Introduction by Eileen Herbert-Goodall
Indra's Web by Vandana Singh (India)
The Ghost of Dzablui Estate by Cheryl Ntumy (Ghana)
Beyond the Bazaar by Lavanya Lakshminarayan (India)
In Bloom by Clelia Farris (Italy)
Green Tide by Cristina Jurado (Spain)
Golden Fern by Lucie Lukačovičová (Czech Republic)
Soul Noodles by Ana Sun (Malaysia)
Beyond Equity by Ruspa Dey (India)
Vanishing Tracks in the Sand by Jana Bianchi (Brasil)
Pony and Cow by Alda Teodorani (Italy)

The Bright Mirror: Women of Global Solarpunk by Future Fiction

As caretakers and healers, women know how to take care of everything, using wisdom, restraint and gentleness to solve difficulties and complications through practical approaches and soft skills such as dialogue, patience and listening. Unlike cyberpunk, where the focus of the narrative is on men, competition and individualism, solarpunk overturns the classic view of the male hero and anti-hero by telling stories in which the solution comes from women, from their participation in important decisions, their resilience under stress and threat, their all too often underestimated ingenuity, and from their ability to collaborate and act for a greater purpose, for a higher good. These ten short stories—written by some of the best female authors in the solarpunk genre—come from seven countries and four different languages, to show how, in contrast to the traditional patriarchal vision of a single globalised future for all, women's scenarios are about decolonising the imaginary, decentralising processes, decarbonizing everyday life and the degrowth of induced consumption.

CURATOR'S NOTE

A superb anthology on the cutting edge of genre, it's highly recommended! – Lavie Tidhar

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Mahua ran over the familiar, rock-studded pathway under the canopy of acacia trees, her breath coming fast and ragged. She would have to stop soon, she wasn't as young as she used to be, and there was a faint, persistent pain in her right knee—but she loved this physicality: heart thumping, sweat running down her face in rivulets, the forest smelling of sap and animal dung, grit on her lips from the dust. The forest was where she got her best ideas; it was an eternal source of inspiration. It was why her work was getting recognition across the world. But the forest didn't care about fame or fortune—here she was just another animal: breath and flow, a kite on the wing, a deer running.

Running, she liked to have the net chatter going on in the Shell in her ear: Salman monitoring the new grid, Varun and Ali reporting on the fish stocks in the artificial marshland by the river, Doctor Sabharwal's monitor relaying Mahua's grandmother's condition at the hospital: stable, stable, stable, still on life support.

Thinking about her grandmother's stroke made Mahua feel like she was about to fall into a pit of despair; she distracted herself with the reminder that she had promised Namita she would try out the myconet music app during this morning's run.

"It's just for fun, Mahua-di, but try it, you'll like it."

They were so anxious about her, these young people, knowing she was not quite herself these days. Moved and perversely annoyed by their concern, she had spent some hours with them in the Biosystems lab learning the app…

There is a fungal network, a myconet, a secret connection between the plants of the forest. They talk to each other, the acacia and the shisham and the gulmohar tree, in a chemical tongue. They communicate about pests, food sources, the weather, all through the flow of biomolecules through the fungal hyphae. Through this network, large trees have even been known to share nutrients with saplings of the same species. Mahua's protégé, Namita, is part of the team that helped decipher (to the extent that humans can) this subtle language. In the forest they have planted sensors in the soil to catch some of the chemical exchanges between plants. The signals are fed back into the interpreter and then analyzed. Some members of the team have made music from the signals: convert the concentration of a certain biochemical transmitter changing in real time into succession of notes where the duration indicates the strength of the transmitter. Add a few other transmitter signals as sounds of a slightly different frequency and you'll get a sometimes musical chatter that is at once soothing and intriguing. Mahua is new to this and she's never tried it out in the forest before. She's always encouraged play in their research—it is not only fun, but important, she tells them—play leads to new insights, shakes up pre-conceived notions… And now they need the relief of play, after having spent the past few months calculating and putting in place Ashapur's first smart energy grid, the Suryanet, modeled on the myconet itself.