Titan
The settlements established on the Jovian moon 鈥� domes built in the ocean deep beneath its frozen surface 鈥� are shielded from the harsh radiation of space by a thick crust of ice. A crack anywhere would be devastating and the ice is sensitive to sound, so decibel levels are tightly controlled. The result is a colony wrapped in deep, meditative silence, all the better to observe Europa鈥檚 native life, giant tardigrades that can be seen undulating in the freezing oceans.
In Emmi It盲ranta鈥檚 latest book The Moonday Letters, humanity has learned to adapt to the unique environments of other habitats in our solar system 鈥� in part due to the devastating consequences caused by trying to force Earth鈥檚 environment to adapt to us.
Her book opens on the eve of a bigger cataclysm, one so monumental it will propel Earth out of the Anthropocene . It is 2168, and though we have settled the solar system, our planet is almost uninhabitable 鈥� but not empty. Earth natives work what is left of our drowned and poisoned home, which has been largely turned into resort islands where off-worlders come to experience the cradle of humanity they never knew. These resorts are pastiches of the present day 鈥� frozen-in-time Disneylands with names like Hollywoodland or Winterland.
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While the slow clean-up work, including plastics processing using algae to produce biogas, pays better than the theme parks, it leaves the workers鈥� lungs in ruins. But they can鈥檛 leave because visa requirements are stringent. Earthlings are the refugees no one wants, yet their resources feed the off-Earth colonies into which the privileged have now moved, such as Mars, Enceladus and Europa.
One exception is Lumi Salo, whose journals make up the corpus of the book. She has been granted an exemption due to her calling as a healer, a shamanistic profession in huge demand since the exodus from ruined Earth.
This all sounds depressing, but the book is a thrill ride. Lumi鈥檚 first journal entries are written as she leaves Europa to meet her spouse on Mars. A missed connection kick-starts a wacky caper in the style of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? This deepens into a disquieting missing persons mystery, accelerating into an eco-thriller with an ending that rivals Fight Club in wild ambition.
It盲ranta鈥檚 work is usually categorised as Finnish Weird, a kind of speculative fiction that cuts across genres, hybridising and blurring them into a new form. It盲ranta certainly cuts a diagonal swathe across Kim Stanley Robinson, Carlos Castaneda and Philip Pullman, to name a few, and also takes cues from plenty of literary fiction.
Nonetheless, I prefer to see The Moonday Letters in the category of 鈥渟olarpunk鈥濃�� at the risk of putting some of its exponents to shame. After all, It盲ranta鈥檚 book does what solarpunk should do: it presents a bold vision, with a road map, and, crucially, it clarifies what hope is and what it can do. Hope isn鈥檛 a luxury of 1950s and 1960s future-euphoria, but a duty, without which we can鈥檛 reach escape velocity from the reality of our worst fears. It may be immaterial, similar to the animal spirits that 17th-century philosophers believed actuated our muscles and senses, but it is real. You do have to choose to flex that muscle, though.
Becky Chambers
Another entrant in the 鈥淗opepunk鈥� category. Where It盲ranta tackles the weight of grief keeping us in the Anthropocene, Chambers looks at the characteristics that led humans into that unofficial epoch. Her works are a road map for a sci-fi genre that doesn鈥檛 rely on the base plots of resource, status, greed and boobs 鈥� a project that seems very much worth undertaking.
