Among the flood of AI-generated content all over the Internet it’s hard to imagine a coherent vision of a better future, especially one hopeful in the face of the Climate Catastrophe.
I believe that to be able to create a sustainable civilization and stop destroying the planet we need to find a new story for ourselves. Such a story could only be crafted by humans, as no neural network is capable of creating coherent symbols for values absent from our mainstream, Western culture. We need new signposts, new hieroglyphs as Neal Stephenson called them:
Good SF supplies a plausible, fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place. A good SF universe has a coherence and internal logic that makes sense to scientists and engineers. Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and William Gibson’s cyberspace. As Jim Karkanias of Microsoft Research puts it, such icons serve as hieroglyphs—simple, recognizable symbols on whose significance everyone agrees.
For the last few years I witnessed many well-meaning writers and academics try to write about a better climate future - be it under a name of Solarpunk or any other - and struggle to find art illustrating their work. It saddened me to see them turn to the most thoughtless AI-generated images, trees growing from concrete buildings - just to represent something.
I hope that with this Library, thanks to the artists who generously donated their art under copyleft licenses, we will be able to go towards meaningful symbols, planting them like signposts towards a better future.
For anyone stuck looking for a story idea, good conflict or tension in a realistic near-future setting, I hope that the seeds will kickstart their creativity. Be sure to also check out the Solarpunk Prompts podcast by the awesome tomasino for even more writing inspirations!
