In a keynote talk in April, commission by Dominic for the event, Timo finished with a challenge to all the writers in the AUB Exploratorium: Write a solarpunk short story.

In this episode we hear how these three and another festival attendee, Hannah Hulbert, adapted to the world of solarpunk, facing the challenges and fears of engaging with speculative futures that aren’t simply dystopian. We hear the premise of each of their stories and discuss how they were affected by the process. Do even scifi creators find solarpunk daunting? Can non-scifi lovers write good future stories?

Links to the stories themselves are to come – watch this space.

A terrific listen for writers and future story developers, wondering how we do indeed write the new songs and stories of us, and for any of us contemplating how to respond to a world in crisis.

You can watch our recording here: