Solarpunk discussion

The future is blue. Endless blue...except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.

Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she's the only one who knows it. She's the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it's full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.

But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.

Just tried the audiobook sample - hard pass. Shockingly thick accent. I will consider the kindle but the price is a bit high. I thought this would have been more popular, considering the voting.

So I joined this group yesterday, having just discovered Solarpunk. And I took off on a walk to my library to get this book, b/c it is just 150 pages, and take my first step into the genre. But. Yuck! Poor Tetley. How awful for her to be treated like that and bear all those scars and I don't know how she kept on living. So horrible how much we can hate one another. To me, the only hopeful part of the book was the afterward from the author.

I’m going to keep this read going for at least another month as thee was a lot of initial interest.

Read The Past Is Red back in January so things are a bit more fuzzy than if I'd just read it, but I absolutely adored the book. The writing was so sharp, so specific, so poetic. Tetley immediately intrigued me (how does she stay so positive? her energy reminded me of Kaylee from Firefly and Kizzy from The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet). I was immediately engrossed and just *had* to find out what her story was. Loved her crazy names for her animals, her creative expressions and names for things. Very childlike in how Garbagetown is set up, very whimsical, as happy a spin as you can really put on a concept as depressing as the pacific garbage patch. But also so satisfying reading about current events that feel so often ignored despite their dangerous importance (climate change/pacific garbage patch). I found the plot twists very satisfying and genuinely surprising. But more than anything, the choice of words and way it was written was a huge cherry on top for me. So creative and well-written.

The review I'd left for it on Goodreads back in January simply said: "An absolute masterpiece. Moving at times, hilarious at others, truly so unique and beautiful in its prose. I have a sneaking suspicion that this will be my favorite book for the next long while to come." (5 stars)

Just noticed this and decided to join in. I see the solarpunk connections for sure. Future SF, climate disaster, readymade local solution. And from the main character, relentless optimism in the face of brutality, almost as a survival strategy.

It is very rough on poor Tetley though.

Spoilerish world detail / science check. The most extreme warming scenarios have 5 degrees warming causing 27m of sea level rise after hundreds of years. Which is devastating but still leaves enormous amounts of land. The Andes are about 4000m tall, for comparison. So that puts this novel more in a fairy tale worldbuilding space.

I'm not that deep in though, and it is plausible the characters don't report accurately on their world.

Ok, so I finished it. It's very well written and Tetley is a character with such a strong voice. But the fatalism makes it a very pessimistic book. Tetley too is a deep pessimist looking fifty years into the future. It's almost anti-solarpunk on that sense.