GreenPunk update

I put up a short new post at the GreenPunk site (that has been a bit neglected of late) which may be of interest to writers. It also links to an article that effectively rebuts the idea put forth recently in SuperFreakonomics that we ought to solve global warming by undertaking a giant geo-engineering project involving pumping the stratosphere full of sulfur dioxide.

Fiction excerpt at GreenPunk site

If anyone's interested, my new post at the GreenPunk website is another excerpt from my novel-in-progress (from a different section of the story than the one I included here in my Outer Alliance Pride Day post a few days ago). The site is still quite new and not exactly loaded with content yet, but it is starting to get interesting, with both non-fiction and fiction items appearing with some regularity. By the way, if any writers reading this have any story excerpts from new or in-progress (or even older work) that you think has a greenpunk sensibility, feel free to let me know about it. I'd be glad to get them posted over there and get some more voices in on it. It's fun.

Updates on current affairs...

1. Please note that the GreenPunk website has launched. It's brand new and rather sparse still, but it already has a little bit of interesting content on it, and it is very, very open to much, much more. It's easy to interact with founder Matt Staggs via that site and also at Enter the Octopus. Also, I have admin access to the GreenPunk site as well, and am happy to review and pass along or post content if anyone wants to hit me up with anything from over here. It's a new Movement, so have fun throwing in on it at the the beginning if it appeals to you (see previous post on the this page, which links to Matt's original call to action).

2. Speaking of fresh new things, note also that the Outer Alliance, just a few days old, expands rapidly. Hit that little Alliance badge at the top of the right-hand column of this page and visit the main site. From there you can join the group if you wish. You can even get your own badge (it was designed by Mari Kurisato, naturally).

3. A few months ago, I announced with great confidence and self-satisfaction a Grand New Vision for M-Brane SF in which I vowed to take the zine into professional status and huge (by sf zine standards) circulation by a year from the date of that proclamation. As the months have passed, and as I have not gotten a whole lot closer to completing that vision yet, I wonder if I need to push back the deadline a bit. On the other hand, I have a strange and rather pleasant sense of movement in some direction, and I still think that the Vision could be realized. I can't discuss in detail right now some of the plans that I am kicking around, but I will say that I envision a number of new book projects following after Things We Are Not which should help solidify M-Brane as a growing presence in the world and shore up the zine itself.

4. Writers: You have a few more days to submit for Rick Novy's special issue (M-Brane #12). Deadline is 8/31. After that deadline passes, Rick will make his decisions and then I will resume normal reading for submissions (I will actually be backtracking a bit and acquiring a few more things for #1o and #11). Once those issues are all filled, there may be a reading hiatus for a little while, but I'll make sure I update guidelines promptly if that happens.

5. Shared World: Bear with me guys. I know I've been promising a re-boot of the Shared World discussion for a while now. It's coming. In the meantime, interested parties may want to review posts here and at Brandon Bell's page under the "Shared World" label at both sites.

Announcing GreenPunk

It seems that no matter how hard status quo-oriented people want the world of the last few decades to carry on forever, it is obvious that the old days are not only ending, but perhaps actually ended a long time ago. Consider these facts:

1) Finance-Capitalism has collapsed. No matter how Republican you want to be, it is, as you have known it, done, down in the ash-can of history, dead forever. Finished as surely Stalinism was. The party’s over, and it probably should have been cancelled long before the food and the band showed up;

2) The planetary climate is undergoing a shift that is currently and will continue to be perceptible within the lifetimes of people living now. The estimates of how long it will take to move radically toward a warmer and much different-looking planet are starting to look way too conservative and, (sorry to my neighbors, the “I-Don’t-Need-Facts-I-Got-Faith” folks of Jesusland) there is no serious scientific doubt anymore that something is happening. None at all. You can argue all day about how and why and what to do about it, but it is happening, and continuing to pollute the hell out of the planet is not going to help;

3) We have created (and by “we” I mean, collectively, the people of countries where people get to sit and type on computers like I am right now) mountains and heaps and rafts and flotillas of—excuse my language—shit. There is shit heaped everywhere, towers of manufactured crap, hordes of cheap and useless consumer goods, monumental barge-loads of human-made garbage as far as the eye can see. There’s a vortex of water bottles, trash bags and other plastic crap the size of Texas out in the Pacific ocean for eff’s sake! This is simply unsustainable in a world where the level of human anguish and the depth of planetary exhaustion and the complete and total fuck-all-this world-pain demand profound change at nearly every level.

End of lecture. But I said all that as a preface to presenting the following: Matt Staggs’ “GreenPunk Manifesto,” published yesterday on his fine blog Enter the Octopus. He proposes to identify and promulgate a sub-genre of fiction centered around this premise:

“GreenPunk: a technophilic spec-fic movement centered on characters using and being affected by the use of DIY renewable resources, recycling and repurposing. GreenPunk would emphasize the ability of the individual – and his or her responsibility – for positive ecological and social change.

“Rejecting steampunk’s romanticism while embracing its focus on approachable, ‘knowable’ technology (as opposed to the ‘black box’ nature of digital tech), GreenPunk envisions a world in which the detritus of consumer culture as propagated by the Elite is appropriated and repurposed by the masses toward the reconstruction of a devastated ecology and the address of social ills.”

Please go to Matt’s page and read more. A lot of people have posted interesting comments suggesting some already-existing literature that may fit under this umbrella or which may presage it. Also, according to recent Twitter updates from Matt, there will soon be a full-blown web resource for GreenPunk (if it hasn’t been launched already), and I will update as appropriate. Finally, I will commit right now to using M-Brane resources, such as they are, at some level with producing an anthology of new GreenPunk fiction should that seem to be demanded by the Movement.

[I’ll note that the website www.io9.com also ran an article about Matt’s post today, but (as is common on that site) somewhat missed the point (at least in user comments) that this is first and foremost a written fiction concept and not just a visual aesthetic. That may come later, but the TV/movie/videogame fanboys who like to dump on book-related ideas are not yet the whole intended audience for this. Also, I swiped that image of a library with trees growing in it from Matt's own post.]