Recent and Upcoming Magazine Issues
We released Issue #11: Solarpunk Fantasy last month. We’re quite proud of this issue.
If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, grab one today so you don’t miss out! The issue is full of stories, poems, and nonfiction experimenting with the more magical and fantastical possibilities the solarpunk genre has to offer.
Solarpunk Magazine Issue #12, our final issue of 2023, releases next month on November 14. There’s no particular theme other than general solarpunk, but since it marks the end of our second year of publication, the issue holds something of a special place in our hearts. In the coming weeks we’ll be doing a Table of Contents reveal and the like, so keep an eye for that! In the meantime, if you don’t have a 2023 subscription, you can preorder the issue here.
2024 Crowd Funder
We’re only one week away from the launch of our 2024 crowd funder, which starts on the morning of Tuesday October 10. You can click here to get on the list to receive an email notification the moment the campaign goes live.
The pre-launch page for our 2024 Crowd Funding campaign is now up and allows you to sign up to be notified the moment the campaign goes live on October 10th. Having a strong first day is really important to getting your campaign into Kickstarter highlight algorithm, and you can pledge on Day 1 and you don’t get charged until the campaign ends the following month.
We can’t emphasize enough how important this crowd funder is. Our annual crowd funder ensures we’re able to buy stories through the next year at the SFWA pro-rate of 8 cents per word for fiction, and that we’re able to keep bringing the same high caliber and quality solarpunk fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and art we have for the past two years.
We’re running this year’s crowd funder similar to the one we did for our first year. Our initial, base goal is low, $4,000, and essentially funds author and editor payments for our first two issues of 2024. That means we need to hit stretch goals and get to at least $12-15,000 to keep up the same amount of content we’ve been putting out each issue and each year up to this point.
Our community of readers and writers (that’s you!) is amazing, and has come through every year so far. We have no doubt this year’s campaign will be exciting and fruitful!
This year we’re keeping the perk tiers simple. There are four main perk tiers that include 2024 Solarpunk Magazine issues and subscriptions, the 2022 Best of Utopian Speculative Fiction Anthology, and a solarpunk graphic novel, Anticipation of Hollowness, by Renan Bernardo, Michele Paris, and Lorenzo Livrieri.
There will also be an additional tier for writers to get a great deal on story edits by our fiction editors (for stories that won’t be submitted to Solarpunk Magazine) in addition to a 2024 subscription. And all backers regardless of what tier level will get a copy of this year’s Solarpunk Magazine editor’s anthology and our 2023 Solarpunk Micro Fiction Anthology.
Upcoming from our Publisher
THE INN at the AMETHYST LANTERN by J. Dianne Dotson
A Lunarpunk YA Novel
Atop a seaside bluff, an ancient lighthouse named the Amethyst Lantern sweeps its violet light across the sea and around the bayside town of Glimmerbight. The citizens do not remember a time in which the Lantern was built. But tales abound of the Inn in its shadow. Long ago, the Inn played host to a wonderous twilight era of a time long passed before the sun’s harsh rays forced humanity to adapt to Night Living. Legend tells that the shuttered Inn still houses a mystic hermit who powers the Lantern, and who may have founded the town itself.
Gentian “Gen” Lightworth and her brother Jas are two teens who live at the edge of the woods beyond which the Inn and the Amethyst Lantern still stand. After their cousin, Mira Celestus, breaks the societal age code by attending the annual Glowworm Ball via magic, something awakens in the Inn. Two giant Luna moths carry an invitation from the Inn addressed to Gen alone, portending that something stirs at the base of the Amethyst Lantern after all. Gen and her friends seek to uncover the truth of the Inn and find that something strange is happening in all the land, that could threaten the pleasant town of Glimmerbight and force Night Living into a more sinister era of darkness, or even worse, to bake in the brilliance of a savage sun.
MOTHERSOUND: THE SAUUTIVERSE ANTHOLOGY
The first shared world by all African creators.
Edited by Wole Talabi and featuring stories by Nebula Award winner Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Eugen Bacon, Tobias S. Buckell, T.L. Huchu, Adelehin Ijasan, Stephen Embleton, Akintoba Kalejaye, Cheryl S. Ntumy, Xan Van Rooyen, Dare Segun Falowo, Eye Key Nwaogu, J. Umeh, Somo Ihezue. Edited by Wole Talabi. With a forward by Fabrice Guerrier.
The anthology includes 120k words of short stories, novelettes, and novellas, plus dozens of original artworks.
🪐 African-based intergalactic worldbuilding
🪐 space travel
🪐 humanoid and non-humanoid creatures
🪐 artificial intelligence
🪐 intricate magic system based on sound, oral traditions, and music.
STEEL TREE by Sarena Ulibarri
If you read solarpunk fiction, then no doubt you’re familiar with Sarena Ulibarri, creator and editor of foundational solarpunk short fiction anthologies like GLASS AND GARDENS: SOLARPUNK SUMMERS and MULTISPECIES CITIES: SOLARPUNK URBAN FUTURES. She recently released a solarpunk novella, ANOTHER LIFE, with our good friends at Stelliform Press, and we’re excited that she also has another novella publishing with Android Press this December!
STEEL TREE by Sarena Ulibarri, is a science fiction novella that reimages of THE NUTCRACKER, the famous and surreal holiday ballet. Ulibarri’s retelling is set on a distant moon called Eta where those who can’t afford the trip to the new Earth colony on Petipa go in hopes of working off their passage in the nut orchards. Klara Silber’s parents paid their debt, but left her behind, in charge of the orchards and the android nutcrackers. She’s sure if she follows their example, she’ll earn her invitation to ascend the space elevator and join Petipa Colony in no time. Only, the android nutcrackers have been malfunctioning all season, and some of the other farmers have suddenly gone missing.
They were told Eta didn’t have any native animal life, but the annual winter party is abuzz with rumors of large creatures lurking in the shadows. When one of the party guests inexplicably transforms into a giant rat and goes on the attack, Klara is sure the night can’t get any stranger. That is, until a fairy-like creature who communicates through dance appears, and a whole hidden history unspools about how the humans conquered these alien lands. To prevent the nuts that caused the giant rat mutation from being sent to Petipa, Klara needs to get two very different communities to work in harmony, even if it means she may never earn her way to the colony.
Ulibarri’s novella flips the classic NUTCRACKER tale on its head, and delves into important solarpunk issues like colonization, imperialism, and class struggle through a new tale that is both poignant and really fun to read. The book is now available for preorder in eBook and paperback from Android Press!
SILVER HELIX by Xan van Rooyen
On the surface, the city of HelsInc appears to have recovered from the war waged between humans and Ethereals, but beneath the scars, the city seethes. The remains of magic festers, causing mutations in human DNA which could give humans Ethereal power—not that the HelsInc government would ever let that happen. The Legion resists, ripping out their neurochips and protesting the mandatory gene therapy for humans with cryptomine in their DNA.
At only 19 years old, Omyn Talvinen isn’t ready to play parent to her kid brother, but with her mom in prison on trumped up charges and her deadbeat dad AWOL, she’s left with little choice. Forced to risk her freedom to pay the rent, Omyn finds herself at the mercy of a pair of cyborg soldiers when they catch her red-handed stealing nanites from a cyberware Salon. But the synths’ powers don’t work on Omyn, and they discover they all share a common memory that they must get to the root of.
Wanted dead by the government, Omyn and the renegade soldiers turn to a rebel Legion group with dreams of resuscitating dead magic for help. With the clock-ticking for the synths, Zee-Five and Omyn are forced to confront the secrets of their past and a dark conspiracy that’ll shake the blood-soaked foundations of the city.
STAR-SCORCHED FINGERTIPS by Melissa Ferguson
A carnivorous vine on a planet infected with a human exodus cult, forges psychic connections with Earth, and bestows an unsuspecting group of women with the power to heal or destroy the remnants of humanity.
In a story that spans the galaxy, this ultimately hopeful, eco-punk adult science fantasy novel explores the future of humanity and our obligations to our planet of origin through characters who wrestle with non-conforming desires, gender identities, and sexualities.