Bright Green Futures: FREE for Awards Season
Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction Association Awards
Hello Friends!
Awards Season is upon us! (Sue says as if she does this every year, which she definitely does not.)
I’m super proud of the Bright Green Futures anthology, published Earth Day 2025 with stories from solarpunk authors who have been guests on the pod! So I’m setting the anthology FREE FOR AWARDS SEASON (until April 5th), to encourage folks to download and consider nominating and/or voting for these amazing stories!
First: Download the Anthology and Read!
The anthology will be free through the close of the Hugo noms (April 5th), but the Nebulas and BSFA awards close soon — download now so you have time to read!
BSFA Awards: VOTING CLOSES Feb 19th!
Long-listed in the British Science Fiction Association Awards:
Ana’s story Coriander (Category: Best Short Fiction)
a non-fiction essay we co-authored How solarpunk can help us rewild our lives Category: Best Short Non-Fiction (published in The Ecological Citizen, this essay is about how we can use solarpunk to navigate a new relationship with nature: free to read online!)
BSFA voting closes soon, so if you have to prioritize reading, go for those first!
CORIANDER: A cultural historian travels around the world to her great-grandmother’s birthplace and discovers traces that transcend time.
The British Science Fiction Association has annual awards, first BSFA members nominate works (the “long list”), then after a month of voting, a “short list” of the finalists is compiled, and then a final round of voting for “best” in each category. Only members of BSFA can vote in the awards, but anyone can read the stories!
Coriander was also selected to be in the Best of British Science Fiction 2025 Anthology — CONGRATS, ANA!
Please share on Bluesky and Mastodon!
Nebula Awards: NOMINATIONS CLOSE Feb 28th!
All seven of the short stories in the anthology are eligible for the Nebula in the SHORT STORY category.
Any SFWA (Science Fiction Writers Association) member can nominate a work for the Nebula award (not the author or publisher). The anthology is posted on the official Nebula Reading List, but that link just goes to the free download page anyway!
Nominations close Feb 28th, finalists will be announced in March!
HUGO Awards: NOMINATIONS now open!
The Hugo nominations are open until April 5th, and members of the World Science Fiction Society nominate and vote on the awards… but anyone can join! (Details here)
All seven of the short stories in the anthology are eligible for the Hugo in the SHORT STORY category.
Solarpunk and Cultural Change
The whole purpose of this podcast is to lift up stories of a better world… I’m super excited to see some of those stories getting nominated for awards and being selected for Best of anthologies. It shows the talents of the authors but also that people do want these stories, despite the reluctance of many to publish them.
I’ve argued that solarpunk operates in the underground, which is where all social change begins. That work is important, but it can be hard to see the change while it’s still forming, hidden in everyday actions, spread out everywhere, simmering in the zeitgeist, seemingly not a movement until it bursts forth into the public consciousness due to some unforeseen (and unforseeable) event.
Yesterday, I read an article in Aeon about solarpunk, and each time I see something like this pop up, I’m reminded that the struggle for a better world has been long-running, it has tendrils far into the past and is spread wide across many disciplines:
“environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht first proposed in 2014 as ‘the Symbiocene’: the era after the Anthropocene, in which human technologies take their cues from living systems and work in partnership rather than through dominance.”
People all over the world, in all different walks of life, are asking the same question: how do we survive in a world that’s increasingly on fire? As more institutions crumble, as fascism breaks many things we thought unbreakable, more and more people are arriving at solarpunk ideas as an alternative to the soul-eating capitalism and extraction engines that are consuming the world.
We need better stories about that fight. We need more stories about alternative ways of living. It is the biggest challenge on the shortest timeline imaginable… we need everyone’s skills and talents, including our storytellers doing the imaginative work necessary to build that better world.
It feels like this:
But it’s actually like this:
Are you like me and hungry to go to a party like that? There are so many things like this that we can literally just choose to do differently. There’s nothing stopping us but our own imaginations. And I guarantee that one party touched far more than the 50 people attending.
Every action matters.
But, Sue, does it really matter if I download and read these stories and share them with my friends? It matters so much.
Be creative. Be daring. Dare to think differently about building a better life for yourself, your loved ones, and all of us. Because that’s how it will happen, one person at a time and all of us collectively.
Peace and Hope,
Sue
A collection of short solarpunk stories from Bright Green Futures podcast guests.