Hello World, I'm Tomasino. This is SolarPunk Promps, a series for writers where we discuss solar punk, a literary, artistic, and activist movement that envisions and works toward actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community. Our goal is to enable stories that will help us to imagine that future and give us a blueprint for real change.
In this series, we spend each episode exploring a single solar punk story prompt, adding some commentary, some inspirations, and some considerations. Most importantly, we consider how that story might help us to better envision a sustainable civilization. If this is your first time here, I'd recommend checking out our introduction episode first, where we talk in more depth about what solar punk is, why you should care, and why this series came into being. Today's prompt is the Dirigible.
A modern zeppelin is the fastest and cheapest mode of transportation for several remote communities. Its anarchist crew is always ready to welcome a new member, even if they're clearly a runaway kid looking for an adventure. This prompt shares some similarities with our previous episode, The Ship. Where that was concerned with trade and practical realities of a floating community, this prompt is an opportunity for a bit of romanticism.
It's unlikely that Dirigibles will objectively be the best mode of transportation in almost any future situation. Aerostats, or aircraft that remain aloft by aerostatic buoyancy, have practical purposes, such as weather balloons. But for most of the uses, there's no way to get rid of them. are better vehicles available. The first hot air balloons were launched by two different competing teams in France, only months apart way back in 1783.
Another French -engineering inventor, Jules -Henri Jaffard, built a steam -powered airship which took flight for the first time in 1852. For a short time, they were the darlings of the sky. These early balloons and airships were filled with hydrogen, cheap, abundant, and unfortunately volatile, as the Hindenburg in the test. Today's airships use helium almost exclusively, but at a much higher cost and lower lifting power.
There is an alternative still being explored which may offer some potential for the future. A vacuum airship was first proposed by Italian Jesuit priest Francesco Lanniterzi in 1670. Rather than filling a large volume with less dense gas than the surrounding air, A vacuum airship would create a large volume of voided space.
This would theoretically allow the greatest possible aerostatic lift, but without any internal gas countering the air pressure, the framing needs to be much stronger to avoid collapse. Even if technology finds such metamaterials in graphene, for instance, the airship design is still not likely to fit many needs. They remain difficult to fly, to train on, to secure when grounded, and to maintain.
But even with all of that, they still have a special place in the imagination of authors, thanks to steampunks aesthetic. Let's borrow that element then, for this prompt, and not feel too bad about it. While it may not be the most practical air travel solution for our future, it still does embrace some of the values we want to express in solar punk. It suggests a balance with nature and its design, even if that design is a bit hand -wavy.
Let us be romantic, and take to the skies in near silence, floating under a great balloon of vacuum. This story is to be about stowaways, about contact between cultures, about the idea of travel when travel is not easy, where each journey is an expedition. The heart of the story, of course, is the Dirigible's crew, a crew which is a found family. For many people, from the neighboring towns, villages, maybe much farther away.
If the ship is making distant trips between remote settlements, its crew may be quite diverse. They might have been airspace pilots for some time already, always in love with the sky, or maybe just needed to make a change in their life, not minding some hard work. There will be mechanics and engineers to keep them afloat, or perhaps the crew will all need to wear many hats. Weight is a premium on an airship, after all. But before we get too deep into the story, let us know what you think.
the story angles, let's consider the airship as a borrowed genre element one last time. This is one of the most well -known aspects of steampunk fiction, and it will carry with it some of that baggage if we're not careful. How do we differentiate a solar -punkte -originable from a steampunk one? Well, the crew, as mentioned, is a great starting point. A steampunk story might have a crew that's part of a country's naval force, or perhaps a luxury liner from a prestigious company.
It could be a stately affair with fine dresses, music, and so on, or perhaps it's a sky -pirate with fancy brass trimmings, top hats with goggles on them, and long leather coats. Our crew and passengers, though, have their base in a sustainable community, and use this transport as an expression of that. Do botanists cultivate hydroponics that hang below as the ship travels? What sort of hybrid skill training went into the MacGyvers that lead the crew?
How much more likely are you to see crew in coveralls with 50 pockets? Would anyone aboard be considered just a passenger at all? Would everyone be required to do some sort of job? Now we're getting back into that Solar Pump mindset. And as you can see, this should be taking quite a different shape than you'd expect to see in a steampunk story. Let's look even deeper at the prompt situation for clues on how to take that farther.
The airship journey could take them to faraway islands or hard to reach villages around the Amazon. Across vast distances on the African continent, perhaps the route is circuitous and won't return back to where it began for months. If our ship is traveling a great distance in a single bound, they might expect to be airborne for weeks at a time. What other social activities would need to happen? What sort of special planning would that take? What would the atmosphere be like as they leave a port?
How about a week later, not having set down again? How about two? What pressures build and change? And then the magic happens. They reach a destination. Perhaps it's just one of many, but at every stop they are always being met with an intrigued community starved for news, starved for gossip, yet also a bit wary. The last time the airship came, it left with some of their youth looking for a life of adventure. What might they encounter at each stop?
Are there different resources they need from each place? Are their travelers returning home? Family to see, only a few times a year? Or friends they traveled with in ages past? How is this trip different? What if this time around they need to transport someone important? What if it's someone from a very different culture or some reason? researchers, engineers, botanists, sent to analyze local cultures and plants, or to bring medicines, or to gather medicines to take home.
In the solar punk future you're writing, how common is travel? We know that the cost of the environment from travel today is quite high, whether that be from commercial air travel or mass reliance on cars. We know that a future in balance with our environment will mean significant changes in the way we move, and there is an uncomfortable feeling when we think about a future world where you can't just hop on a plane for a vacation.
It feels like going backwards, but perhaps some small measure of that is the anxiety of potential isolation. Our societies used to be fragmented. National borders, continental divides, even a big river can mean you don't interact with others very far away from you. This story could be a good place to think about that. The divide between digital and physical spaces. How does your future world address these challenges head -on? Where in a future, electronic messages can be instant.
They can give us a presence which is understood and accepted. We won't expect people to fly half the world just for a two -day conference or a business meeting. Physical travel requires a different level of need. It could be an important life decision to change continents. And what shape it takes is worth considering and really exploring. Think about your own experiences today. How many friends do you keep in contact with regularly whom you rarely if ever see in person?
Do you have close relationships with people you've never met? Only a few decades ago that wasn't a possibility. Yet now we know online relationships are real relationships. The dynamics of self in digital ecosystems is a whole topic to itself, but do give it a bit of thought. Does the modern reality of digital relationships change the anxiety of isolation in a post -travel future?
Will those digital relationships be strong enough as a connection to prevent communities from drifting apart in different directions? Will the focus of the local community re -contextualize global diversity? These remote villages without any easy access between each other or to the wider world may grow in unique directions as needed for their environment and people. The social mores could change drastically in a short time with true isolation.
We might see that come to play in how they treat stowaways for instance, or perhaps a rite of passage in one community is seen as rude or a grave insult in another. There are many sociological implications here to explore as you float between them on your brilliant little airship. Make it an adventure. Until next time, I'm Tom Osino. I hope you'll join me for the next Solar Pump Prompt. Music in this episode is really beautiful. My mumbo by Jean Toba.