Travel Documents 139: No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save our Planet

by Kim Stanley Robinson Et Al

Genre:  sci-fi, near-future, social change, cultural change, solarpunk

The Dust Cover Copy

A collection of inspiring, funny, dark, mysterious, tragic, romantic, dramatic, upbeat and fantastical short stories.

These 24 stories are written by a variety of authors, with the aim to inspire readers with positive visions of what a sustainable society might look like and how we might get there.

The stories are diverse in style, ranging from whodunnits to sci-fi, romance to family drama, comedy to tragedy, and cover a range of solution types from high-tech to nature-based solutions, to more systemic aspects relating to our culture and political economy.

The Scene

Worldbuilding

To date I’ve read this book four times. And I’m definitely going to read it again. It’s the kind of collection I hand to people when they say ‘I don’t know, solarpunk just doesn’t really work. It’s too smarmy.’ 

Well this collection works. It works hard. And it’s clever about reintroducing us to ourselves and our possible futures. Whether it be the seasteading in Oasis, the heartbreaking setbacks and success of The Desert Spiral, or the simple and wholesome love story of Come Help Me, these are stories of blood, sweat, tears…and results.

But wait, it gets better! At the end of every rousing story, there’s a direct link to factual information that exists Right Now. And yes, almost everything in this book can be put into practice right bloody now. If we can just get over ourselves, we can already make changes. What thes stories ask is: so what are we waiting for?
All those resources are collected at  https://www.greenstories.org.uk/anthology-for-cop27/solutions

The Crowd

Characterization

It’s my policy to speak in broad terms when reviewing anthologies, but what I can say is that all the characters in all the stories are different. They’re interesting. Sometimes they’re aggravating as heck. And every one of them is worth reading about. I have my own favorites: Tim in Habitat Man is sweet and scruffy and so earnest, Yulia in Come Help Me is so delightfully pragmatic,  and Sepphira in The Envelope is someone I identify with. Everybody in Arlene’s Bar from Frackers makes me think of my favorite sitcom stories. But whoever you are, you’ll find a future friend and ally somewhere in this anthology.

The Lingo

Writing Style

You’ll see every genre in here with ‘green’ in front of it. There’s a charming green mystery, an eye-rolling funny green sitcom setup, a painfully real green memoir, and a rollicking green adventure story. Everybody does their styling a little differently in this anthology: some stories are tight and tense, some chatty, some sparse as the desert. One is practically written in text messages, all shortened sentences and tightly controlled word use. There’s a hint of nostalgia to many of these stories. Some of them have in-your-face anger, and many of them have grim resolve. But through every one, there’s a golden thread of possibility leading us to something better.

The Moves

Plot

Personally, I felt mildly cheated to find that Robinson’s stories were just chapters out of his book Ministry for the Future, because I was excited for new Robinson stories. But that’s just me, and personal feelings aside I will say that the plot of each piece is solid as a stand-alone. The stories have plots that range from solid workmanship to intricate complexity to soaring excellence, with one or two witty off-the-wallers to keep things fun. Every plot works like a fine Swiss watch running on a solar battery.

Overall Rating

This is the book you need. This is the book we all need. One that tells us what’s possible, and then tells us how to pull it off.

Grab it at https://habitatpress.com/no-more-fairy-tales/