Last year I published To Those that Imprisioned Winds, a short story that fits in with inverted solarpunk, and looking at the publisher's posts, I've separated out some of the concepts for anyone who wants to write about it.

Discussions, of course, are welcome. It's a new genre.

Inverted solarpunk can have other names. Dark Solarpunk. Dystopian solarpunk. The latter I don't like very much, because solarpunk is utopia. Combining it with dystopia doesn't sound right. Reverse solarpunk...

The idea is to explore the cracks in solarpunk, contaminating it with realism or even pessimism. A real example: the north-east of Brazil uses wind power, but the construction was on the land of traditional peoples and destroyed local cultures. One more: hydroelectric dams in the north threaten the culture of native peoples. Few jobs are created for the local population.

How can we be optimistic when big companies use green discourse to destroy local cultures?

Thus we enter another concept of inverted solarpunk: greenwashing as a form of profit. Something quite capitalist.

Great green solutions are needed, but in reality, there is always a corruptible human behind them who takes advantage of the community's ills to increase their own power. Solarpunk in reverse.

Megacorporations and governments can use sustainable technology as a tool of exclusion, and those who don't fit into the system end up marginalized.

In this sense, punk becomes clearer, moving away from the eco-philosophical concept present in solarpunk. On the flip side, we have the traditional biotech hackers, alternative communities and dissidents fighting against a world that promises progress but imposes new forms of domination.

I don't like this concept so much, because, cof cof, cliché? but that's me, and my way of writing. I love the concept of “living as a act of rebellion”, which would be more interesting in inverted solarpunk.

Cyberus only publishes brazilian short stories from indie authors, same to this anthology of inverted solarpunk.

But I'm curious. Does megacorporation in your story use green energy or green discourse to manipulate/pursue some people? Or shows a point of view from someone negatively affected by green discouses? If so, I think it is inverted solarpunk, but it's new born genre, I can't say much about that...

Reading your synopsis remember me #clifi, or #hopepunk too.

this is an interesting discussion — I had not heard of "inverted" solarpunk although I'm familiar with lunarpunk and other "darker" takes on solarpunk. I feel like... those really belong *under* the solarpunk umbrella. I've read solarpunk that's definitely grappling with darker issues like corporate greenwashing and yet still solidly what I would call solarpunk. *shrugs*

I think solarpunk is being co-created all the time so I expect there will be variants.

Lunarpunk is beautiful!

But I think it's less dystopian than inverted solarpunk, because it still has a lot of optimism. That's the beauty of human writing, there are so many variations. It's nice to think of a solarpunk spectrum: some writers will distance themselves from utopia by moving closer to inverted solarpunk, others may talk about tradition and mysticism like some strands of lunarpunk, and still others go more towards hopepunk.

It sounds like what you're describing as "inverted solarpunk" could be called "green(washed)" dystopia - does that sound right?

One could still tell a solarpunk story of people who live within that world, reject the mainstream values upholding a shiny facade in favor of real-solar, real-punk values - equality, accessibility, accountability, circular renewability - even when it doesn't look as pretty. I'd enjoy reading that. Strange World did a low-key version, actually.

I've yet to find hardly any utopias: although it could be my selective criteria: I don't read the post-apoc stuff because I think we have too much of it in general and if you need to have the apocalypse before you can have something better, I'm just not interested.

I look for near-future stuff and it's rare that that's utopia. Plus the publishers *will not* publish utopias (anymore) so there's not much of it.

I think solarpunk gets tagged as "utopic" if it's not violent.