Lunarpunk

A solar storm forecast for Thursday is expected to give skygazers in 17 American states a chance to glimpse the Northern Lights, the colorful sky show that happens when solar wind hits the atmosphere.

"Yes, The Matrix Resurrections creates what is—at least in my estimation—a decidedly lunarpunk world and brings the budding aesthetic and subgenre to the big screen, if not for the first time, then at least in the most high profile example to date."

I have recently read Le Guin's The Dispossessed, which is a wonderful look into a Solarpunk world. However, an important critique that the book emphasizes is that this new Solarpunk society (or, well, an Anarchist society really) has produced a 'tyranny of bureaucracy' and a number of social pressures that stifle individual ambition and that punish those that are different from the norm.

Would you agree that Le Guin's critique can be useful for the solarpunk movement?

I have attached an analysis of the novel as well.

In the novel, the two most prominent slices of reality that require complementary interpretations are Shevek’s General Temporal Theory and his vision of anarchism on Anarres. Just as he sees Sequency and Simultaneity as complementary, so he sees individual freedom and social responsibility as the complementary manifestations of anarchy. Moreover, Shevek is able to comprehend anarchy in a complementary way only because his view is based on the theory of time that he has developed.

Recent entry in the "Solarpunk Spirituality" series by Solarpunk writer Phoebe Wagner. Links to the rest of the series including "The Nonbinary Nature of Solarpunk/Lunarpunk" can be found here as well.

You can follow their work on the Fediverse at @Pheebsdw@wandering.shop

The fight against light pollution seems relevant to this community. The International Dark Sky Association has a lot of good information for people who are just starting to learn about this issue. Light pollution has many impacts on wildlife and the environment, but it also keeps us from being able to see the stars. I think everyone should get the chance to experience a night sky that isn't obscured by light pollution.

Lunarpunk is a more tentative, lesser-defined aesthetic. It is regarded as the sibling aesthetic of Solarpunk. It embraces spirituality and utopian futures, referencing witchcraft, futuristic design, nature, renewable energy, and the circle of life.

Lunarpunk is a relatively new and still underdeveloped subgenre born, or rather in the process of being born, out of solarpunk as well as science fiction and fantasy more broadly. A good way to start conceptualizing lunarpunk at a basic level is to consider it in terms of a basic and analogous relationship with solarpunk, particularly when it comes to the aesthetic aspects of the two subgenres.