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I pulled this comment of mine from a locked entry on my f-list on "hopepunk," which linked to some articles on it. After reading the articles, I wrote:
Apart from the impossible-to-pronounce name, hopepunk is a weird movement because it seems so utterly undefined as anything but "not grimdark," which is also a useless term as nobody agrees on what that even is either. One of the articles says The Handmaid's Tale (novel) is hopepunk because Offred is resisting inside her mind, but lots of others would say the book defines grimdark.
You can't have a movement without a set of media that everyone agrees exemplify it, but there doesn't seem to be a single example of something everyone can point at and say "it's hopepunk." If you take steampunk, there's tons of things that everyone can point at and say, "Those are steampunk." I think "punk" should be limited to things with a clear aesthetic that includes visuals - which was also the case for originalpunk.
The most interesting possible definition of hopepunk, IMO, would be this:
- Stories involve communities rather than lone individuals.
- Great change requires communal effort.
- Communities are not inherently bad, though some may be.
- People are not inherently selfish and cruel, though some may be.
- Compassion, kindness, and idealism is more likely to lead to good rather than bad consequences.
- Protecting only yourself or only your own loved ones at the expense of the Other or strangers is wrong.
- Meeting strangers is more likely to lead to interesting conversations, trade, or relationships than fights to the death.
- Even if the society contains prejudice, from the point of view of the story, all people are equal. Even if a story takes place in a racist and sexist society, the story itself will not marginalize those characters.
- Non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic (etc) societies are common in these stories.
- The visual aesthetic is pretty/beautiful/intricate/fun, with multiple cultures represented. There is an effort to make even ordinary items fun to use and pleasant to look at. Clothing is colorful and individual. The aesthetic is that things are both for use and for pleasure, showing that life is not only for survival.
Black Panther would be a good example of this, I think. Everything ever written by Diane Duane and Sherwood Smith.
Apart from the impossible-to-pronounce name, hopepunk is a weird movement because it seems so utterly undefined as anything but "not grimdark," which is also a useless term as nobody agrees on what that even is either. One of the articles says The Handmaid's Tale (novel) is hopepunk because Offred is resisting inside her mind, but lots of others would say the book defines grimdark.
You can't have a movement without a set of media that everyone agrees exemplify it, but there doesn't seem to be a single example of something everyone can point at and say "it's hopepunk." If you take steampunk, there's tons of things that everyone can point at and say, "Those are steampunk." I think "punk" should be limited to things with a clear aesthetic that includes visuals - which was also the case for originalpunk.
The most interesting possible definition of hopepunk, IMO, would be this:
- Stories involve communities rather than lone individuals.
- Great change requires communal effort.
- Communities are not inherently bad, though some may be.
- People are not inherently selfish and cruel, though some may be.
- Compassion, kindness, and idealism is more likely to lead to good rather than bad consequences.
- Protecting only yourself or only your own loved ones at the expense of the Other or strangers is wrong.
- Meeting strangers is more likely to lead to interesting conversations, trade, or relationships than fights to the death.
- Even if the society contains prejudice, from the point of view of the story, all people are equal. Even if a story takes place in a racist and sexist society, the story itself will not marginalize those characters.
- Non-racist, non-sexist, non-homophobic (etc) societies are common in these stories.
- The visual aesthetic is pretty/beautiful/intricate/fun, with multiple cultures represented. There is an effort to make even ordinary items fun to use and pleasant to look at. Clothing is colorful and individual. The aesthetic is that things are both for use and for pleasure, showing that life is not only for survival.
Black Panther would be a good example of this, I think. Everything ever written by Diane Duane and Sherwood Smith.
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But at the same time, I really like this set of criteria, and I think it could actually reasonably used to select a core set of hopepunk texts that would make for interesting discussion. (I feel like
Other possible works I'd say are good examples of this, sticking to SFF: Big Hero 6 and pretty much all of Susan Palwick.
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I'm really pleased to see people still remember that post of
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I used to think of it as a tightrope walk of happiness above an abyss of tragedy -- the characters are happy and together because they constantly fight to be happy and together, and they could always fall off into the tragic ending; the tension is part of what makes it interesting to me, and the fact that they have to continually renew their commitment to the happy ending rather than the tragic one. "Clair pockets in a noir universe" captures the feeling more succinctly and probably gets more to the heart of what I like best about it.
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Anyway I'm on to kudzupunk now, myself.
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So it often celebrates a lot of Afrofuturism because of that, and because there's a lot of overlap in aesthetic - I'd say both Sun Ra and Wakanda are solarpunk-adjacent, but Cindi Mayweather isn't. (And there aren't really equally visible Southeast Asian and First Nations futurist movements in the US, but where they can, Solarpunk also aligns with them.)
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The actual power source has never come up in anything I've sold or otherwise completed, so I'm not sure it has to be solar power; I don't do hard sf so that's kind of a detail that wasn't plot important.
As someone who is not of African descent, I always imagined it as very adjacent to Afrofuturism but not one and the same, though in some instances a work can certainly be both; it's absolutely not my place to write Afrofutirism since there's not the faintest hint of African in me.
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Oh, man, I wish I were going for that! Sometimes I get nervous that I'm going to be attacked for writing solarpunk as a Latina and this would either make me feel much better or a lot worse.
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Also I tend to disagree with fiction lists when I do see them, and most of the stuff outright claiming the genre has not been via the pro publishers/magazines, so I haven't prioritized it. I'll look back at my recent tomorrow and see what pops up though.
Of this year's Hugo noms, I feel like both the Roanhorse and the Chambers feel at least Solarpunk-adjacent, though I doubt their authors would claim them that way. But they've both got a lot of what I think of as the essential elements - building newer stronger communities out of the remains of failed modernity.
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Karen Healey's When We Wake is a dystopia, but there is some good eco friendly tech in it. I'd love to see solarpunk set in Australia, but maybe that means I have to actually write something :-P
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Always Coming Home by le guin reads as very solarpunk for example- the higher technology isn't lost, it's just used with care and moderation (which often means not ever) and can look like a lower standard of living even if the people are living just as well.)
But there's also some that goes full high tech, yeah.
But it's definitely specifically futurist in outlook- going forward not backward or away.
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Also I just read a comic (MCMLXXV) which actually fits the infernokrusher description perfectly (and was super fun).
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Vandermeer was definitely one of the first authors I thought of for kudzupunk (after Ian McDonald's Chaga series, the difference being I've actually read some of Chaga.)
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P.
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A few other possibilities: Eye of the Heron by Le Guin, Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss.
ETA: A Door into Ocean and sequels by Joan Slonczewski
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I think the key reading for what Hopepunk is supposed to be is "One Atom of Justice, One Molecule of Mercy, and the Empire of Unsheathed Knives" by Alexandra Rowland. (That's probably in the f-locked post you mentioned)
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I think I like the "clair" definition a bit more, although it does appear to be more character-centered than world-building centered.
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I agree with you about Trail of Lighting. But I've frequently found that when I ask for recs for hopeful stories, I get recs that I find bleak --so people seem to have wide range of what they find hopeful. Other panelists felt that some works on the list where not angry enough to be Hopepunk.
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Manner punk seems an especially egregious oxymoron.
I do like clair/noir.
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One of the things punk implies to me is DIY - people doing things themselves and making or adapting things to suit themselves. Where those things are physical, social, or intellectual.
In my head, any version of punk with elements of elitism is doing it wrong. Which isn't to say that there aren't elitist punks, but that they are probably in it for the fashion and not for the politics.
I feel that solarpunk works for me because it's about imagining ways to change how we interact with the natural world, using sustainable energy and building livable cities, because it is something people can actually start incorporating into their own homes with window gardens and repurposing already existing technologies.
Early steampunk had a very big maker component, although the aesthetic was not for me, and I was more interested in stories that challenged European colonialism, like Everfair than those who just seemed to want the trappings of the steam age without questioning the politics of empire.
Even with cyberpunk, there's stuff about people taking technologies and fucking with them in ways that the corporations hadn't intended or envisioned.
I can absolutely see how manner punk is an oxymoron, and also immediately start imagining ways in which the DIYness of punk could be applied to rigid manners and etiquette to subvert them and make something new.
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YES THIS!!!
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For me, a lot of that DIYness moved from squats in cities to the crusty punks in the UK and the feral hippies in Australia who tried living off the grid and using solar panels before they were easily available and cheap, which might be why I have no trouble tacking punk onto solar.
This photo collection has been doing the rounds on fb,and it was so great to see pictures of how people actually dressed in the 80s (I wish they had put the photos in something resembling chronological order, tho, I found some of the juxtapositions jarring.) “Untypical Girls”: Early Photographs Of Women In Punk From Between The Late 1970s And Early 1990s
The only other thing that hit me so hard in the nostalgia feels was Vi är bäst! (We are the Best!), a film about 13 yo girls in Stockholm who form a punk band.
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That film looks wonderful.
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I once got into an argument with people who I usually agree with over whether Aliette de Bodard's "The House of Shattered Wings" was grimdark or not, because I didn't think "everyone is flawed and selfish but nobody is cartoon-evil" qualified.
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Altho apparently Atwood was so dissatisfied with S2 of the series she wrote a sequel and it's going to be published this fall! Hi ho.
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There's a couple of clinkers in his books, but very few.
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I wish from the bottom of my heart—as someone who has written Callahan's Place fanfic, owns a Callahan's Place t-shirt, met their husband in a Callahan's Place newsgroup, and organized three Callahanicons—that I could recommend these books, but I just can't.
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Just don't. Trust me.
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So I imagine that, like you, when she read them she got the stated intent. I don't know if she's reread them lately and encountered the suck fairy or not, but it explains why I could never get into them and why she would have.
The suck fairy sucks, man.
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I remember Callahan's Key coming out in 2000 and everyone on alt.callahans and #callahans being shocked by how bad it was. In retrospect, that's not because it was markedly worse than the other books, but because we'd already outgrown the mode that Spider was still in. So rereading them (and other pre-2000 SF "classics"), for me, is like my experience being a progressive Jew reading Leviticus: recognizing its importance to our history, finding bits of wisdom and language that still resonate, but also being relieved that we've generally moved on to better things.
The suck fairy sucks pretty hard. :/
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I think he did also worsen. Because of the books we had in the house and my own idiosyncratic reading patterns, I went straight from Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) and Time Travelers Strictly Cash (1981) to The Callahan Touch (1993) and that was a bit weird and then Callahan's Legacy (1996) came out and I swear I felt my brain bounce. I know for a fact that my reading tastes had not evolved sufficiently in those three years to account for it; in 1996 I was still reading Piers Anthony. I am willing to believe the Suck Fairy was always lurking, but after a certain point I think all its relatives had moved in, like the pseudo-Irish version nobody asked for of "It Could Always Be Worse."
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Like, I'm never gonna go off on the man more publically than this and I'm keeping my battered copy of Crosstime Saloon, but I haven't recommended him to anybody in years and probably never will again.
If I do, it will be under extremely particular circumstances and with a boatload of caveats.
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So true. And so sad. Also, can I metaquote?
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[* There are some things he wrote about children and sex that are... I mean, he is definitely and explicitly not arguing that adults should have sex with children in this society, he's clear on that. It's the rhetoric around that which is... well, I found it uncomfortable although still clearly well-intentioned.]
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A lot of King is the perfect example of clair pockets in a noir world.
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YES, I love that about his books. The fact that characters can and often do die saving each other (or lose it all in other ways), but never with the implication that it wasn't worth it, underscores the entire idea that it IS worth throwing yourself into risk and danger for other people (I mean, obviously, in real life no one is guaranteed a good outcome either). And it makes those instances when it DOES work out a lot sweeter because of the uncertainty.
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I am saving my alternate world PhD topics for when I'm retired. Maybe by then I will be able to pick just one (or at least work out which one I want to do first).
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And the difference between valorbright and hopepunk is to what extent the clair characters believe in chivalry/nobility/honour/fealty/modesty/humility/duty/filial piety/knightliness/kingliness/jus ad bellum/city on a hill/etc, and that if you just eradicate the bad apples that are ruining those good ideals, good will prevail again (valorbright) vs to what extent they think that those ideals never were as noble/great as all that and deserved to be criticised and greeted with cynicism, and nobody is all good or all bad, but we can strive for good and the system can be overthrown or at least resisted or at least we can snatch good moments from the oncoming grim (hopepunk).
So, vastly oversimplified:
Valorbright: knights in shining armour doing valiant deeds to protect the helpless from the forces of evil.
Grimdark: actually knights were all brutish rapists treading everyone they met through the mud.
Valorbright: ONLY SOME OF THEM. That's exactly why the code of chivalry existed! Because they recognised that with great power comes great responsibility and some people misuse that and need to be stopped!
Hopepunk: actually knights were not the only people who mattered in the middle ages. Ordinary people's lives have always mattered, and there have always been people resisting oppression, the forces of which including but not limited to the knights and the whole system that supports knights and allows them to have the power they have.
I hope this doesn't come out like I think valorbright is bad. It's not bad, it's just a particular genre. I think of a lot of grimdark (especially in the vein of Game of Thrones) as written in reaction to the perceived unrealistic nature of valorbright. (Which is true but missing the point. Musicals are also unrealistic in that in real life people do not stop the action and burst into song. It's a narrative convention, not a sworn deposition. Part of the aesthetic of valorbright is its elevated register. There are other criticisms one can make about the goals and underpinning assumptions of that genre, but, yeah, realism isn't the point.)
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ETA and some of N.K. Jemisin's work, especially The Broken Kingdoms and The Awakened Kingdom.
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Sorry if someone else has mentioned this, I didn't have a chance to read thru all the threads carefully yet!
EDIT: I'm back, and I have more to say!
Basically, I think the read I have on hopepunk is not that is just "opposite of grimdark" but it's a particular *kind* of opposition to grimdark.
Another, Noblebright, has been talked about above and some of the Be the Serpent episode talked about noblebright as being characterized by a conception of purity and simplicity. Simplicity, here, meaning not a pastoral ideal, but rather than people are one thing or another, and never a mixture or complicated or screwed up. Noblebright and grimdark both have elements of "people are all bad or all good, no mix" - people are simple.
Hopepunk makes a point of being about complexity (as opposed to simplicity) and forgiveness (as opposed to purity.) You can do a bad thing, and that bad thing is still a thing you have done, but it is not the whole of you and it is not the end of you - change and forgiveness are open possibilities in hopepunk, and having made a mistake does not soil the whole world.
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https://sartorias.livejournal.com/695246.html
Author C.J. Brightley, who curated this project, defines Noblebright this way:
Noblebright fantasy has at least one important character with noble, idealistic motives who does the right thing out of principle. The character is flawed, but his or her actions are generally defined by honesty, integrity, sacrifice, love, and kindness. The story upholds the goodness of the character; the character’s good qualities are not held up as naiveté, cluelessness, or stupidity, but rather shown to be worthwhile. Good characters can make a difference. Noblebright characters can learn and grow.
They can deliberately choose to be kind when tempted to be unkind, they can choose generosity when it hurts, and they can influence their world and other characters for the better. In a noblebright story, even villains are not without hope; their stories may have a redemptive ending, or they may have some kind of conversion experience (religious or not). It’s not guaranteed, of course, but in a noblebright story, it’s a possibility.
Noblebright fantasy is not utopian fiction. The world of a noblebright story is not perfect, and indeed can sometimes be quite dark. Actions have consequences, and even good characters can make terrible mistakes. But a noblebright story is generally hopeful in tone, even if there are plenty of bad, grim, dark things going on in the world.
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If I don't get to make observations about noblebright without being told I am wrong bc an authority has a different definition, why are we pretending we get to have an opinion about the definition of another movement? An authority should give an authoritative definition,if that's the case.
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It reminded me instantly of your Stranger series, btw, and also of Martha Wells's Raksura books.
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