Our obsession with cyberpunk and the failure of solarpunk to take firm root
In the imagination of the present, the future is always just a little on fire.
From the flickering neon of Cyberpunk 2077, the saturated ruin of Blade Runner, or the techno-chaos of Neuromancer, we seem compelled to envision the world to come as fractured, synthetic, and collapsing under its own inventions. These stories thrill us. They warn us. They remind us of our weakness against systems greater than ourselves.
On the far side of that same horizon, a quieter fire glows like morning light reflecting off solar panels: solarpunk—a movement of hope, harmony, and human-scaled technology. A vision of green viable micro cities, decentralized systems, permaculture neighborhoods, and mutual aid. A world not abandoned to entropy, but coaxed into a kind of balance, usually built up from the chaos. Despite this hope though somehow it is the one that is neglected compared to our obsession for the dystopia.
So we are left with a question:
Why do we so often veer toward dystopia, when solarpunk offers hope right there in front of us?
Cyberpunk as Truth, Solarpunk as Longing
We gravitate toward cyberpunk because it feels emotionally honest. Not because it is accurate—but because it reflects the immediacy of systemic pain. Inane bureaucracy, inequality and corruption. Tech that extracts and monitors instead of connecting It constantly reminds the reader, the viewer, the gamer of the hopelessness, and despair. Our protagonists often seem so insignificant against the power of the corporations, hiding from all-seeing authority, and often being beaten to a pulp by crime lords and thugs.
If it's so hopeless why do we keep diving back into the stories? Because of the potential buried in the rot, the rebellion that underlies everything like a powder keg ready to explode leading to progress. The future tech: the implants, the holograms, or the ability to ride the waves of the net doing battle with opponents as easily as on the streets. And there's the real draw- cyberpunk brings out the action, the rebellion, the survivors.
Meanwhile solarpunk despite its optimism lies neglected in our imagination because it lacks the tension of the dystopia. Cyberpunk in its honesty is post-reactive truth—a vision not of how things are, but of how they could stabilize after the churn. It is what happens after the fire, when the soot settles and someone starts planting again. But narratively there is no tension- the problems are solved, there is unity, there is creativity, and there is almost naivety.
We long for cyberpunk, even if we don’t fully believe in it. Because we haven’t practiced it. We haven’t built narrative muscle for healing, only for resistance, for cynicism, for struggle. But healing, too, is heroic and the smog and the rough edges of the cyberpunk genre don’t end in hopelessness.
Cyberpunk Is the City. Solarpunk Is the Suburb.
Cyberpunk and solarpunk are not enemies. We don’t need to pick a favorite, we need to understand the ecology.
They are geographic conditions of the same future.
Cyberpunk is actually hopeful otherwise why do we fight on? And solarpunk in its blind optimism is naive and demands opportunity for struggle and growth.
Cyberpunk is the big city where ideas churn, burn, and reform under pressure. solarpunk is the suburb, the periphery—where those ideas once stabilized are integrated, and made livable.
In this model, cyberpunk is the engine. It burns fast and throws off sparks. Solarpunk is the grid that catches those sparks and turns them into light. Cyberpunk creates the tools and the economy. Solarpunk shapes the culture. Cyberpunk is smoggy, poverty-stricken London in its rough lurches of the 19th century giving way to solarpunk’s bucolic countryside and groundbreaking discoveries over a drink at a convivial pub in the 20th.
The Profit Engine and the Hope Circuit
Cynically we observe that progress has always been yoked to profit.
The Roman Empire funded the expansion of roads to move armies that ultimately yielded trade routes. Renaissance science advanced because of patrons seeking status. The free version of ChatGPT is availbe with the goal of seeking future profit and creating technologic dependance.
Solarpunk in its purest form seems almost allergic to profit. To survive in the real world, it must accept the circuitry of capital, without being consumed by it. Cyberpunk may be a hellscape—but it produces. Solarpunk is the heart that redirects and refines what is produced.
The future requires a dynamic tension—a civilization powered by combustion but steered by conscience. A thermodynamic society.
A New Genre: Reclamation Fiction
Maybe what we’re truly yearning for isn’t cyberpunk or solarpunk—but a fusion genre. A world that remembers its trauma but refuses to let it define its destiny.
Let’s call it Reclamation Fiction.
In Reclamation Fiction:
• Cities are still rough but they’re also repurposing skyscrapers into algae farms.
• Hackers still resist power but also maintain digital monasteries of knowledge.
• AI is not always the villain it’s also the co-architect of a culture learning to live with itself.
It’s a genre for people who want to build something better—not from scratch, but through salvaging the opportunities generated by chaos.
Living It Now
What William Gibson was imagining in the 80’s versus what we are expecting now- while merging- are wildly different because we’re seeing the rapid progress in around us in real time. I routinely work with an AI. I have a supercomputer in my pocket and a voice assistant on my wrist. Neal Stephenson had to imagine VR when he was writing Snow Crash and I have several VR headsets in my home. And the truth is, some of us are already living quiet solarpunk lives inside an increasingly cyberpunk world.
• We 3D print replacement parts instead of buying new plastic.
• We garden on apartment balconies and run hydroponics in our kitchens to outsmart the increasingly fragile supply chain.
• We decentralize our AI tools and maintain personal cloud servers to grow and preserve our literature, our art, and our knowledge.
There is still plenty of economic inequality and we're fighting to keep the water clean but we're also creating novel vaccines and medications with the help of AI and gene editing. While we rage against the machine we can still take deep rest days and dream of harmony as the servers hum in the background. If we muscle through it all one day we may even have cleaner air and more green grass to lay in.