This is a conversation with speculative fiction writer and sustainability researcher Andrew Dana Hudson. This is episode 94 of The Fire These Times podcast.

His stories have appeared in Slate Future Tense, Lightspeed Magazine, Vice Terraform, MIT Technology Review, Grist, Little Blue Marble, The New Accelerator, StarShipSofa and more, as well as various books and anthologies. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and longlisted for the BSFA. In 2016 his story “Sunshine State” won the first Everything Change Climate Fiction Contest, and in 2017 he was runner up in the Kaleidoscope Writing The Future Contest. His 2015 essay “On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk” has helped define and grow the “solarpunk” subgenre. He is a member of the cursed 2020 class of the Clarion Workshop.

Check out his website and newsletter.

We primarily spoke about an essay he wrote in 2015 called “on the political dimensions of Solarpunk“.

Topics Discussed:

• What is Solarpunk?
• Introduction to his essay “On the Political Dimensions of Solarpunk“
• The urgency of Solarpunk and the response to Cyberpunk
• Post-normal fiction
• Solarpunk and global network society: why did it start in the 2010s?
• The importance of care work
• Solarpunk and the future of cities
• Solarpunk and utopias
• Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction
• The climate activism momentum
• How has Solarpunk changed over the years? Also: discussion of COP26 and Green New Deal

Books mentioned + Recommended:

• Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures edited by Priya Sarukkai Chabria and Taiyo Fujii and Shweta Taneja (which includes a story by Andrew)
• Our Shared Storm: A Novel of Five Climate Futures by Andrew (Pre-order now)
• Lo stato solare by Andrew
• Infomocracy by Malka Ann Older
• Gnomon by Nick Harkaway
• Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
• The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Walkaway by Cory Doctorow

The art is by artist and illustrator CosmosKitty (I added the text). Check out their work here: cosmoskitty.com

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