Hopeful Climate Fiction
The purpose of Bright Green Futures is to surface hopeful climate-fiction stories. The links below will take to you recommended stories across various media, plus authors’ websites to find more. Please see Featured Stories for those discussed on the podcast.
Visit Bright Green Future’s Bookshop.org Page to purchase paper copies on this list!
Not sure where to start? Check out the Solarpunk Starter Pack!
RECENTLY ADDED
The Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft (BrightFlame’s website)
Thank Geo by BrightFlame (Solarpunk Creatures)
Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis
NOVELS/NOVELLAS/NOVELETTES
Nothing is Promised series by Susan Kaye Quinn (also in German, Spanish)
Monk and Robot series, Becky Chambers (2022 Hugo Award) (Sue’s review)
Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson
Roots in the Box and Roots in the Bones by T.K. Rex (in Asimov’s Jan/Feb 2023)
Foxhunt by Rem Wigmore
Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell (2023 finalist Philip K Dick award, 2024 winner Ursula K. Le Guin award)
Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri (2023)
Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052 - 2072. It's a long title, by Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O'Brien.
A Hunger with No Name by Lauren C. Teffeau
The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks Dalton
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Lost Cause by Cory Doctorow
Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup
SHORT STORIES
Susan Kaye Quinn: Seven Sisters, It’s in the Blood, Once and Future Kilowatts
T.K. Rex: Holdout in the Northern California Designated Wildcraft Zone, A Lot Full of Weeds, Davu the Explorer and the Druid Tía Yara
Renan Bernardo: Eight Steps to Steal a Yacht and Build a Hospital, A Shoreline of Oil and Infinity, Anticipation of Hollowness
Jamie Liu: To Labor for the Hive (2024 winner, Grist Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors) (Also in Spanish)
Ana Sun: Anatomy of Emotion – The Carving of Chance – Seize the Moon, Shadow Among the Leaves, Soul Noodles
Sarena Ulibarri: The Spiral Ranch, Walking Through Fog, Wandering Star
BrightFlame: Thank Geo, When the Web Went Down, Maybe We Are All Witches
Sanjana Sekhar: Cabbage Koora: A Prognostic Autobiography, GARMI
Grist’s Climate Fiction Drabbles (100 word stories)
The Hilarious Inside Joke of Our Overwhelming Melancholic Nostalgia by Francis Bass
The Orchard of Tomorrow by Kelsea Yu (Clarkesworld)
An AI plots to take over a community’s solar power by Paolo Bacigalupi (Grist)
Under the Grid: Detroit goes full-on solar in this fictional future by Andrew Dana Hudson (Grist)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Metamorphosis collection (published by Milkweed Editions)
Different Kinds of Defiance by Renan Bernardo (Android Press) including The River that Passed Through My Life (originally published in Portuguese by Editora Dame Blanche)
Grist’s Imagine 2200 Collections (2021, 2022, 2023 Editor’s Picks, Best of Audio, 2024)—Submit to Imagine 2200
Real Sugar is Hard to Find by Sim Kern
Solarpunk: Short Stories from Many Futures, edited by Francesco Verso
Solarpunk: Ecological and Fantastical Stories in a Sustainable World edited by Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro, Translated by Fabio Fernandes (World Weaver Press, English translation of the world’s first solarpunk anthology from Brazil and Portugal)
The Bright Mirror: Global Solarpunk by Women (Future Fiction)
Solarpunk Summers edited by Sarena Ulibarri
Solarpunk Winters edited by Sarena Ulibarri
Solarpunk Creatures (World Weaver Press)
Fighting for the Future: Cyberpunk and Solarpunk Tales (Android Press)
Multi-Species Cities co-edited by Sarena Ulibarri et al.
GRAPHIC NOVEL
Shifting Earth by Cecil Castellucci, Flavia Biondi, Fabiana Mascolo
POETRY
The Terraformer of Bigotry, Dawn Vogel
MIXED COLLECTIONS
All We Can Save (ed. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Katharine K. Wilkinson)
TV/FILM
Strange World (2022)
Star Trek: Discovery, Season 3
Many say all Star Trek is optimistic SF, but ST:DiscS3 is intentionally, conspicuously hopepunk.
Taryn O’Neill, producer of Scirens, trailer for the Climate Action Almanac: “The Assignment”