Klara the Solarpunk

I just finished reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, and found it to be a beautiful and heartbreaking work worthy of discussion. Something that stood out to me is its relationship to the solarpunk genre. I’ve briefly referenced this genre/style/attitude/aesthetic/worldview in previous posts. But this novel seems like a great opportunity to expand on my view of it and why it’s useful.

The Lens

In this post we’ll be examining Klara and the Sun as a work of solarpunk fiction. For our present purposes, I describe solarpunk as an orientation towards a future that blends high-tech protopianism with a spiritual, reverential, collaborative relationship with nature most associated today with indigenous, pre-industrial cultures. I believe that solarpunk’s core assertion is that we can reclaim our role as lovers of nature without sacrificing the benefits of technological progress; and that, in fact, these branches of development must be wedded to each other. Thus, one of the most common emblems of solarpunk is the illustration of a forest-like city. Solarpunk is distinctly future-looking, and avoids the pre/trans fallacy by integrating the old with the new rather than privileging either.

Certain interpretations of solarpunk are colored by more anti-capitalist and anarchistic philosophy, but it’s hardly necessary to share such views in order to be a…