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thessilian's review against another edition
5.0
An anthology of Solarpunk stories - optimistic science fiction that imagines a future founded on renewable energies - with a great variety of settings and cultures and plots.
I like both pessimistic and optimistic stories, but a little positivity feels good right now. The stories and worlds presented here are inspirational, even though not everything works out every time. From the prominent farming theme to murder mysteries and aliens, the stories vary widely in both setting and tone, but I enjoyed all of them. Some I loved more than others, but that's the nature of an anthology.
It's a lovely premise and I'm hooked on solarpunk now. The future feels a little less bleak.
I like both pessimistic and optimistic stories, but a little positivity feels good right now. The stories and worlds presented here are inspirational, even though not everything works out every time. From the prominent farming theme to murder mysteries and aliens, the stories vary widely in both setting and tone, but I enjoyed all of them. Some I loved more than others, but that's the nature of an anthology.
It's a lovely premise and I'm hooked on solarpunk now. The future feels a little less bleak.
betsygant's review against another edition
3.0
A nice, short sci-fi. What I took away: 1) Boundaries are important, but they need to be fluid and evolve to different circumstances, and 2) Keep an open-mind.
ckeeve's review
adventurous
hopeful
lighthearted
reflective
sad
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
barb4ry1's review against another edition
2.0
Actual rating: 2.5/5
I enjoy dystopias and postapocalyptic wastelands, but they don't present the future I want for myself or future generations. I want an optimistic future founded on renewable energies. I believe people can coexist peacefully with nature. Yes, I'm that naive.
Solarpunk's ideas are close to my heart. In short, the genre can be described as a type of optimistic science fiction that focuses on visions of a brighter future.
The seventeen stories packed into this anthology approach a variety of ethical and technological issues while trying to present a sustainable world. I loved most ideas and conceptions presented in the stories. Some of them are simply mind-blowing, some merely exciting.
However, clever ideas and thought-provoking concepts aren't enough to make an excellent story. As a reader, I want strong conflict and distinct characters. I didn't get much of it in Glass and Gardens.
Let's take a quick look at each story.
Caught Root - Julia K. Patt ★★
Sweet, hopeful, but the relationship development felt unbelievable. Also, the stakes are low here. Some scenes retell the daily routine of the narrator and lack of action killed my engagement in the story.
The Spider and the Stars - D.K. Mok ★★★★
A touching and hopeful story about a girl fascinated by insects and arachnids and their strange and alluring worlds. While the plot is fairly simple it's packed with fascinating concepts of sustainable living (convection ventilation systems, climate-resilient crops, tree-planting drones). Excellent.
Riot of the Wind and Sun by Jennifer Lee Rosman ★★★
The story happens in the future Australia, where the major cities tend to hoard energy reserves sending the outback villages into a blackout. In one of such villages, people start working together to put themselves back on the map. Hopeful, easy to read, but unfortunately not really exciting.
Firewall - Stefani Cox ★★
Nothing special to be honest. Totally unmemorable.
Watch Out, Red Crasher! - Shel Graves ★★
A great idea here. In this world, people's emotions are visible to everyone through colours. People hope to achieve their perfect colour. If someone can't balance the emotions he has to leave the community. The execution, though, lacks strength.
The Call of the Wold - Holly Schofield ★
Slow, introspective, and boring. I'm brutal here but it's just my opinion. I'm sure some readers will enjoy Julie's reflections on her life, both past and future. I'm not one of them though.
Camping With City Boy - Jerri Jerreat ★★★★
The story is simple, but the voice of the narrator never cease to entertain. Makemba's excursion into the wilderness with her city boyfriend, Rich, isn't as thrilling as she expected it to be. It turns out Rich may not be a minor god people in the city choose to see in him. And Makemba expresses her feelings in a witty, funny way. A great story.
A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine - Jaymee Goh ★
Great title, disappointing delivery.
Midsummer Night's Heist - Commando Jugendstil ★★★
Entertaining heist story written by two real-life writer’s collectives — Commando Jugendstil (“a small collective of Italian solarpunk creators”) and Tales from the EV Studio (“a posse of emigrant Italian writers who specialise in historical fantasy”). A decent story.
Heavenly Dreams of Mechanical Trees - Wendy Nikel ★★
Good concept, decent execution, but It didn't have much impact on me.
New Siberia - Blake Jessop ★★
Nice, touching story. Despite low stakes, it's a worthy, hopeful read. And they drink vodka.
Grover: Case C09 920, "The Most Dangerous Blend" - Edward Edmonds ★★
We get a full-on murder mystery into the solarpunk theme. It was ok.
Amber Waves - Sam S. Kepfield ★★
A married couple struggles to protect their crops from destructive weather and the interference of a large agricultural corporation. Cool idea, poor execution.
Grow, Give, Repeat - Gregory Scheckler ★★
Imaginative, but meandering and slightly pointless story.
Cable Town Delivery - M. Lopes da Silva ★★★
Short and entertaining. It proves that librarians are the true heroes.
Women of White Water - Helen Kenwright ★★
A woman with psychic powers becomes involved in a love triangle. She tries to follow a set of rules, her ethical code. Not always an easy task.
Under the Northern Lights - Charlotte M. Ray ★★
A love story in an imaginative future. Nice, and sweet, but also bland.
I don't want to discourage anyone from giving this anthology a try. I think that most stories here are based on great ideas. Unfortunately, with two or three exceptions they lack a strong narrative voice or a conflict that would engage the reader.
Having said that, I plan to delve into solarpunk genre. I hope I'll find the books that not only display the kind of sustainable future I want but also relatable and three-dimensional characters. Let me know if you have such a book in mind.
I enjoy dystopias and postapocalyptic wastelands, but they don't present the future I want for myself or future generations. I want an optimistic future founded on renewable energies. I believe people can coexist peacefully with nature. Yes, I'm that naive.
Solarpunk's ideas are close to my heart. In short, the genre can be described as a type of optimistic science fiction that focuses on visions of a brighter future.
The seventeen stories packed into this anthology approach a variety of ethical and technological issues while trying to present a sustainable world. I loved most ideas and conceptions presented in the stories. Some of them are simply mind-blowing, some merely exciting.
However, clever ideas and thought-provoking concepts aren't enough to make an excellent story. As a reader, I want strong conflict and distinct characters. I didn't get much of it in Glass and Gardens.
Let's take a quick look at each story.
Caught Root - Julia K. Patt ★★
Sweet, hopeful, but the relationship development felt unbelievable. Also, the stakes are low here. Some scenes retell the daily routine of the narrator and lack of action killed my engagement in the story.
The Spider and the Stars - D.K. Mok ★★★★
A touching and hopeful story about a girl fascinated by insects and arachnids and their strange and alluring worlds. While the plot is fairly simple it's packed with fascinating concepts of sustainable living (convection ventilation systems, climate-resilient crops, tree-planting drones). Excellent.
Riot of the Wind and Sun by Jennifer Lee Rosman ★★★
The story happens in the future Australia, where the major cities tend to hoard energy reserves sending the outback villages into a blackout. In one of such villages, people start working together to put themselves back on the map. Hopeful, easy to read, but unfortunately not really exciting.
Firewall - Stefani Cox ★★
Nothing special to be honest. Totally unmemorable.
Watch Out, Red Crasher! - Shel Graves ★★
A great idea here. In this world, people's emotions are visible to everyone through colours. People hope to achieve their perfect colour. If someone can't balance the emotions he has to leave the community. The execution, though, lacks strength.
The Call of the Wold - Holly Schofield ★
Slow, introspective, and boring. I'm brutal here but it's just my opinion. I'm sure some readers will enjoy Julie's reflections on her life, both past and future. I'm not one of them though.
Camping With City Boy - Jerri Jerreat ★★★★
The story is simple, but the voice of the narrator never cease to entertain. Makemba's excursion into the wilderness with her city boyfriend, Rich, isn't as thrilling as she expected it to be. It turns out Rich may not be a minor god people in the city choose to see in him. And Makemba expresses her feelings in a witty, funny way. A great story.
A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine - Jaymee Goh ★
Great title, disappointing delivery.
Midsummer Night's Heist - Commando Jugendstil ★★★
Entertaining heist story written by two real-life writer’s collectives — Commando Jugendstil (“a small collective of Italian solarpunk creators”) and Tales from the EV Studio (“a posse of emigrant Italian writers who specialise in historical fantasy”). A decent story.
Heavenly Dreams of Mechanical Trees - Wendy Nikel ★★
Good concept, decent execution, but It didn't have much impact on me.
New Siberia - Blake Jessop ★★
Nice, touching story. Despite low stakes, it's a worthy, hopeful read. And they drink vodka.
Grover: Case C09 920, "The Most Dangerous Blend" - Edward Edmonds ★★
We get a full-on murder mystery into the solarpunk theme. It was ok.
Amber Waves - Sam S. Kepfield ★★
A married couple struggles to protect their crops from destructive weather and the interference of a large agricultural corporation. Cool idea, poor execution.
Grow, Give, Repeat - Gregory Scheckler ★★
Imaginative, but meandering and slightly pointless story.
Cable Town Delivery - M. Lopes da Silva ★★★
Short and entertaining. It proves that librarians are the true heroes.
Women of White Water - Helen Kenwright ★★
A woman with psychic powers becomes involved in a love triangle. She tries to follow a set of rules, her ethical code. Not always an easy task.
Under the Northern Lights - Charlotte M. Ray ★★
A love story in an imaginative future. Nice, and sweet, but also bland.
I don't want to discourage anyone from giving this anthology a try. I think that most stories here are based on great ideas. Unfortunately, with two or three exceptions they lack a strong narrative voice or a conflict that would engage the reader.
Having said that, I plan to delve into solarpunk genre. I hope I'll find the books that not only display the kind of sustainable future I want but also relatable and three-dimensional characters. Let me know if you have such a book in mind.
readingrenbo's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
frasersimons's review against another edition
4.0
The exciting thing about solarpunk is, as the forward talks about in Glass and Gardens, uncharted territory. Rather than proclaim what it is with a tightly curated collection of fiction focused on a specific notion, the anthology instead chooses to give a voice to a wide range of people; asking what solarpunk is to them and encouraging the reader to consume and talk about the genre themselves. Through critical thought, as well as a wide range of public opinions informing the discourse via reviews, their hope seems to be to arrive at a definition not solely derived from academics.
Some of these stories may be better classified as eco-fiction or climate fiction. But this idea of handing it over to everyone to define is a romantic notion that has a lot of traction with me, personally. I often wonder what cyberpunk would have been like if the Internet was a little bit more accessible then. Would more people of color and marginalized people contribute to the first wave of cyberpunk and drastically alter the landscape of those formative years? I think so. After all. They did arrive; just after it was proclaimed dead.
This anthology seemed very diverse with a wide range of stories. Some of which I liked, others I didn't; kind of to be expected in any short fiction anthology. Often I'm attracted to cyberpunk because of the frenetic pacing inherent in much of the fiction. There is some meandering in these stories and sometimes I struggled to ask myself where the "punk" was.
In keeping with the objective of the forward, however, I think this anthology successfully probes science fiction stories that might be solarpunk in order to find the core of solarpunk. Even with stories that weren't for me, I still appreciated the larger framework of questions being posed to the reader. In the end, this probably hinders the book as an overall text but it is admirable that they stick to their guns, so to speak.
For me, just as with cyberpunk, the punk aspect is important. I want some form of resistance, some kind of dissent or critical thought against authority and systems in place; stratification of class, that kind of stuff.
The solar part, in my mind, is up for grabs, though. What does that really even mean? I don't think the general consciousness is aware of renewable energy and specialized technologies coming out of that sector. And in that respect this book is great. Because it's short fiction and not hard sci-fi a lot of isn't explained as much as I would have liked, but neither is it New York 2140, a novel that I could not get through because it is pedantic in its attempts to educate you about what felt like literally everything.
New technologies, new thinkers, new ways to imagine our interactions with others and the planet are all here. These stories coupled with a bit more focus on dissent, which I think we need right now more than ever, is exactly what I'd like to be reading right now. I feel like this sub-genre and its formative years are some of the most exciting things to sprout from cyberpunk and science fiction. Does it have to be hopeful? I'm not sure I care, to be honest; stories that do either would be fun to consume, I think? Plenty of Solarpunk in other anthologies have short fiction that isn't very hopeful but situates itself into the sub-genre by way of these extrapolated renewable technologies and punk aspects.
I hope that solarpunk is as eclectic as cyberpunk can be, should you go looking. This approach is a great way to define the sub-genre and I'm excited for more anthologies like this.
Some of these stories may be better classified as eco-fiction or climate fiction. But this idea of handing it over to everyone to define is a romantic notion that has a lot of traction with me, personally. I often wonder what cyberpunk would have been like if the Internet was a little bit more accessible then. Would more people of color and marginalized people contribute to the first wave of cyberpunk and drastically alter the landscape of those formative years? I think so. After all. They did arrive; just after it was proclaimed dead.
This anthology seemed very diverse with a wide range of stories. Some of which I liked, others I didn't; kind of to be expected in any short fiction anthology. Often I'm attracted to cyberpunk because of the frenetic pacing inherent in much of the fiction. There is some meandering in these stories and sometimes I struggled to ask myself where the "punk" was.
In keeping with the objective of the forward, however, I think this anthology successfully probes science fiction stories that might be solarpunk in order to find the core of solarpunk. Even with stories that weren't for me, I still appreciated the larger framework of questions being posed to the reader. In the end, this probably hinders the book as an overall text but it is admirable that they stick to their guns, so to speak.
For me, just as with cyberpunk, the punk aspect is important. I want some form of resistance, some kind of dissent or critical thought against authority and systems in place; stratification of class, that kind of stuff.
The solar part, in my mind, is up for grabs, though. What does that really even mean? I don't think the general consciousness is aware of renewable energy and specialized technologies coming out of that sector. And in that respect this book is great. Because it's short fiction and not hard sci-fi a lot of isn't explained as much as I would have liked, but neither is it New York 2140, a novel that I could not get through because it is pedantic in its attempts to educate you about what felt like literally everything.
New technologies, new thinkers, new ways to imagine our interactions with others and the planet are all here. These stories coupled with a bit more focus on dissent, which I think we need right now more than ever, is exactly what I'd like to be reading right now. I feel like this sub-genre and its formative years are some of the most exciting things to sprout from cyberpunk and science fiction. Does it have to be hopeful? I'm not sure I care, to be honest; stories that do either would be fun to consume, I think? Plenty of Solarpunk in other anthologies have short fiction that isn't very hopeful but situates itself into the sub-genre by way of these extrapolated renewable technologies and punk aspects.
I hope that solarpunk is as eclectic as cyberpunk can be, should you go looking. This approach is a great way to define the sub-genre and I'm excited for more anthologies like this.
alamerysl's review
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
marthe1998's review
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.25
klpaolucci's review against another edition
4.0
I very much enjoyed this book! Solarpunk is my new obsession. I'm a big fan of anthologies, and this one didn't disappoint. The editor chose a great mix of stories. I think everyone will find something they enjoy here.
mabs's review
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.25