Justine Norton-Kertson’s book, Utopian Witch (subtitle Solarpunk Magick to Fight Climate Change and Save the World) is a book about magic and witchcraft but has some of the best explanations and origin stories about solarpunk that I’ve seen anywhere. (Justine Norton-Kertson is also the publisher of Solarpunkmagazine )
In the book, Justine Norton-Kertson writes: “Solarpunk is a wonderful example of speculative fiction that brings art and real-world activism together in a shared purpose–to create a better world. It’s still a relatively new subgenre of science fiction, and there’s plenty of disagreement about what qualifies as solarpunk. But there does seem to be a general agreement that we can use this genre as a foundation for understanding and exploration.
“The term solarpunk was coined in a 2008 article published on the blog Republic of the Bees. The article suggested a new literary genre grounded in futures with renewable energy and resource based economies. The article also laid out a very basic framework for the new literary genre by comparing it to steampunk, which at the time was enjoying its own moment in the sun.”