I’m mostly going to focus on fiction here, but I will occasionally talk about nonfiction stuff if it seems (at least to me) to be related to what I’m discussing here.
For example, here’s two books that describe the path to the future I want to see. The Beginning Comes After the End by Rebecca Solnit and The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger would seem to have little in common (other than both being nonfiction books written by women), one focusing on our current situation and the other on story writing, but they both talk a lot about relationships and building interconnections, seeing this work as essential.
Rebecca Solnit’s book The Beginning Comes After the End is basically a reminder that there has been a movement in this society over the past decades toward embracing all people and living in harmony with the earth and the problems we are struggling with are caused by elites who don’t want to give up power and who want us to return to the days when they controlled everything. For me solarpunk describes the life that she believes we are struggling toward.
The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger is about looking at two types of fictional stories, the ‘Hero’s Journey’ and the ‘Heroine’s Journey’, the difference being less about gender and more about the basic plot, whether it’s a person struggling to triumph alone or they’re someone working with others to build something together. She believes the Heroine could be male or the Hero could be a woman. I think her ‘Heroine’s Journey’ describes the stories I want to create.
These books mirror each other. Solnit talks about the world we’re moving from, saying that “It’s symbolized by the lone man, the superhero, soldier, cowboy…” which is almost exactly the “Hero” that Carriger is reacting against. Gail C says, “The Heroine’s Journey is one of building teams, creating cohesions, forming social relationships… It also seeks balance and compromise.” That could describe the process Rebecca S thinks we need to go through.
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