes spot Gramps’s friends marching with the Maga Club groups, carrying ugly signs, conspiracies and racism and “demographics are destiny.” Or set up with a table on Magnolia on Food Truck Friday, showing videos about “the great replacement” and “socialist tyranny.”

“I know who you mean.”

“None of ’em ever liked you. They didn’t like your father even before he went to Canada with that woman. When he did, well, that sealed it for ’em. To leave America and go work for the socialists? Kid, it’s a good thing he never tried to come back here, I’ll tell you that much. Far as they’re concerned, the only good thing that rabbit flu did was kill a bunch of foreign commies, agitators, traitors, and climate bed wetters. By which they mean your father and mother. And by extension, that means you. Your sex thing doesn’t help either—”

My head filled with that buzzing sound I heard whenever Gramps tried to talk to me about sexuality. The fact that I wouldn’t call myself straight made him crazy. The fact that I wouldn’t say “gay” or “bi” or any of those old-fashioned terms made him absolutely bugfuck. “Queer” was okay with me, or “pan,” but honestly, who the fuck cared? Why would my grandfather need to know which people I wanted to fuck and which people I did fuck? I’d explained this to him calmly and I’d had shouting matches with him about it. My other friends had problems with this stuff, sure, but their parents were able to at least pretend to understand. Gramps was a generation older and not only didn’t he understand, he didn’t want to. “Just pick one, kid,” is what he’d say, and then I’d overhear him saying worse to his friends when they took over the kitchen to play poker or the living room to watch a game.

“Jesus, Gramps”—that buzzing sound was blood, of course, coursing in my ears as my rage built and built—“would you just shut up about that bullshit? I don’t care what your asshole friends want. In case you didn’t notice, one of them nearly murdered me last night—”

“Shut. Up.” Loud, in that boss voice he used when he was getting everyone else to listen to him, whether it was on a jobsite or during an argument over cards. “Yeah, one of my friends just about murdered you last night, but he didn’t, did he? You know why? Because of me. Because of who I am in this community. Our name, Palazzo, it goes back a long way in this town. We’re Lockheed originals, thanks to my own dad. That counts for something. You’re safe because you’re my grandson, that’s what I’m trying to explain to you. But it’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card. You’re not untouchable.”

“Thanks for letting me know.” I hated it when Gramps acted like he was in the Mafia because he and his friends were the kinds of assholes who periodically got drunk or disturbed enough to commit some act of idiotic vandalism.

“Kid—” he started. I left.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/10/weaponized-interdependence/#super-soaker-full-of-hydrochloric-acid

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

#pluralistic #books #science fiction #clifi #solarpunk #the lost cause #kickstarter #audiobooks #audible #crowdfunders

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is-solarpunk · 1 year

Text

Solarpunk Writing Prompts #4

Here you can listen to original podcast

Here is the source of the podcast's transcript you can read below

Solarpunk Prompts - The Canteen

Hello world. I'm Tomasino.

This is Solarpunk Prompts, a series for writers where we discuss Solarpunk, a movement that imagines a world where technology is used for the good of the planet.

As the Solarpunk Wikipedia page says: Whereas cyberpunk envisions humanity becoming more alienated from its natural environment and subsumed by technology, Solarpunk envisions settings where technology enables humanity to better co-exist with itself and its environment. Solarpunk is more similar to steampunk than cyberpunk

Our goal is to help see that future world into existence by developing genre stories which push these sensibilities into the public consciousness.

In this series we spend each episode exploring a single Solarpunk story prompt adding some commentary, some inspirations, and some considerations.

Most importantly, we consider how that story might help us to better envision a sustainable civilization.

If this is your first time here, I'd recommend checking out our introduction episode first, where we talk about what Solarpunk is, why you should care, and why this series came into being.

Now, let's get started.

Today's prompt is: "The Canteen"

For clarity we're talking about a cafeteria, lunchroom, or mess hall here, not the type of canteen you drink out of.

A canteen in an isolated scientific or environmental outpost, where scientists, engineers, cooks and maintenance staff show each other their human face, while still remembering the importance of their role here and the harsh conditions of the outside. For example: cleaning the plastic from the oceans, measuring the polar ice levels, etc.

I've talked a great deal so far about the positivity of Solarpunk especially in how it treats technology in the future. And that is with great reason. One of Solarpunk's common descriptions is that it is the opposite of Cyberpunk. Perhaps opposite isn't exactly the right word, but it gets to the heart of things. Solarpunk isn't a gritty, collapsed society, with a technological power of oppression laying over everything. And so the rainbows and green pasture aesthetic predominates public consciousness. And that's generally a fine thing, I should say. Solarpunk is optimistic. It is hopeful.

Solarpunk stories can take many forms, though. That hope and optimism may not pervade every aspect equally. Today's prompt is a great example of that.

Here we have a harsh outer world surrounding the community. It could be anything from a blizzard covered tundra to a plague ridden city ruin. Where do we find the hope and optimism in places like that? In the community, of course.

Remember Solarpunk guideline number one: The community as protagonist.

Having a glimmer of hope and determination in the midst of a setting of challenge, or even despair, is a powerful juxtaposition. It can grant you the ability to explore the full range of emotional experience for your characters. You can challenge those sensibilities, even dip into moments of doubt, to further emphasize the choice of hope.

When faced by an external threat or antagonist, we have less need for the internal ones that we've discussed so far. We can lean into that harmony of community as a balm for the difficult realities faced in bringing the Solarpunk sensibilities to the outside world.

I'm thinking of our second guideline here: Infrastructure is sexy... But there is no simple solution.

What are your characters building or fixing? What do they seek to change in the world around them? What challenges must they overcome? Is it a physical barrier? Scientific? Or are there outsiders? Are we changing hearts and minds?

The unique landscape of challenges paints a picture where we can really dive in and illustrate that sense that there is no simple solution.

Think about the unique gifts present in the individuals of your community? What do they each bring to bear on their mission? How do the relationships within the community express themselves in its outward efforts? Do all of your characters agree on the same path or do their backgrounds inform unique preferences?

Here is a point where I like to think back to our refugee camp a bit. Remember the mixture of cultures and the dynamic creole language that it developed? What sort of cultural mashup exists in this isolated community? What sort of unique skills might those cultures bring? How would they each handle the stresses of their work, especially being isolated from the rest of the world.

With this in mind, their struggles may overlap and interweave, and see starts and stops and restarts in their progress.

If you wanted to focus more on the science fiction or climate fiction aspects of the story these challenges and their setbacks provide ample opportunity to work through ideas and scenarios or even a comprehensive list of environmental processes. You could highlight some specific aspect of climate change, or a way to combat it.

We have many themes to explore in the genre, and many approaches to those themes, and it's okay to service more than one. A good Solarpunk story can also be good science fiction!

If none of that appeals to you, though, this prompt demands none of it. It would be a perfectly fine choice to have a simple sense of outer dread. The world is dying, but we're working to save it. And let that aspect of the story be a backdrop only.

After all, we haven't yet discussed the actual focus of the prompt: The canteen.

This prompt is designed to narrow the focus to the human moments of community rather than focusing exclusively on their work. The setting of the canteen, or mess hall, would be a place for everyone to mingle and mix outside of their normal roles. To share a meal, to relax, to talk, or perhaps more.

When we're talking about isolated communities we're talking about a unique culture.

Culture is a system of shared meanings. It could be expressed in many ways, from rituals, religious practices, taboos, and especially food. We covered the topic of language in some depth earlier, and it would be equally appropriate here. The card game, Dialect, might help you brainstorm ideas.

For those traveling to work in Antarctica, there is a No Appendix Club. That is, a group of people with no appendix. They had it removed. This is not technically required of everybody. In fact it's only required of doctors staying in the winter, but it has become part of cultural tradition.

Antarctica No Appendix Club

When you imagine this communal eating area, bring all of this to mind. What has that culture bred? How strong is it? How equipped is it to deal with the challenges it faces?

There is a term called "Cultural Resilience" which is used to describe a culture's ability to cultivate and develop an identity, knowledge, and practices, and how its values, language, and customs, can help it overcome adversity.

A resilient culture is one that can absorb adversity, deal with change and continue to develop. These are the types of communities we want to better envision with Solarpunk. How do all these multitudes of pieces and parts come together for yours?

At the turn of the century UNESCO issued a Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. It linked cultural resilience to metrics of national happiness. How happy is your community, despite their challenges?

UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity

And then, finally, after plenty of consideration for their mission and their unique skills and viewpoints, and how that would build into culture and mores, we can ask the most important human question, "what do they do with their free time?"

Would a Solarpunk community of scientists play cards after dinner, or that that sort of competitive gaming feel flat? What about board games, or puzzles? Do they seek escape from their reality by playing imaginative games? Is there a Dungeons and Dragons group in the corner? Live action role play?

This may be a time for the characters to let their hair down. It's definitely a great time to explore their everyday humanity.

It's also a nice exercise for you personally: Imagine yourself in a Solarpunk community of the near future. How would you want to spend your free time? Now you can help the world imagine it with you. And that's the first step in making it real.

Thanks for joining me. I'll talk to you soon on the next Solarpunk Prompt.

Music in this recording is nikodimov - weeds from Global Pattern's compilation Solarpunk: A Brighter Perspective

#solarpunk #writing prompt #solarpunk writing prompts #solarpunk loredumps #community as a protagonist

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