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A review by tomatocultivator
Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures by Octavia Cade, Christoph Rupprecht, Sarena Ulibarri, Shweta Taneja, Norie Tamura, Avital Balwit, Amin Chehelnabi, Kate V. Bui, Phoebe Wagner, Vlad-Andrei Cucu, Caroline M. Yoachim, D.K. Mok, Sarah E. Stevens, Natsumi Tanaka, Rajat Chaudhuri, D.A. Xiaolin Spires, Deborah Cleland, Joseph F. Nacino, N. R. M. Roshak, Eike-Henning Nießler, Taiyo Fujii, Andrew Dana Hudson, Meyari McFarland, Joyce Chng, Priya Sarukkai Chabria, Joel R Hunt, Rimi B. Chatterjee, Eliza Victoria, Timothy Yam
4.0
As the possibility of an actual climate-change apocalypse grows more and more real, I have become less able to stomach dystopias and post-apocalyptic stories. None the less, I can't help but devour cli-fi as I come across it, especially if it has the more positive (or at least, adaptive) markers of solar punk. Before picking up Multispecies Cities, I had not noticed that while many of these stories dealt with conservation of animal life, most did not bring up the idea of cohabitation, and shared civilization with other living beings on the planet.
This selection of short stories from a diverse range of authors, including a strong contingent from south eastern and Pacific Asia, is set up in the form of an experiment: what would the future be like if other forms of life were acknowledged and made part of our society as fellow organisms, and can stories of such futures affect the reader's opinions on the subject. The twenty-six stories all imagine a different future. Some aren't so far off - Timothy Yam's "Untamed" sends a teen on community service up to care for a rooftop gardens that now dominate the skyline of their city, and form an important social as well as climatic role.On the other hand, E.-H. Nießler's excellent "Crew" posits a not unimaginable world where a human, an octopus, and an ex-military sperm whale may make a great marine salvage team. The most important aspect of each of these stories is that they for the most part focus not on how humans can "conserve" nature and animals, but how we could live if we acknowledged that other organisms are just as valid as us, with rights to exist, have culture, and share space with us in our cities. Perhaps there could be a time when we don't think of them as "our" cities at all.
A few of these tales fell flat, either due to characters I didn't quite believe or narratives that did not flow as well as their neighbors. A handful I might even call little speculative fables. However, even the rough ones really inspired thought. The editors ask the readers to fill out a survey on-line before and after they begin reading, to hopefully document if and how people's thinking might have been changed. I whole-heatedly approve of this experiment, and while I won't tell you how my answers might have changed, I can tell you that they did shift. We live in a time that requires radical, revolutionary change, and Multispecies Cities is an engrossing, palatable,and necessary call to arms/fins/paws/psudopods.
This selection of short stories from a diverse range of authors, including a strong contingent from south eastern and Pacific Asia, is set up in the form of an experiment: what would the future be like if other forms of life were acknowledged and made part of our society as fellow organisms, and can stories of such futures affect the reader's opinions on the subject. The twenty-six stories all imagine a different future. Some aren't so far off - Timothy Yam's "Untamed" sends a teen on community service up to care for a rooftop gardens that now dominate the skyline of their city, and form an important social as well as climatic role.On the other hand, E.-H. Nießler's excellent "Crew" posits a not unimaginable world where a human, an octopus, and an ex-military sperm whale may make a great marine salvage team. The most important aspect of each of these stories is that they for the most part focus not on how humans can "conserve" nature and animals, but how we could live if we acknowledged that other organisms are just as valid as us, with rights to exist, have culture, and share space with us in our cities. Perhaps there could be a time when we don't think of them as "our" cities at all.
A few of these tales fell flat, either due to characters I didn't quite believe or narratives that did not flow as well as their neighbors. A handful I might even call little speculative fables. However, even the rough ones really inspired thought. The editors ask the readers to fill out a survey on-line before and after they begin reading, to hopefully document if and how people's thinking might have been changed. I whole-heatedly approve of this experiment, and while I won't tell you how my answers might have changed, I can tell you that they did shift. We live in a time that requires radical, revolutionary change, and Multispecies Cities is an engrossing, palatable,and necessary call to arms/fins/paws/psudopods.