Oh, one more to consider: Reckoning Press is more climate fiction than explicitly solarpunk, but it was one of the things that got me to give solarpunk a chance.

Ecotopia is a fun one because it hits all the notes but predates the genre.

Murder in the Tool Library is a favorite of mine because the setting is awesome and aspirational while feeling real and human, and because the murder mystery plot is a change from the usual ecofiction.

The solarpunk TTRPG Fully Automated! is free (libre and gratis) and has several sections devoted to its setting and worldbuilding that helped me understand a bunch of solarpunk concepts by seeing them in practice and to start thinking much bigger with my own fiction. It also has some good advice on creating engaging plots in an aspirational solarpunk setting where a lot of the usual problems have been solved.

That’s interesting, even going with modern tech, it’s a neat answer to preserving darkness. Military-grade passive night vision with the analogue tubes are ridiculously expensive but you wouldn’t need them just for walking around - simple infrared spotlight goggles are way cheaper, and probably lighter, especially if you remove extra binocular features. They could also be assisted by infrared streetlights if those wouldn’t mess up other animals. Downsides: I don’t think walking while wearing them would be fun, your depth perception and field of view takes a hit with most designs, and slow update of the screen can be disorienting. They’re also more complicated to make than flashlights.

That’s an interesting idea - instead of carrying a flashlight you might carry an RFID transponder. They’d need to not be linked to any personal records (such as purchase) to protect anonymity and prevent tracking. And a personal flashlight might still be useful.

I’m not sure I love the idea of lights flicking on, identifying where I am to someone waiting in the dark. Maybe it would turn on lights for a block length on the street or something? I’m also wondering if the reduced on-off cycling would wear out lights faster and, if so, how replacing them more often stacks up to more energy spent running them all the time.

Still it’s an interesting compromise position on the light pollution situation.

That is very cool!!

These are all awesome! You’ve given me a bunch to think about

I’ve seen the clipper ship Grain de Sail II, and I’ll definitely check these ones out too! I really like seeing some proof that modernized sail (with fairly traditional-looking rigging) is viable, and especially seeing which cargoes and routes make it viable. I think that might be a good look at what makes for worthwhile shipping in a solarpunk setting (high value goods, ingredients that only grow effectively in certain areas, humanitarian aid, etc). I think some takes on adding sails are perhaps too unwilling to compromise on the massive container ship design, grasping for how to keep that format running rather than examining if we should.

I wrote about this on the photobash I mentioned, but I genuinely like the optimization and logistical advantage of using standardized, stackable shipping containers which fit on ships, trucks, and trains without the need to load and unload the cargoes by hand at each transition in their journey. That’s great stuff, no complaints. What I wonder about is if that cost efficiency has caused other problems. We ship cargo all over the world but much of the time, we do it because it’s so cheap to do so. We ship raw material from one continent to process it on another, we ship that material again so we can shape it into parts, which are shipped back to the second continent for partial assembly, and then for final assembly on a fourth. Is that efficient? It’s cost efficient. But we burn terrible amounts of fuel each time we do it, and we do it for so many things. I’m not sure if there’s a green stand-in for that kind of dirt-cheap bulk shipping.

The Passat, the steel-hulled barque I borrowed parts from to make my last image (and its sibling ships) hauled nitrate, grain, concrete, and other stuff using a pretty traditional-looking hull (and loading it was apparently an important process which could and did lead to issues if done poorly. Like I said, most of the designs I’ve seen for container ships look a lot like regular ones with masts added on where they won’t get too in the way. I’d like to find or work out a design that starts with a viable sail ship and tweaks it towards modern features, like a way to somehow still load cargo in shipping containers, without messing up its form/function.

So thanks for the link (and for reading my rant)!

I like both of those ideas! I’ve seen a few cool takes on repurposed oil rigs, I’ll have to read up on them a bit to see what kind of resources they offer to long term residents, but I’d enjoy doing a take on it - maybe a ship charging station from windmills plus merchant hub/repairs like a bartering outpost from waterworld?

Nuclear powered ships are definitely proven and it’s be cool to see the tech put to a nonmilitary use - though the regulation/control aspect would be challenging to do safely.

Thanks!

The solar powered, electric drive ships are cool! I might include something like this homemade one in a scene sometime.

I’d never heard about the submarine efficiency, but it makes sense.

I’m thinking about types of ships etc, and I suppose a solarpunk setting might have less of a range of purposes in addition to less shipping overall? Like, fishing, lobstering, crab fishing, etc are the first industries that spring to mind for me but even if someone is opposed to solarpunk being vegan, I don’t think it’s controversial to say the populations of those species need time and space to recover. Plus a lot of ocean waste is from the fishing industry. (I know lots of cultures are basically built around fishing but I’m not exactly qualified to depict them anyways.)

But what does that leave? Cargo, transportation, research, ships involved in building offshore wind or tidal power?

I’m skeptical the flowers will have the ability to split concrete slabs/curbs apart - trees definitely could but flowers seem unlikely to me.

That’s interesting - this is the first I’m hearing of them doing that to jets.

This isn’t the original, but I took the photo and cleaned it up a bit: