guide – Stories From Tomorrow – Jessica Brook's Author Site

Solarpunk/Swamp Punk Fiction World Building Guide

May 8, 2025May 16, 2025 jbjwrites1 Comment

Why write a story in a swamp? Aren’t they smelly places full of mosquitoes, gators, and Florida Men?

Last month I put together a comprehensive guide on the fiction genre our world desperately needs—solarpunk! A genre of fiction that envisions humanity, technology, and nature all coexisting in a utopian way.

As an add on to the previous article, I wanted to write another guide geared toward writers or gamers depicting a solarpunk world in a swamp-like, or wetland setting.

Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s my Florida Woman side shining through? Or maybe it’s because the solarpunk genre recognizes that the beauty of the natural world takes on many diverse forms. As someone who spent summers as a child canoeing through wetland environments, I am intrigued by these landscapes full of above ground roots, alligators, colorful water lilies, and towering cypress trees.

But here’s a more indepth response to the question, Why create a story in a swamp?

Swamps as a Place of Refuge: Throughout U.S. history for example, swamps have been a place of refuge for both Native Americans, and run away slaves. While swamps are not ideal places to live, both of these populations found creative ways to make it work. In a solarpunk story, this could take the form of a band of anarchists taking refuge in a swamp in order to resist the corruption of a surrounding capitalist society.

Exotic Swamp Worlds: Given that swamps and wetlands have an exotic, otherworldly quality, they can be a great way to also create an exotic world on another planet.

Natural Hazards: Swamps can be a way to create conflict in a story, given their many hazards. They can be a perilous transition zone a character goes through on a journey.

The Darker (Sludgier) Side of Nature: Solarpunk is typically sunny and full of optimism, but perhaps “Swamp Punk” could represent another necessary side of nature, the sludgy not so pleasant side that is full of peril, darkness, death, decay, and mystery. A group of humans learning to live in harmony with a swamp, or wetland environment, could show the human endeavor to coexist, and even celebrate nature’s more macabre side, not as an evil thing, but in understanding that death and decay are necessary parts of life.

So without further adieu, here you go!

First off, does “Swamp Punk” as a subgenre of solarpunk actually exist?

“Venusian Dragon” by edenpictures is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

There aren’t many well-known “solarpunk” stories specifically set in swamps, but there are a few stories of varying genres that touch on similar ecological and aesthetic territory—lush, humid, waterlogged environments where nature is powerful and human systems must adapt.

The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi: This book is YA dystopia. So it does not have the sunny, optimistic, utopian setting of the solarpunk genre. But it does touch on the themes of ecology and survival in a swamp or jungle-like setting. “In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man—a bioengineered war beast named Tool—who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses.”

Anthologies like Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation: While this book is not definitively focused on swamps, it is a collection of solarpunk stories focused on survival in different types of climates and situations.

Books like A Land Remembered or Forever Island by Patrick D Smith are historical fiction, rather than sci-fi. But in absolutely beautiful and intricate language, they bring the Florida wetlands to life. These books also depict the ingenuity and courage of the Seminole Indians who built a life in the swamps, engaged in a resistance against the Trail of Tears, and then later, resisted efforts of developers to steal and destroy their land. Thematically, that is quite solarpunk indeed!

There are quite a few stories written in the turn of the century by the sci-fi author, Robert A Heinlein, in which he depicted swamps on Venus. As I discussed in my World Building Science Fiction – Venus guide, early pulp science fiction (1930 -1950) often portrayed Venus as a lush paradise full of jungles, swamps, Amazonian women, and even dinosaurs. It wasn’t until the 1960s that scientists discovered that Venus was super hot and that the clouds are made out of sulfuric acid.

Key Ecological Features of Swamps:

“Everglades and Turner River” by chaunceydavis818 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

To write fiction in a swamp, one should be aware of what specifically constitutes a swamp, and what some of its key ecological features are.

A swamp is a type of wetland. A wetland (true to its name) is a very wet land where the ground is saturated in water either permanently or seasonably. A swamp is a forested wetland. This is the key difference between a swamp and a marsh. Swamps are dominated by trees while marshes are dominated by grasses and other non-woody plants. Swamps also have deeper standing water (a great breeding ground for mosquitoes and other fun six-legged friends!)

Swamps are considered transition zones because both water and land play a key role in this environment.

While I have to be careful to prevent this from turning into a Wikipedia entry, I just want to cover some basic, core features of a swamp.

Tree roots that protrude from the ground: A particularly interesting, and visually distinctive feature of swamps is that they have tree roots that protrude from the ground. These above the ground roots are an adaptation to waterlogged, low-oxygen soil, where normal roots wouldn’t get enough air to function. An example of this are the knobby looking “knees” of bald cypress trees (commonly seen in Florida), the vertical “snorkel” roots of Black Mangrove trees (which protrude out of the ground like a snorkel), the stilt roots of Red Mangroves, and the Buttress Roots (large, wide roots on all sides of a shallowly rooted tree) seen in African and Amazonian swamp forests.

Bugs and lots of them! You are probably already aware that these water logged environments make a great home to mosquitoes and dragonflies. Other common bugs are water striders (that skim or walk on the surface of water), deer flies (painful biters active in daylight), ants, termites, beetles, butterflies, moths, gnats, and a type of insects commonly called “No-See-Ums,” incredibly small, almost impossible to see sand flies that swarm in the humid air and love to bite. But while people may call them no-see-ums, you’ll certainly feel them when they bite!

Hammocks. No, not the kind you lie in. A hammock is a slightly elevated area of dry land—often just a few inches to a few feet higher than the surrounding wetlands—that allows different types of plants and trees to grow, usually hardwoods. These areas act as ecological islands within the swamp or marsh.

Food: For those who live in or near swamps or other types of wetlands, they can eat catfish, tilapia, frogs, alligators, crocodiles, crawfish, mussels, clams, honey, snails, duck, herons, egret, or game birds. Edible plants include cattails, wild rice, pickerelweed & arrowhead (duck potato), palmetto hearts, muscadine grapes, pecans or hickory nuts, mayhaws, and swamp apples (wild crab apples).

WARNING!!!: Some fruits, like pond apples, have poison seeds. So this is obviously not a real life survival guide. Do research elsewhere if you are going to figure out what you can eat in a swamp…Yet the poison seeds could make a great source of tension in a story.

If you are curious about traditional dishes someone might make from content they have collected from a swamp, look into Cajun/Creole cuisine, or the diets of indigenous groups that have historically lived in or near swamps.

Medicinal plants include elderberry (a great immune system booster), along with swamp milkweed which thrives in clay soil and is poisonous, but has historically been used in small amounts for purging and killing parasites…once again, don’t use this article as your guide before signing up for the Florida Redneck version of the Naked and Afraid, this is for fiction only, people!

Human activities in a swamp include hunting, trapping, and fishing. However, swamps historically have had low property values compared to fields, prairies, or woodlands because they have a reputation for being “unproductive land” that cannot be easily used for human living or farming activities.

Thus farmers commonly drain the swamps next to their fields to gain more usable land for crops. Human development has often resulted in the destruction of swamps, destroying ecologically biodiverse habitats that are home to a wide variety of plant and animal life.

Real World Places Where a Swamp Punk Story Could Take Place:

“Bird in the Everglades” by milan.boers is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Bayou Country USA: An ecological landscape of slow-moving rivers, swamps, and cypress groves along the Gulf. The term “Bayou Country” is closely associated with Cajun, Creole, and French settler cultural groups. The term may also be associated with the homelands of certain Choctaw tribal groups.

The Everglades (Florida, U.S.) A vast subtropical wetland of sawgrass prairies, mangrove forests, and slow-moving waters stretching across southern Florida. The Everglades are home to a wide array of wildlife (such as panthers, manatees, alligators, turtles, ibis, etc.) There area is tied to the histories of the Miccosukee and Seminole peoples.

The Okavango Delta (Botswana) A sprawling inland delta of winding waterways, seasonal floodplains, and papyrus reed beds in northern Botswana. The Okavango is a rich African ecosystem that is home to elephants, hippos, crocodiles, and countless bird species. The Okavango Delta peoples consist of five ethnic groups: The Hambukushu, Dceriku, Wayeyi, Bugakhwe, and ǁanikhwe.

The Sundarbans (India/Bangladesh) A mangrove forest area in the Ganges Delta straddling the border of India and Bangladesh. This region is home to dense networks of rivers, mudflats, and salt-tolerant mangrove forests, as well as Bengal tigers, crocodiles, and migratory birds. People who live in the Sundarbans include Bengali communities, the Munda, and Mahato. Life involves adapting to the region’s shifting tides and monsoon rhythms.

The Pantanal (Brazil) The Pantanal encompasses the world’s largest tropical wetland area. It is located mostly within Brazil, but also extends to parts of Bolivia and Paraguay. The region is home to jaguars, capybaras, caimans, giant otters, and several bird species. The Pantanal has been home to a variety of different indigenous peoples who have historically been resourceful at adapting to this semi-aquatic environment. This includes the Paiaguá “Canoe Indians”, the Terena who were accomplished farmers, and the Guaicurú.

Powerful Uses of Swamps and Other Wetlands in a Solarpunk World:

Anti-flooding defense: Swamps and other wetlands are a natural defense against flooding and provide great flood management. For instance, when flooding occurs, swamps are like a natural sponge that absorbs and use the excess water in the wetland, preventing it from spreading to the surrounding areas. Thus in a solarpunk story, it could be interesting to show a more advanced and empathetic humanity cultivating swamps as a defense against flooding (especially flooding caused by global warming).

Water, pollution, and carbon purification: Wetlands act as natural water purifiers. They filter sediment and absorb pollution. Development and agriculture contribute extra nutrients, pesticides, and silt to local waterways. Wetlands trap and filter these impurities, helping to maintain healthy rivers, bays, and beaches. Salt marshes, seagrass beds, and mangroves also play an important role in addressing climate change by removing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing them in plants and in the soil. “Coastal blue carbon” is the term used for carbon that is stored in these coastal habitats.

Sustainable fisheries: If you love seafood, thank a coastal wetland for your favorite dish. Coastal wetlands are some of the most productive ecosystems on Earth when it comes to seafood. In 2018, U.S. commercial and recreational fisheries supported 1.7 million jobs and contributed $238 billion in sales. Thus in a solarpunk setting, wetlands could be a useful source of sustainable seafood.

Tourism, Recreation, and Spiritual Reflection: In a solarpunk world, the natural world isn’t seen a tool for human use. Humans and the natural world learn to coexist. Humans in this setting would also learn to appreciate the deep awe and beauty of a place like the Everglades. They’d find ways to explore and engage with that beauty without harming the ecosystem. This could include canoeing along quiet waterways, hiking on raised boardwalks, birdwatching among mangroves, or sitting in stillness beneath moss-draped cypress trees.

Tech, Infrastructure, Clothing, and Other Useful Items in a Swamp Punk Setting:

As I mentioned in my original Solarpunk Worldbuilding Guide, solarpunk doesn’t have to be high tech. It can often come in the form of a “low-tech renaissance,” or “cottage core.” If there is a simple, low tech way for people to live in harmony with the environment without exploiting too many resources, then all the better.

So some of these are not high-tech solutions. They are simply looking at what has worked for cultures that were historically connected to wetland areas. However, there is also some high tech thrown in here as well.

🛖 Housing and Settlement

Stilt Houses and Raised Platforms

Built on stilts or mounds to stay above seasonal floodwaters.
Found among the Bayou tribes (e.g., Chitimacha) and in Amazonian wetland cultures.
In the Sundarbans, people build homes on slightly elevated earthen platforms.

Dealing With Mosquitoes

In any wetland setting, mosquito netting will be essential for preserving a character’s sanity.
Mosquito-Repelling Gardens: Swamp homes could be surrounded by plants like citronella, lemongrass, marigold, lavender, and basil to create natural bug buffers.
Bioluminescent Bug Lures: Lights powered by algae or fungi could draw bugs away from dwellings and toward trap zones or pollinator gardens.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, the Seminole Indians (the indigenous people of Florida) used a variety of methods to repel mosquitoes which included throwing certain plants into a fire and standing in the smoke, rubbing gar fish oil on the skin, migrating during peak mosquito season (May and June), and potentially developed a tolerance over time.

Solar Canopy Roofs

Broad, angled roofs equipped with solar panels that double as shade structures and water collectors. Panels could be bifacial to absorb light from above and the reflected water below.

Rainwater Harvesting and Filtration

Gutter systems feed into cisterns below the house, paired with natural filtration units using sand, charcoal, and local wetland plants.

Chinampas (Floating Gardens)

Used by the Aztecs in swampy areas of central Mexico.
Constructed from layers of mud, vegetation, and reeds to create fertile floating plots.

Alligator or Crocodile Farms

Alligator or crocodile farms would be a way to breed and raise alligators/crocodiles for meat, leather, and other goods. In the solarpunk story, “A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine” by Jaymee Goh, published in Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers, a crocodile farm is used in a controversial way to dispose of bodies (great tension!).

Mound Building

Tribes like the Muskogee (Creek) and Mississippian cultures created large earthen mounds for ceremonial and residential use in flood-prone areas. The mounds could also be used to preserve important items from flooding, such as seed libraries or conventional book libraries.

🛶 Transportation and Mobility

Canoes and Dugouts

Swamps are naturally difficult to traverse by foot, so canoes built from hollowed logs or woven reeds are useful for transport. The Miccosukee and Seminole people of Florida are known for using dugout canoes in the Everglades.

Airboats:

Many people today in wetland areas also use airboats, which glide over the waterline. Gliding allows them to do less damage to the environment and animal life.

Solar Powered Boats:

Since 2016, the Indigenous Achuar people have navigated solar-powered boats along the Amazonian waters of eastern Ecuador. These boats are large canoes covered with a roof of glossy black solar panels that soaks up the bright light of the Amazonian sun. The solar panels on these boats also help power the electricity in Amazonian rainforest villages. This has been a critical way to offer development without deforestation, because the people can travel by river instead of cutting down trees to build roads.

Raised Walkways or Log Paths

Temporary or seasonal paths laid with logs, brush, or woven mats made out of palmetto fronds to allow foot travel across wet areas.

🧵 Swamp Punk Clothing: Materials & Features

Woven reeds or cattails – for belts, sandals, basket-armor, or lightweight hats.
Palm or palmetto fibers – used like raffia to make breathable skirts, wraps, or hooded capes.
Moss-dyed linen or hemp – cool, breathable plant-based fabric grown on hammocks or traded from highland zones.
Mycelium leather – water-resistant, compostable, and grown from fungi—used for boots, satchels, or armor plating.
Water hyacinth fibers – invasive in many swamp areas, but can be spun into rope, mats, or textiles.
Layered wraps and drapes – allow airflow while protecting from bugs and sun.
Arm and leg gaiters – made from waxed cloth, moss-treated fiber, or mycelium to keep leeches, mosquitoes, and swamp debris off.
Wide-brimmed hats and neck veils – woven from palm fronds or reed fibers, often coated in natural insect repellents.
Knee-high boots or foot wraps – made from sealed plant fibers, fish skin, or upcycled rubber for navigating muck.
Gator or snake hide for leather clothing, hats, and boots.
Scavenged animal feathers, teeth, and claws for decoration.

⚡ Energy

Floating Solar Rafts

In my article, Five Real Life Examples of Solarpunk?, I discussed the real life use of solar islands, floating solar islands that collect sunshine and convert it to energy. Wetlands areas with vast waterways, and plenty of sun exposure, could use these to collect energy.

Biogas from Anaerobic Soil and Swamp Grass

As mentioned above in this article, swamps and other wetlands have been often dubbed as poor areas for human development due to the fact the soil is low in oxygen, or is anaerobic. Thus, not much traditional agricultural activity can take place. However, this would make swamps a great place for a process called anaerobic digestion, which can be used to produce biogas. This is a process in which microbes break down organic matter and release methane. Methane gas can be used for used for cooking, heating, and even small-scale electricity generation.

Swamp grasses like elephant grass, cattails, and giant reeds are excellent resources for biogas production. They produce a large amount of biomass per unit area, which translates to a significant amount of biogas. The organic matter in these grasses is easily broken down by anaerobic microorganisms, resulting in efficient biogas production. They also don’t compete with food crops for land, making them a sustainable option for bioenergy production.

Compact, dome-shaped biogas collectors could be nestled near homes or community kitchens, and fueled by compost, swamp vegetation, swamp grass, or waste.

Turn Mud Into Energy! Plant Microbial Fuel Cells

Plant-Microbial Fuel Cells create electricity using living plants and the bacteria in the soil. As plants grow, they make food through photosynthesis. Some of that food—up to 70%—is sent out through their roots into the soil. Bacteria eat this leftover material and, in the process, release tiny electric charges called electrons. Scientists place special electrodes near the roots to collect those electrons and turn them into usable electricity.

Swamps are especially well-suited for Plant-Microbial Fuel Cells (PMFCs) because their natural conditions already support the key elements these systems need to work well. They are wet, which provides good electron conductivity and bacterial growth. The anaerobic soil in swamps is also great for bacterial production. See more at Turn Mud into Energy With a Microbial Fuel Cell.

Kinetic and Water-Based Systems

Canoe docks, fishing platforms, and suspended walkways could be outfitted with kinetic pads or treadle-powered devices that convert foot traffic and movement into usable energy.

Micro-hydro turbines hidden in slow-moving creeks could provide continuous trickles of power without disturbing aquatic life.

I hope you enjoyed this guide!

Feel free to comment if you feel like there are any important points I missed or should add.

If there are other solarpunk biomes you’d like me to create guides for, please suggest some.

And as always, don’t forget to share, like, and subscribe.

World Building Guide for Writing Solarpunk

April 7, 2025October 16, 2025 jbjwrites4 Comments

Happy Earth Month!

In honor of Earth Month, I wanted to put together a guide for the literary genre our world needs right now. Solarpunk!

Right now we’re living in an era where it’s hard not to feel gloomy. The term “doom scrolling” is popular for a reason.

But what if instead of using our mental energy to doom scroll, we used our imaginations to conceive of a better future, where nature, technology, utopia, and human compassion came together to build a better world, a brighter world full of hope and optimism.

Enter Solarpunk. Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement that envisions a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community. Contrary to the tech and capitalist heavy themes of Cyberpunk, Solarpunk imagines a world where we’ve evolved beyond hyper consumerism, and we have learned to live with nature in harmony. For this reason, Solarpunk is not just a fun read, but it’s often a call to action in our world to build a better future.

The term “Solarpunk” was coined in 2008 in a blog post titled “From Steampunk to Solarpunk.” The term combines the words “solar” and “punk”: “Solar” represents a world more reliant on solar energy, but the connotation of the word can also evoke a bright and sunny world full of vibrant colors and optimism. The word “punk” alludes to a grouping with other fiction subgenres, such as cyberpunk, dieselpunk, and steampunk; it also refers to a DIY (Do it yourself) counter culture.

(The above image is creative commons licensed and can be found here)

Impactful Quotes About Solarpunk:

“Dystopian stories surely have a place, as a warning, but sometimes I feel like I’ve been warned enough. I want to know what to do in the face of despair, to not only avoid being crushed, but to reach for brighter skies. In times like those, I look for books that are part of an expanding genre — and a growing social movement — a counternarrative that has infused my days with hope. More and more lately, I find myself reading solarpunk.”

Quote Source: How solarpunk helped alleviate my existential dread

A new movement in SF that examines the possibility of a future in which currently emerging movements in society such as green movement, Black Lives Matter movement, and certain aspects of Occupy Wall Street coalesce to create more optimistic future in a more just world.

Quote Source: Cultural Elements in World-Building of Solarpunk Short Stories

Solarpunk with Capitalism is just greenwashed cyberpunk.

Quote Source: Reddit Post

Solarpunk Ethos:

The ethos of Solarpunk represents a world that has evolved beyond material capitalism.

It is a world in which knowledge sharing and resource sharing are encouraged. Technology has an open-source model.

The focus of this genre is often on local communities rather than globalism. Businesses often have a worker-owned model.

Popular Themes:

The following themes are popular in the world of Solarpunk.

Environmentalism
Renewable energy and sustainable tech.
DIY (Do It Yourself), ingenuity, localized resilience
Social justice
Feminism
Optimism
Historically marginalized communities, such as BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ folk are highlighted. Non-Western cultures are also highlighted
Animal rights
Localism over globalism, decentralization
Long term designs over built in obsolescence
Eco-anarchism and eco-socialism
Post capitalist, post scarcity societies, universal basic income, anticapitalism, anti-greenwashing
Antiwar

Artistic Inspiration:

The artistic genre of Solarpunk often uses the Art Nouveau style. Art Nouveau, which means “new art” in French, is an international ornamental art style that flourished from about 1890 to 1910, characterized by flowing, organic lines, floral and plant-inspired motifs, and a focus on integrating art into everyday life. “In particular, Art Nouveau became an aesthetic touchstone for solarpunk…not only because of its penchant for earthy, organic forms, but also because it’s both ornate and approachable, according to Rosie Albrecht, editor of solarpunk zine Optopia (source)”

The Solarpunk aesthetic also makes heavy use of bright colors and is often inspired by Studio Ghibli movies, particularly Castle in the Sky and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

1800s age-of-sail/frontier living (but with more bicycles)

Jugaad is a concept of non-conventional, frugal innovation in the Indian subcontinent. It includes innovative fixes or simple workarounds, solutions that bend the rules, or resources that can be used in such a way. It is considered creative to make existing things work and create new things with meager resources.

Stained glass windows used as solar panels.

Solarpunk Fashion

Sustainable
Thrift clothes
Recycled uniforms and armor
A love of nature shines through (flowers, animals, plants)
Practical
Includes diversity of cultures

Ideas for Tech:

When thinking about how tech functions in a solarpunk world, it’s not merely enough to slap some solarpanels on a roof and call it a day. Technology does not exist in a vacuum. We must also consider how it’s used and extracted by the culture of the society it exists within. For instance, under an imperialist-fascist state, solar panels do nothing to change the exploitative relationship between humans and the planet. Plundering the natural world and using abused workers to create electric batteries or solarpanels is not solarpunk.

So technological solutions within a solarpunk literary world must be integrated into ideas of humane relations with our fellow human beings and the planet. Solarpunk also isn’t always high or low tech. It depends upon the context and the culture it exists amongst. Much like our current world, the applications of the technology could be extremely diverse.

Solarpunk isn’t “anti-tech”, but it doesn’t romanticize technology either.

Two criteria for uses of solarpunk tech are the following: Is it equitable Is it sustainable?

Examples of solarpunk tech:

Below I’m going to generate a collection of ideas you can expand upon in your own stories. I’m not claiming the list is perfect. I’m sure there are ways that some of the items here could potentially be used in an exploitative way if it gets in the wrong hands, but such is human nature. Humans are gonna human. If anything, that could be a great source of tension in your story.

⚡️Energy Tech

Transparent Solar Panels – integrated into windows or even wearable fabrics.
Personal Wind Turbines – compact vertical-axis turbines for urban rooftops or balconies.
Algae Bio-reactors – used on buildings to generate energy and purify air.
Piezoelectric Flooring – captures energy from footsteps in public spaces.
Smart Energy Grids – decentralized and powered by community-run solar or wind co-ops.
Kinetic Batteries – store energy generated from human motion (e.g., walking, cycling, or dancing) for personal or community use.
Hydro Projects – small-scale, ecologically sensitive water turbines and current harvesters used in rivers, streams, or coastal flows to produce clean energy.
Wind Farms – large-scale turbine networks strategically placed on land or offshore, managed by local cooperatives or bioregional councils.
Solar Arrays – fields or rooftops lined with solar panels, often community-owned, that feed into local grids or energy commons.
Biogas Fuel Systems – anaerobic digesters convert organic waste (like food scraps or manure) into methane-rich biogas, which can be used for cooking, heating, electricity, or as vehicle fuel—closing waste loops and providing clean energy in both rural and urban settings.

🌬️ Low-Tech Renaissance

A redditor brought up a great point that my guide leaned toward the high-tech side of the genre, but that solarpunk can also be a return to low-tech. A return to low-tech doesn’t mean regression; it means refinement. Solarpunk societies embrace tools and techniques that are sustainable, repairable, and human-scaled. These technologies are rooted in harmony with the earth and designed for long-term care rather than short-term gain.

Sail & Ship Networks – Instead of high-emission air travel, long-distance journeys could rely on ships that sail across the ocean.
Windmills & Waterwheels – Time-honored energy sources could make a comeback, quietly powering villages, artisan workshops, and micro-grids. Designed with elegance and ecological sensitivity, they are living symbols of regeneration and place-based resilience.
Village Tailors & Community Cobblers – Clothing and shoes may no longer be mass-produced but crafted with skill and care by local artisans using natural fibers and recycled materials. Fashion becomes personal, circular, and expressive of shared values.
Open-Air Workshops – Community workspaces powered by pedal, solar, or hand tools offer locals the means to build, mend, and make with intention. From bicycles to furniture, goods are created to last—and meant to be passed down, not thrown away.
Slow Roads – Pathways made for carts, bicycles, walking, and animal companions invite slower travel and deeper connection. These routes are dotted with rest stations, food gardens, and communal gathering spaces.
Craft Guilds & Apprenticeships – Knowledge transmission happens face to face, generation to generation. Skills like blacksmithing, herbalism, fermentation, and textile arts are cherished as both livelihood and culture.
Off-Grid Sanctuaries – Healing retreats and study centers located deep in forest clearings, deserts, or mountain valleys rely on low-tech tools, local foods, and deep ecology to support recovery from burnout, grief, and disconnection.

🚜 Agriculture & Food

(This art is from The Lemonaut, who has made their art piece ‘A Solarpunk Tower‘ available for public use.)

Vertical Forest Towers – skyscrapers covered in trees and gardens for food production and air purification.
Smart Permaculture Systems – using sensors and AI to manage polycultures and water flow.
Hydroponic & Aeroponic Wall Gardens – growing food in apartments, on balconies, or on public buildings.
Mushroom-Based Packaging & Materials – biodegradable and grown locally.
Community Food Printers – 3D-printing meals from organic, local paste materials.
Biotech Gardens – genetically tailored plants grown for specific nutrients, climates, or medicinal properties, often co-designed with local healers or AI.
Clean Water Silos – vertical reservoirs that collect, filter, and store rainwater for irrigation and drinking, often integrated into garden infrastructure.
Ecogrid Interfaces – digital dashboards that allow communities to monitor soil health, water usage, crop readiness, and pollination data in real time.
Purification Plants – decentralized, eco-engineered water purification facilities that use layers of sand, charcoal, aquatic plants, and engineered microbes to clean greywater and storm runoff for reuse in agriculture and homes.
Harvester Titans – towering, solar-powered automata that tend and harvest large-scale vertical farms and biodiverse fields with delicate precision.
Pollination Drones – gentle, bee-sized drones that assist in crop pollination in balance with natural pollinators, guided by AI to avoid ecosystem disruption.
Cannabis and Hemp Systems – widespread cultivation of hemp and cannabis for sustainable textiles, biodegradable plastics, building materials (like hempcrete), oils, medicine, and soil regeneration—integrated into closed-loop agricultural and industrial systems.
Shift to Plant-Based Diets – many solarpunk communities could emphasize vegetarian or vegan lifestyles to reduce land use, emissions, and animal suffering, while celebrating culinary creativity and plant diversity.
Insect Farming – small-scale, ethical insect farms could provide high-protein, low-impact nutrition and compostable byproducts, used in community kitchens or food printers with minimal environmental footprint. (For more on solarpunk about insect farming, check out this story here).

🚲 Transportation

Solar-Electric Bikes – charge themselves while parked in the sun.
Hyperloop-like Community Transit – ultra-efficient intercity tubes powered by renewables.
Maglev Cargo Drones – clean, quiet deliveries between green rooftops or decentralized hubs.
Glider Roosts – launch and landing platforms for solar-gliders and personal winged transport, often built into cliffs, towers, or floating pads above green cities.
Shared Mobility Pods – electric, autonomous, and summoned via a community-run app.
Mass Transit – high-capacity, clean-energy transportation systems (like electric trams, solar subways, and suspended railways) that connect neighborhoods, eco-villages, and bioregional hubs with seamless accessibility and zero emissions. Mass transit is more ecofriendly than individual transit because more people are using the same vehicle, reducing waste.
Mobile Homes and Nomadic Lifestyle – compact, solar-powered dwellings on wheels or tracks that allow people to live nomadically while minimizing ecological impact; often shared among communities, artist collectives, or seasonal workers and parked in rotating eco-zones with resource-sharing hubs. A nomadic farmer lifestyle (if carbon free) could be more ecofriendly, as farmers aren’t using the same land over and over, and giving it a chance to replenish itself.

🎓 Information & Education

(More artwork from The Lemonaut. This piece is “A prosthesis maintenance day at the hackerspace“)

Community Mesh Networks – free, decentralized internet not reliant on big corporations.
Augmented Reality for Nature Education – overlaying info on plants/animals/eco-systems in real time.
Digital Seed Libraries – sharing open-source genetic data and growing guides.
Localized Learning Pods – tech-enabled home or neighborhood schools with flexible, community-based curricula.

🏛️Architecture & Infrastructure

Green Cities – urban areas designed around nature rather than over it, featuring dense canopy cover, integrated food forests, rooftop gardens, car-free zones, and buildings that act as part of the local ecosystem.
Green Avenues – wide, plant-lined boulevards that prioritize pedestrians, cyclists, and wildlife over vehicles, with integrated water channels, edible landscapes, shaded walkways, and solar lighting.
Vertical Gardens – living walls and stacked growing systems that provide food, purify air, and insulate buildings, often integrated into homes, schools, and public spaces.
Living Buildings – structures made from bioengineered materials that self-heal, grow, and clean the air.
Solar Paint – coats walls/roofs with light-absorbing nanomaterials.
Water-Harvesting Facades – designed to collect and purify rain or fog water.
Bioluminescent Pathways – glowing moss or engineered plants that light walkways at night without electricity.
Guerrilla Gardening – grassroots planting efforts in abandoned lots, roadside medians, or neglected corners of the city—transforming forgotten spaces into thriving gardens and biodiversity pockets, often without official permission.

🏘️ Eco-Architecture & Local Tech

Earthships – off-grid homes made from natural and recycled materials, with built-in water harvesting, passive heating/cooling, food growing, and waste systems.
Localized Material Tech – using regional materials (e.g., adobe, bamboo, volcanic rock, clay, algae) for construction, tech housing, and tools—optimized by AI to ensure durability and ecological harmony.
Modular Green Micro-Hubs – plug-and-play, solar-powered pods used for mobile clinics, education, or maker spaces, built from local biocomposites.

🌳 Integration with Nature and Forests

In solarpunk societies, nature is not something to be tamed or walled off—it is home, teacher, and ally. Landscapes are cultivated with reverence, cities and ecosystems coexist, and human responsibility is rooted in reciprocity and regeneration.

Land Conservation – expansive zones of protected wilderness co-managed by local communities, scientists, and indigenous caretakers, often monitored with eco-drones and supported by regenerative land use practices.
Integrated Forests – forests designed in collaboration with local ecosystems to blend food production, wildlife corridors, spiritual spaces, and climate resilience into the heart of every city, village, or biome.
Ranger Stations – solar-powered, earth-integrated outposts where ecological stewards live and work, tending forest health, assisting with wildlife care, and offering eco-literacy education to travelers and residents.
Food Forests – layered, self-sustaining ecosystems of edible plants, fruit trees, herbs, and fungi that mimic natural forest systems while providing abundant nourishment for humans and wildlife alike.
Coppicing and Pollarding – traditional woodland management techniques revived for sustainable timber, fuel, and craft material harvesting—encouraging long-term tree health and biodiversity while maintaining human-nature reciprocity.

♻️Waste & Circular Economy

A focus on extending the life span of tech, or utilizing waste, will be key in a solarpunk society, rather than the planned obsolescence we have in our current consumer society.

Smart Composting Toilets – odorless, clean, and turns waste into garden fuel.
AI-Driven Material Recyclers – neighborhood hubs that auto-sort and repurpose everything.
Upcycling Fabricators – small home devices that remake broken objects into new tools.
Blockchain for Zero-Waste Supply Chains – transparent tracking of materials from source to product to reuse.
Repair Garages – community-run workshops where people fix appliances, clothing, furniture, and tech together, sharing tools, knowledge, and skills to extend the life of every object.
Nuclear Reclamation Zones – long-term environmental healing projects that use biotech, fungi, and solar-powered robotics to detoxify and restore areas damaged by nuclear waste or meltdown sites, turning them into future sanctuaries or research gardens.
Ocean Plastic Harvesters – elegant marine drones and floating fungi rafts that collect microplastics and waste from the ocean, breaking them down into usable materials or feeding them into offshore bio-processing stations for reuse in construction, textiles, and tools.
Upcycled Tech Nodes – tech made from e-waste and scrap, locally repaired or refabricated using open-source designs and local knowledge.
Solar Forges – community workshops using intense solar reflectors to melt and reshape metals or glass without fossil fuels.
Biodegradable Tech Shells – devices (like phones or tools) made with organic exteriors that decompose safely once obsolete.
Repurposed Ruins – abandoned buildings, infrastructure, and industrial sites creatively transformed into gardens, homes, maker spaces, or cultural centers—honoring the past while reclaiming space for regenerative community use.

🤖 Tech & Robotics

In a solarpunk world, technology is decentralized, open-source, and designed for harmony with nature—not profit. Robotics and digital tools serve communities, not corporations, and often integrate with biology, local materials, and ecological systems.

Tech Markets – open-air or digital marketplaces where inventors, tinkerers, and communities exchange custom tools, code, micro-devices, and repair parts; often local, open-source, and governed by mutual aid.
Bot/Machine Shops – cooperative workshops where communities design, build, and maintain helpful robots and devices for farming, energy, caregiving, and exploration. Often part of neighborhood maker hubs or education centers.
AI Companions – emotionally intelligent digital beings trained to support mental health, creativity, memory-keeping, and spiritual reflection. Designed with ethical boundaries and community oversight.
Mycelium-Based Processors – living fungal circuits that process data slowly but sustainably, used for long-term ecological modeling, local computing, and communication with environmental systems.
Caregiving Robots – gentle, adaptive machines designed to assist the elderly, children, or those with disabilities in daily life, programmed with kindness, cultural sensitivity, and open-source ethics.
Nature Monitoring Drones – small, quiet aerial or aquatic drones that help track soil health, forest regrowth, air quality, and pollinator movement—designed to observe, not disrupt.
Trash Sorter Bots – helpful home or community-level bots that automatically sort waste for compost, reuse, recycling, or repair, integrated with circular economy platforms.
Collaborative Exosuits – lightweight robotic exoskeletons used for farming, building, or caregiving—shared through community tool libraries for people who need a little extra strength or mobility.

🦠Symbiotic & Regenerative Organisms

Engineered Plant-Partners – crops adapted to local conditions that also fix nitrogen, purify air, or glow softly at night.
Living Walls & Roofs – genetically enhanced mosses, lichens, and vines that clean pollutants, capture water, and self-regulate temperature.
Bioluminescent Organisms – light-producing algae or trees replacing street lamps and interior lighting in public areas.
Bio-Integrated Wearables – skin-safe sensors grown from bacteria or fungi, used for health tracking or plant-human communication.
Mycelium Neural Nets – fungal-based computing systems that process information like a natural brain and interface with environmental sensors.
Biocircuitry – genetic “wiring” for low-energy devices, potentially replacing silicon-based tech with self-growing organic materials.

⛏️Ethical Resource Extraction

In a solarpunk society, even the most industrial processes are reimagined to honor the Earth. Resource extraction is rare, deliberate, and done with maximum respect for ecosystems, often guided by indigenous wisdom, systems thinking, and community oversight. Extraction methods are low-impact, decentralized, and deeply integrated with land healing practices.

Agromining – the use of hyperaccumulator plants to draw metals like nickel or zinc from the soil; once harvested, metals are extracted from plant matter, creating a closed-loop alternative to traditional mining. Agromining can also be used to remove heavy metals and toxins from polluted ground, healing the land as it produces usable resources. Though less common today due to higher costs, solarpunk communities invest in it for its ecological benefits.
Biological Prospecting – using fungal networks, soil bacteria, and deep-rooted plants to detect mineral concentrations underground without destructive drilling.
Geothermal Access Wells – small-scale, carefully drilled wells that tap geothermal energy or access deep-earth minerals using low-impact, community-approved tech.
Robotic Micro-Miners – autonomous, solar-powered bots that extract minerals from abandoned waste piles, tailings, or post-industrial ruins rather than virgin ecosystems.
Salvage Rights Collectives – community-led groups that reclaim and process materials from old tech, ruins, or infrastructure—essentially mining the past instead of the planet.
Crystal Harvest Sanctuaries – ceremonial zones where rare minerals (like quartz or lithium) are harvested by hand in slow, respectful ways—often paired with offerings, story-sharing, or rituals to maintain balance with the Earth.

☁️ Sky Tech

Solar Blimps & Dirigibles – slow, serene airships for travel and cargo, powered by solar panels and algae biofuel; low-impact and panoramic.
Wind-Surfing Drones – lightweight transport or delivery drones that glide on natural wind currents, needing minimal propulsion.
Sky Gardens – floating platforms or tethered aeroponic systems that grow food and purify air high above dense cities.

🌍 Climate Control

This section may be controversial, because humans “controlling” the climate goes against the ethos of humans living in harmony with nature. However, this could also be a source of tension in the story, such as in the story ‘Weather Duty,’ by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Moisture Balloons – large, solar-inflated aerial devices that collect humidity from the atmosphere and release it as gentle rain over arid or drought-stricken areas.
Climate Satellites – orbital systems that monitor weather patterns, carbon levels, and ecological shifts in real time, guiding adaptive land use and early warning systems for natural disasters.
Habitation Domes – sealed or semi-sealed environments that maintain ideal living conditions in extreme climates (desert, tundra, post-industrial zones), incorporating regenerative agriculture, water cycling, and passive energy systems.
Cloud Seeding Drones – eco-safe drones that deploy mineral-based compounds to encourage rainfall in areas affected by prolonged drought, coordinated with local weather councils.
Forest Fire Prevention Nets – sensor-equipped mesh systems strung through high-risk areas to detect early signs of heat, smoke, and dryness, releasing moisture or alerting ground teams.
AI-Guided Climate Modeling – advanced simulations that blend indigenous knowledge with real-time environmental data, helping communities adapt agriculture, construction, and migration to shifting climates.
Thermal Buffer Zones – areas designed with plant layers, wind tunnels, and reflective surfaces to cool urban heat islands and stabilize microclimates.

🌐 AI & Adaptive Systems

This is another section that may be controversial. Today many people in humanist spaces are against AI because of the exploitative way it is being created and used. However, keep in mind that this is the use of AI within the framework of our exploitative, capitalist society. In a more humanist, egalitarian society, AI would be utilized differently.

AI Ecosystem Managers – constantly monitor soil health, water use, and plant life; advise communities on how to optimize their local ecosystem.
AI-Designed Buildings – use natural principles (biomimicry) and local materials, designing structures adapted to microclimates and community needs.
Companion AIs – spiritual/creative collaborators rather than productivity tools—helping people write poetry, tend gardens, or maintain emotional well-being.
Community Memory Archives – AI-curated oral histories, recipes, indigenous knowledge, and collective dreams, accessible in every neighborhood.

🧬 Medicinal & Healing Tech

Gene-Sharing Seed Banks – containing both heritage crops and newly bred species resistant to climate extremes and rich in nutrients.
Personalized Herbal Bio-Synthesizers – small, AI-assisted devices that grow, extract, and combine medicinal compounds on demand.
Adaptive Immuno-Gardens – plants engineered to detect airborne viruses and release natural immune boosters into the air.

🤝 Governance & Community Tech

Solar Credits & Energy Sharing Apps – neighbors can trade extra solar power peer-to-peer.
Consensus Decision-Making Platforms – decentralized apps that help communities vote and prioritize projects.
Time Banking Apps – track hours of community service as currency.
Augmented Co-Design Tools – AR/VR platforms that let citizens collaboratively design parks, buildings, etc.
A reddit user pointed out that rather than having a tech heavy solution, people in a solarpunk setting could even go back to a much more participatory democracy, as was practiced in Athens. See a YouTube video about it here.

⚖️Ethical Frameworks

Cooperative Genetic Commons – open-source genetic blueprints maintained by communities rather than corporations, respecting indigenous and ecological wisdom.
Consent-Based Biodesign – ecosystems and species are “consulted” (through observation, AI translation, or ritual) before engineering is done, emphasizing harmony over domination.
Biotech Literacy Education – every citizen understands the basics of bioethics, systems biology, and ecological interdependence.

For another list, check out the comprehensive picture Reddit user “OtherAtlas” put together. You can see their original post here.

Sources of Tension Within a Solarpunk Setting?

This video here by the Cleric Corner examines great questions about how to create compelling stories and world building within the Solarpunk setting.

Combating ecological threats
Competing views on how to get to utopia
Competing world views (i.e. a solarpunk society versus a cyberpunk society)
Contrasting ways of life
Two different solarpunk communities with competing views
Threats of greenwashing (pretending to be ecofriendly for publicity while engaging in destructive ecological practices

Alternative Social Structures to Modern Capitalism?

Solarpunk worldbuilding is an amazing place to explore reimagined social structures—especially ones rooted in equity, care, cooperation, and ecological consciousness. Below is a list of social structures that could govern (or gently guide) a solarpunk society, branching off from anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, and post-work themes. This could be useful food for thought in your stories or RPGs.

🌿 Post-Capitalist Economies

(This piece is Solarpunk Community Center by The Lemonaut)

Gift Economies – goods and services are shared freely within the community, based on need and mutual care.
Time Banking – time is currency; people earn hours by helping others and trade those hours for services (e.g. teaching, healing, repairing).
Resource Cooperatives – decentralized, worker-owned orgs manage energy, food, housing, and tech infrastructure.
Solar Credits & Energy Commons – people trade solar power or other renewable energy units in a localized, non-profit grid.

🚩Eco-Anarchist & Eco-Socialist Structures

Autonomous Bioregions – communities are organized by ecological regions (watersheds, forests, coastlines) instead of national borders.
Anarchist Syndicates – non-hierarchical collectives that handle specialized functions like healthcare, education, and resource distribution.
Eco-Councils – rotating representatives chosen by consensus to manage common resources, guided by ecological science and local knowledge.

🏘️ Localism & Systems Thinking

Resilient City-States – urban hubs surrounded by regenerative agriculture zones; decisions made at the local level with inter-city cooperation through federations.
Holonic Governance – nested systems of decision-making (e.g., family pod → neighborhood circle → city assembly → regional council), where each level handles only what it must.
Community Circles – regular gatherings where people of all ages deliberate local issues, share meals, and reconnect.

♻️ Reuse Economy

(This piece is a solarpunk tailor workshop by The Lemonaut)

In a solarpunk society, reuse isn’t just a personal habit—it’s a cultural and economic cornerstone. By building systems that prioritize second lives for objects, communities reduce waste, foster creativity, and deepen respect for the natural world.

Circular Education Initiatives – community programs that teach skills in repair, composting, material science, and conscious consumption, often tied to local schools or makerspaces.
Reuse Marketplaces – local platforms or town-square-style events where people trade surplus tools, parts, furniture, or salvaged materials, fostering a vibrant sharing culture.
Thrift Stores – secondhand shops embedded in community ecosystems, focused not just on resale but on upcycling, repair, and storytelling behind reused goods.

♀️ Anti-Patriarchy & Feminist Structures

Matriarchal or Matrilineal Societies – wisdom, inheritance, and leadership pass through maternal lines; power lies in care, relationship-building, and communal memory.
Queer Communal Families – chosen families and multi-parent households are common; care and parenting roles are distributed.
Feminist Tech Stewardship – technology is evaluated not by profit or scale, but by its capacity to nourish, liberate, and reduce harm—especially for women and marginalized people.

🌀 Spiritual & Indigenous-Inspired Model

Council of All Beings – decisions are made in ceremony that invites members to speak as animals, plants, rivers, ancestors—honoring the rights and voices of all life forms.
Dream Governance – dreams, intuition, and spiritual insight play a formal role in guiding decisions, often through dreamers, poets, or seers.
Elder Circles – wisdom keepers, often elders or tradition-bearers, hold space for long-term thinking, remembering histories, and resolving disputes with ancestral and ecological awareness.

🌻 Post-Work & Liberated Labor

End of Wage Labor – automation, AI, and biotech reduce the need for grueling labor, allowing people to choose meaningful roles instead of jobs.
Care Networks – caregiving (for people, animals, and land) is honored as sacred work; often rotated communally with full societal support.
Ritual-Based Rhythms – daily life is shaped by natural and seasonal rhythms rather than a clock; work is occasional, purposeful, and often celebratory. People celebrate the seasons, along with the lunar and solar cycles.

Alternatives to Policing & Prisons in a Solarpunk Society

🕊️ Transformative Justice

Community Accountability Circles – when harm occurs, the person who caused harm, the person harmed, and trusted community members meet in facilitated circles to process the event, name the harm, and co-create a plan for repair.
Restoration Hubs – peaceful, garden-like spaces where people come to reflect, learn, and heal after causing or experiencing harm. These are staffed by trained mediators, counselors, elders, and spiritual guides.
Conflict Weavers – respected community members who specialize in de-escalation, mediation, and long-term relationship repair; they’re trained in communication, psychology, and cultural traditions.

🛠️ Systems of Prevention & Repair

Harm Prevention Teams – nonviolent, trauma-informed groups trained in crisis intervention, mental health first aid, and de-escalation; called upon in emergencies instead of police.
Accountability Apprenticeships – individuals who’ve caused harm may be mentored by elders or former wrongdoers in regenerative roles (e.g., farming, healing, community service) to re-earn trust and learn care-based values.
Circle of Needs Assessments – when community tensions rise, councils use systems thinking to identify unmet needs behind behavior—like hunger, grief, or isolation—and build communal solutions.

🌱 Abolitionist Principles in Practice

No Prisons, Just Pathways – instead of incarceration, people who’ve done harm are invited into long-term, immersive programs focused on therapy, skill-building, ancestral reconnection, and spiritual healing.
Restorative Memory Gardens – places that honor and remember harm that has occurred (such as intergenerational trauma or ecological devastation) as part of collective healing and learning.
Public Truth-Telling Ceremonies – storytelling and ritual where people speak openly about harms they’ve caused and received, witnessed by community with compassion, not condemnation.

🧠 Rebuilding Social Safety Nets

Universal Care Networks – wraparound systems that support people before crises happen, including housing, mental health care, food sovereignty, and community mentoring.
Early Signal Monitoring – AI and local data cooperatives track rising stress factors (like hunger, isolation, air quality) and alert community responders before harm escalates.
Neighborhood Guardians – rather than enforcing rules, these gentle figures provide protection and support by building relationships, noticing tensions early, and facilitating trust between groups.

Writer Setting Guide – The 90s

July 19, 2023October 19, 2025 jbjwrites1 Comment

Why Are the 90s So Hot Right Now?

There’s no denying that the 1990s is in. Grunge fashion was one of 2022’s biggest fall trends. I’m even hearing the occasional 90s alternative rock song when I walk into a store now. And I’m pleasantly surprised to hear about so many Gen Zs watching shows like Friends and Sex and the City, despite these shows pre-dating their existence.

This sudden interest in the 90s should come as no surprise. Trends recycle every 20-30 years like clockwork. Remember back in the 2010s when the 80s were hot?

However, there’s another reason some people think today’s youth are nostalgic for a decade they didn’t exist in. The 90s represent a simpler, more laid back time before social media, before smart phones, before pandemics, before mass shootings, before doom scrolling, and before a 24/7 connection to all that is wrong with the world. In the 90s, the Cold War had just ended and there was a new peace in the world. It was an optimistic time when the “World Wide Web” was brand new. The future seemed full of possibility. According to Business Insider, young people troubled by today’s economy are escaping into 90s and early 2000s nostalgia. And for many Millennials and Gen X’s, there’s also a satisfaction with seeing the trends of our youth making a comeback.

So you want to capitalize on this current plaid and flannel coated wave of nostalgia? You want to write a story set in 90s? Here’s a guide of some essential things I put together for your research, dear writer.

Disclaimers:

Don’t write toward trends for the sake of following a trend alone because trends can always change. But rather, it may just be a fun and nostalgic exercise for you to write something that takes place during this time.

For those in the 35-55 age group, some of this may seem like it was written by Captain Obvious. But for the younger Millennials, Gen Z’s, and Gen Alphas reading this, they may not know what life was like growing up without internet or cell phones. And for the older generations, it may be a good education about the trends they missed out on during the 90s when they were busy being parents or going to work, you know, “adulting.” Also, even for people like myself who did grow up during this period, it could be a good reminder of what life was like.

In the interest of keeping this as an article rather than a book, there’s only so much I can cover. I tried to cover the basics, but I’m sure there’s a lot I missed out on. It’s an entire decade after all. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

(Above Image Source)

Major Events in the World and the U.S., 1989-1999:

(The Berlin Wall Coming Down – Image Source)

Below I’m going to include a timeline of key events from the 1990s. This is not to say that these are the only events that mattered. There is also a bias toward the U.S. in this timeline as a reflection of my own lived experience. However, these are just a few events that I think were influential to life at the time and were widely discussed.

End of the Cold War, 1989-1991: The end of the Cold War was one of the most history making events of the 20th century. The world went from having two major geopolitical superpowers to one.

November 9, 1989 – the Berlin Wall came crashing down, a powerful symbol of the fall of the communist world.

December 26, 1991 – the Soviet Union collapsed and a struggle between two major geopolitical super powers was ended. American political scientist Francis Fukuyama even argued that we had reached “the end of history” and that Western liberal democracy was the final form of government.

Birth of the World Wide Web, 1991:

The internet did exist before the 90s. 1983 is considered the official birth of the internet. But 1991 is the year that the internet became available to the public via the World Wide Web. I have a whole section on the internet below which will have more detail.

The Persian Gulf War, 1990-1991:

August 2, 1990 – The Persian Gulf War began as Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait.

February 28, 1991 – An international force, led by the U.S., defeated Iraq. This was the most popular U.S. war since World War II because it restored confidence in America’s position as a global super power, and helped exorcise the ghost of America’s failures in Vietnam.

Apartheid Was Repealed, 1991:

South Africa existed under a system of racial oppression from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was characterized by an authoritarian system in which the country was politically, socially, and economically dominated by a white minority.

June 17, 1991 – Apartheid legislation was officially repealed.

1994 – Multiracial elections occur as a result of the end of apartheid.

The AIDS Epidemic Peaks in the U.S., but Keeps Growing World Wide:

(This hard to read graph is from the CDC. It shows that AIDS deaths and prevalence peaked in the U.S. in the early 90s, and then began to wane by the mid 90s)

The AIDS crisis, as we generally think of it, began in the 1980s, though people were dying of this virus before the 1980s. AIDS was first named in 1982 in the New York Times.

1991 – AIDS became the number one cause of death for U.S. men 25-44 years old.

1994 – AIDS became the leading cause of death for all Americans ages 25-44 years old.

1999 – The World Health Organization announced that HIV/AIDS had become the 4th biggest killer worldwide. Global AIDS deaths peaked around 2005 and then began to decline. (Statista)

The Bosnian War, 1992-1995:

1991 – the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ceased to exist, having dissolved into its constituent states.

1992 – Croat and Muslim nationalists, who were formerly part of Yugoslavia, formed an alliance and outvoted Serbs in the independence referendum for the international recognition of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign state. War broke out and Serbs quickly assumed control of over half the republic. Killings and deportations became rampant in the newly-proclaimed Serb Republic, but also widespread in Muslim and Croat-controlled areas.

1995 December – The Bosnian War ended. The Dayton Peace Accord created two entities, one for Serbs and one for Bosnian Muslims and Croats. This conflict is significant because it shows the violence that continued in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse as countries struggled to chart a new future for themselves beyond the paradigms established in the Cold War.

The Rwandan Genocide, 1994:

April 7, 1994 – The Rwandan Genocide started. During this period of about 100 days, anywhere from 500,000-800,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic minority group, and some moderate Hutus, were murdered. 2 Million people fled the country. The genocide finally ended on July 15, 1994. This was an event that shocked and horrified the world, since so many people were killed in such a short amount of time.

The OJ Simpson Trial, 1994-1995:

September 26, 1994 – The OJ Simpson trial began. This was a major event in the U.S. that dominated the news cycle. A famous celebrity, O.J. Simpson, was accused of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. The trial spanned eleven months, ending on October 3, 1995. The verdict came out as, Not Guilty.

The trial is often characterized as the trial of the century because of its international publicity, and has been described as the “most publicized” criminal trial in human history. The trial took place shortly after the historic 1992 Los Angeles riots. Many commentators believe that the defense capitalized on anger among the city’s African American community toward the LAPD, which had a history of racial bias, to convince the majority-Black jury to acquit Simpson, despite the fact that OJ was implicated by significant amounts of forensic evidence.

The Death of Princess Diana, 1997:

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, caused international shock and was a very prominent news story at the time. Diana was just 36 years old when she died. Her death sparked an outpouring of public grief in the United Kingdom and worldwide, and her televised funeral was watched by an estimated 2.5 billion people. The royal family were criticized in the press for their reaction to Diana’s death. Public interest in Diana has remained high and she continues to retain regular press coverage in the decades since her death.

End of Conflict in Northern Ireland, 1998:

1998 – The Good Friday Agreement Referendum is held, ending decades of conflict between Protestant and Roman Catholic forces in Northern Ireland. The 90s was a time of many bombings and acts of politically motivated violence in both the UK and Ireland centered around the issue of Northern Irish independence.

U.S. President Bill Clinton is Impeached, 1998-1999:

Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial lasted from December 19, 1998 – February 12, 1999. The cause was Clinton’s testimony denying that he had engaged in a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Clinton by Paula Jones. There were details in the Starr Report showing a sexual relationship between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. It was pretty crude, but images of a dress Lewinsky had with Clinton’s…ahem…”genetic material” on it made it all over the news, and was on the news all the time for a year. It seemed like all anyone on TV could talk about. Clinton ended up being the second president to be impeached in U.S. history.

The Y2K Scare, 1999:

Y2K refers to potential computer errors related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates in and after the year 2000. Many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits, making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. There were fears of mass technological failure at the turn of the century. Many people even started storing food, water, firearms and withdrawing mass sums of money in anticipation of a computer-induced apocalypse. However, the year 2000 happened, and there was no apocalypse.

Technology of the 90s:

The Internet:

(Graph Source)

1990 – Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, develops HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This technology continues to have a large impact on how we navigate and view the internet today.

1991- CERN introduces the World Wide Web to the public.

1992 – The first audio and video are distributed over the internet. The phrase “surfing the internet” is popularized.

1992 – AOL went public and started mailing people compact discs that would let them use the internet in 1993.

1995 – The first online dating site, Match.com, launches.

1995 – Ebay is founded.

1997 – The search engine, Ask Jeeves, is released.

1997 – AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is released.

1999 – AOL buys Netscape. Peer-to-peer file sharing becomes a reality as Napster arrives on the internet, much to the displeasure of the music industry.

The development of the internet had a major impact upon society in the 1990s. Back then the internet was commonly called, “The World Wide Web,” or even sometimes referred to as, “The Information Super Highway” (usually by politicians). I myself first used the internet in the mid 90s when I was around 8 years old. My family would get AOL CDs sent to us in the mail. The internet was far slower, clunkier and more inefficient than it is today. It could take a webpage several minutes to load. You couldn’t be online and on the home phone at the same time. If you picked up the home phone while someone was using the internet, the phone would make a very unpleasant screeching JRRRRN EEEEEEEE sound. One time my parents had to call the police, but had to sign off the internet first just to make the call.

And yet despite its clunky beginnings, people were far more excited about the internet back then than they are now. As you can see from the graph above, few U.S. homes had the internet in the 90s. It was a luxury for the upper and middle class, as well as a novelty. Internet and computer usage didn’t start to become widespread in U.S. households until the late 90s/early 2000s. Until the late 90s, most homework was still handwritten and most research kids did for school was still done at the library. If someone needed directions somewhere, they would look at a map or get verbal directions. Even when I first learned how to drive in 2004, people were still primarily using maps and verbal directions.

Socializing on the Internet:

Socializing on the internet now is the norm due to the explosion of social networks in the 2010s. But back in the 90s, socializing on the internet was not the norm.

There began to be a growth of internet socializing toward the end of the 90s, as more people started using chat rooms, AIM, email chains, or sending each other weird chain letters promising curses if they didn’t send the letter to ten other people. For some people, their primary use of the internet was at the office or at school due to not having it in their home. I remember computers and internet use becoming more common in classrooms toward the end of the 90s.

Online dating was also new near the end of the 90s. Though it was uncommon. People would make fun of you or consider you nerdy if you found a partner on the internet. Also back in the 90s, it was not cool to be nerdy. The explosion of nerd culture into the mainstream happened later, in the 2010s.

Cell Phones:

(Image Source)

An important detail to remember in any story that you write in the 90s is that most people did not have cell phones. They would use their home phone if they needed to make a call. It was more common for people back then to remember people’s phone numbers or to have a book of written phone numbers. There were also more payphones around for people to use if they were outside of the house.

Thus, life was like an episode of Seinfeld. If you wanted to meet someone, you would pick a time and place, and people would be very mad if you didn’t show up at the specified time and place.

Given that home phones were the main method of phone conversation, you would sometimes have to talk to other people in the person’s household first before you could get them to find the person you wanted to talk to. People might also pick up another phone in the house and listen to your conversation if they wanted to ease drop, you could tell when you heard their breathing over the line.

CDs Dominate For Music:

(Image Source)

The CD-ROM as we know it was invented in the 80s, but it didn’t go into common use until the late 80s, when people started using it for gaming and music. In the year 1990, tape cassettes were more common for music. However, over time CDs became more common than cassettes, to the point that CDs were the main way to listen to music and play computer games by the late 90s. Also people commonly called it a “CD.” Not many people casually used the term, “CD-ROM.”

Cassette Tapes: While CDs eventually became more common, people definitely were still listening to cassette tapes in the 90s or using them to record on an 8-track recorder. The first car I purchased in the early 2000s even had a cassette player. And I remember in the early 2000s, most teens at my school still used cassette tapes for recording music if they were in a band. In the 90s it was still common for people to make a mixed tape of songs for their sweet hearts. Burning CDs didn’t become common until the early 2000s.

VHS Players/VCR:

(Image Source)

The 90s was the heyday of the VCR and VHS. Most U.S. homes had a VCR. A VHS tape was the most common way to watch movies. If people wanted to rent a movie, they would have to go to Blockbuster or some other video store. If someone wanted to record something on television to watch later, they could record it on a VHS tape with their VCR.

It was not until the early 2000s that DVDs began to surpass VHS in U.S. homes.

Floppy Disks:

Floppy disks were the main way that people transferred information on a computer. USBs were not introduced until 1996, and did not become commonly used until the 2000s. In the early 90s, a computer game would be on a floppy disk. But by the mid-late 90s, it was more common for a computer game to be on a CD.

Music

Grunge Music Becomes Popular in the Early 90s:

(Image Source)

September 24, 1991 – Nirvana’s Nevermind album was released. The Seattle-based rock band Nirvana unleashed an album which popularized grunge music, a musical style that emerged during the mid 1980s in the American state of Washington. Grunge music was influenced by punk rock and heavy metal, featuring the distorted electric guitar sound popular in both genres. Yet Grunge also incorporated influences from Indie rock. Grunge was slower than Punk and Heavy Metal, with a more sludgy, dissonant, ponderous, and grungy feel (hence the genre name).

The lyrical themes of grunge were typically nihilistic, angst-filled, introspective, and full of disillusionment over the state of relationships and the world. This came as a sharp contrast to the glam metal scene popular in the 80s, which celebrated life in the fast lane, partying, drug use, sex and hedonism. Grunge had a more low key energy, with lyrical themes similar to punk. There was a focus on mistrusting authority, hating the inauthentic, speaking out against corporations, and supporting women. Some say the grunge movement represented a hangover, or burnout from the 80s. Some say grunge music represented the malaise of Generation X.

Grunge was a commercial success in the early to mid 90s (which was ironic given the anti-commercial themes of grunge music).

The following grunge bands were very popular: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots.

Grunge waned by the mid-90s – Grunge’s popularity in America ended around the mid-to-late 1990s, when many grunge bands broke up or became less visible. Kurt Cobain, the lead vocalist and primary songwriter of Nirvana, struggled with a heroin addiction and committed suicide in 1994.

The Rise of Hip Hop and Gangsta Rap:

(Flavor Flav of Public Enemy performing in 1991. Image Source)

Hip Hop originated in the early 1970s and existed for several years among young, inner-city African Americans in the Bronx before coming into the mainstream. Hip Hop culture contains the following elements: MCing/rapping, DJing/scratching with turntables, break dancing, and graffiti art. The themes of hip hop originally focused on life in the inner-city, anti-violence and anti-drug use. People in poor neighborhoods who lacked money for musical instruments, or an expensive DJ setup, could mimic the sounds of popular drum machines by beat boxing with their mouths.

It was sometime between 1988-1997 that Hip Hop had a golden age. Some popular hip hop artists of the 90s were: Tupac Shakur (2Pac), Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Nas and the Notorious BIG.

Gangsta rap or gangster rap, initially called “reality rap,” is a sub-genre of hip-hop. It also experienced its golden age in the 90s. In the sub-genre of gangsta rap, hip hop artists started wearing the clothes of gang members and using harsher lyrics to represent the struggles of poverty, racism, police brutality and drugs in their communities. The pioneers of gangsta rap include Schoolly D of Philadelphia and Ice-T of Los Angeles (originally New Jersey), later expanding with artists such as N.W.A, Tupac Shakur (2Pac), and the Notorious B.I.G.

1988 – N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton was released from Los Angeles, establishing the West Coast as a rival to hip hop’s long-time capital, New York City. This is the first gangsta rap album to become a blockbuster success. It also sparked controversy regarding their song, “Fuck the Police,” which earned a letter from FBI Assistant Director, Milt Ahlerich, condemning the song.

2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G. are murdered, 1996-1997: The late 90s is considered the end of the golden era of Hip Hop and Gangster Rap. This era came to an end as two major Hip Hop icons were murdered.

1997 – The Bling Era Begins: While gangsta rap and hip hop became a huge-selling genre in the early 90s, hip hop was regarded as outside of the popular mainstream, committed to representing the experience of the inner-city and not “selling out.” This changed in 1997 with the beginning of the “Bling Era,” a name derived from Lil Wayne’s “Bling Bling.” Hip Hop and Gangsta Rap crossed over into the mainstream, blended with other genres, became more focused on materialistic themes, and achieved more commercial success. Artists like Puff Daddy, Jay-Z, Ja-Rule, DMX, Eminem, Lil Jon, and 50 Cent began to become successful during this period. Rappers wore shiny suits in their videos. The Bling Era eventually ended in 2006 when more people started downloading music.

90’s Style:

Fashion:

(Image Source. Don’t they look like Gen Zs!?)

While it’s hard to summarize all the styles that were popular in an entire decade, I’ll do my best to give a brief summary. According to Masterclass, fashion in the 90s was characterized by a wave of minimalist looks as a break away from the “anything worth doing is worth overdoing” culture of the 80s. Casual, chic outfits defined by baggy T-shirts, slip dresses, streetwear, and sportswear significantly shaped 1990s fashion trends. Fashion took on a disheveled look and emphasized casual comfort over materialism and polish.

Early 1990s style showcased bright colors and athletic wear reminiscent of the ‘80s, late 1990s fashion transitioned to sophisticated slip dresses and preppy prints. The music and film industry influenced popular trends that came out of the decade, styling grunge looks, denim overalls, mini skirts, and cropped cardigans. Trends from the 1990s continue to influence fashion today, as athleisure and streetwear remain popular.

In addition to the broad categories of women’s and men’s fashion, the 1990s also saw the popularity of numerous fashion accessories. Iconic footwear styles such as Doc Martens, platform shoes, and sneakers became synonymous with the era, while bags, backpacks, and jewellery also played a significant role in shaping the decade’s fashion landscape. These accessories often served to emphasize and enhance the various trends, providing an additional layer of personal expression and creativity (One Off Vintage).

Makeup:

The 90s were the decade of bold eyebrows, eyes and lips. Brown, purple, and burgundy lipstick became a huge trend, usually paired with a dark lip liner. At the time it was very trendy to line the lip with a darker color, then use a lighter lipstick and not blend the line, giving a very striking look.

Eyebrows were dark and well-defined, and usually thin. We also saw the start of the blue eye shadow trend and the use of glitter on the eyes. (See makeup trends by decade for more information)

Girl Power:

(Image Source)

Girl power and the rise of third wave feminism were a big deal in the 90s. Girls at my school liked singing, “Anything you can do I can do better.” More television shows and movies were showing women in intellectual or action roles that used to be reserved for men. Dana Scully in X-Files and Lisa in The Simpsons were both examples of female characters who were more intellectually competent than their male counterparts. Xena Warrior Princess became a very popular show featuring a bad ass, powerful warrior woman.

There was also an emphasis on increasing the number of women in the workplace. The first national observance of Take Our Daughters to Work Day took place on April 22, 1993, according to the Ms. Foundation for Women.

The Riot Grrrl underground Feminist punk subculture and musical movement began in the early 1990s. In addition to a unique music scene and genre, riot grrrl became a subculture involving a DIY ethic, zines, art, political action, and activism.

The average age of marriage for women jumped in the year 1990. For more than a century the average was 20 and 22, but in 1990 it jumped to 24. By 1997 it reached 25.

Toward the late 90s, there was also an emphasis on sex positivity in the third wave feminist movement. There was a growth in the idea of women embracing their sexuality and being empowered to make their own sexual choices. Indeed when Sex and the City was released in 1998, it became popular for showing a group of female friends who openly discussed and enjoyed sex. However, there are also arguments that by the end of the 90s, the sex positivity movement got twisted into women being exploited for the benefits of consumerism and male pleasure, as was visible in movies like “American Pie” (1999), or “Girls Gone Wild” (1997-2011).

Also, while girl power became popular in 90s culture, there was definitely still sexism in many avenues of day to day life. Growing up I remember that the girls in my neighborhood were expected to do household chores while their brothers got to relax and play video games.

Another important fact to keep in mind is that the girl power culture in the media was commonly displayed via white thin heterosexual women, but not so much through other women. Most of the characters on TV were overwhelmingly white and there was way less LGBTQ representation than there is now.

A shocking fact, however, is that women actually had higher employment rates at the end of the 90s than they do today (Statista). I’m not exactly sure why that is, but perhaps it’s because the economy for working class Americans was better back then than it is now.

90’s Slang:

The List Of 90’s Slang Words People Still Use
– Whatever
– Trippin’
– Yadda-yadda-yadda
– My bad
– You go, girl!
– Buzzkill
– Dibs

TOP 90’s Catch Phrases That Haven’t Come Back
– Talk to the hand
– So sue me!
– Da bomb / the bomb
– Sup?
– Crunk
– Eat My Shorts
– Who’s your daddy?
– Dip
– As if!

Source: Promova, Your Dictionary 90s Slang, 25 Excellent Slang Terms From the 1990s.

Top 25 Shows That Were Popular in the 90s

Modern Shows Set in The 90s

Books

Game of Grunge – A Song of Rock and Hip Hop (Fanfiction)

20 Bestsellers Published in the 1990s

Modern Books Set in the 90s

My Own Experience Growing up in the 90s:

(A dorky picture of me in 1996 with a melted snowman)

Of course this is anecdotal, but when writing about a time period, it’s good to interview people who lived in it. And lucky for you, you have me! A living breathing human being who had a Furby, talked to her friends on a home phone (while sometimes getting wrapped in the cord), got the internet from a CD, placed colorful Lisa Frank stickers on my text books, watched Care Bears and Ninja Turtles on Saturday morning, saw gangsta rap music videos on MTV, and heard Soundgarden on the Rock Station instead of the Oldies Station.

My perspective is limited since I was just a little kid in the 90s. But I still got to experience much of the popular culture and politics of the era through observing older family members.

I remember the 90s as a time of optimism and economic prosperity. Unlike today, people in the U.S. seemed hopeful about the future, especially in lieu of the “World Wide Web” and the end of the Cold War.

It was normal for kids to play outside until the sun set, racing around on their skateboards, roller blades, and bikes.

Another big difference is that people were less “plugged in” to their screens in the days before streaming and smart phones. There was more socializing in person (because there wasn’t much of an alternative). Payphones were ubiquitous. People were allowed to smoke in restaurants in the smoking section (though smoking was starting to wane in popularity). There was less obsessing over the news, because it ended on TV around 10 pm and then you couldn’t look at it anymore, unless you were reading a newspaper, or waiting around on your slow internet for a news article to load. I’m not sure if the world was actually a better place or if it was just more difficult to read about how bad things were.

But the plus is that if you want to go back to the 90s, you can relive it all through the information super highway on the World Wide Web!

I hope this guide was helpful. What do you remember about the 90s? Feel free to comment. Share this article if you liked it.

LINKS

Writer Setting Guide – Y2K (Stories From Tomorrow)

Game of Grunge – A Song of Rock and Hip Hop (Fanfiction on AO3)

15 Important Historical Events That Happened In The 1990s

Alternative Rock Of 90’s│Nostalgia Playlist

World Building Science Fiction – Mercury

July 16, 2020August 2, 2025 jbjwrites4 Comments

(My sources are cited at the bottom of this article. For much of this article, I researched the content put out by Isaac Arthur, who in 2020, was named the recipient of the National Space Society’s Space Pioneer Award for Education via Mass Media)

Mercury is one of the most neglected planets in Science Fiction. Mars or Venus are usually the sites for fictional colonization. One might think Mercury’s close proximity to the sun and its lacking atmosphere would make it a dud.

But there are actually several reasons why an airless ball of silicon and metal next to the sun could have potential.

Below I will include resources that could be helpful to science fiction writers.

Since people don’t commonly write about Mercury, it would be a great way to come up with something unique that would make their work stand out.

MERCURY’S LONG TERM POTENTIAL AS A DYSON SWARM

In the long term, Mercury could be used as a building supply store to construct power collectors, and then disassembled to form the basis of a Dyson Swarm.

A Dyson Sphere is a megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The thought is that this would be how a space fairing civilization would meet its energy requirements, exceeding what could be provided by planets alone.

A Dyson Swarm is a variant that consists of a large number of independent constructs (usually solar power satellites and space habitats) orbiting in a dense formation around the star.

However, turning Mercury into such a structure would take a very long time. Longer than the longest human civilizations have existed. Human beings don’t seem capable of dedicating themselves to such a long-term endeavor, but some kind of AI-human hybrid with a super long lifespan might. So if you decide to write a story about a people turning Mercury into a Dyson Swarm, you might also want to make them into something more than human.

BENEFITS OF COLONIZING MERCURY IN THE NEAR AND MIDTERM

What about Mercury’s near term/mid-term colonization potential, in case we don’t want to wait for the time span of several civilizations for it to become useful? What are the benefits?

Solar Energy:

The proximity to the sun presents potential for harnessing a tremendous amount of solar energy, collecting solar energy for both Mercury, and other planets in a colonized solar system. This could be achieved via orbital solar arrays, which would be able to harness energy constantly and beam it to the surface. This energy could then be beamed to other planets in the Solar System using a series of transfer stations positioned at Lagrange Points.

A Heavy Metal World:

Like Earth, Mercury is a terrestrial planet, which means it is made up of silicate rocks and metals that are differentiated between an iron core and silicate crust and mantle. However, unlike the Earth, Mercury’s composition is 70% metal. As a result, if Mercury were to be mined, it could produce enough raw materials to supply humanity indefinitely.

Similar Gravity to Mars and a Low Escape Velocity:

The gravity on Mercury is 38% that of Earth, which is similar to what Mars experiences. This is twice the level of gravity of the moon, making Mercury easier to adjust to than the moon. The low gravity coupled with the lacking atmosphere (no air drag) also gives the planet a low escape velocity, making it easier for ships to escape Mercury, in that they’d require fewer resources to do so. This would make Mercury a great site for exporting materials, especially considering their wealth of metals. Also, it would make Mercury a great site for building ships, especially if human beings become an interstellar civilization. If stellar lasers were built near the sun, a vessel could be launched from Mercury and pushed by lasers out of the solar system. And hydrogen for fuel would certainly be plentiful given the solar winds blasting Mercury.

Proximity to Earth:

As a resource-rich world, Mercury is closer to Earth than the Asteroid Belt or Saturn. Mercury also achieves an inferior conjunction (the point where it is at its closest point to Earth) every 116 days, which is significantly shorter than either Venus or Mars. Basically, missions destined for Mercury could launch almost every four months, whereas launch windows to Venus and Mars would have to take place every 1.6 years and 26 months, respectively.

HOW TO MAKE COLONIZATION ON MERCURY WORK?

Mobile Bases:

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun. Therefore, we tend to think of it as the hottest, but Venus actually beats it for peak temperature. Also, what many people don’t expect is that Mercury can get very cold. Mercury gets downright cold at night, unlike Venus, since it has no atmosphere, just a thin haze of mostly hydrogen and helium from the captured solar wind.

One way to avoid getting too hot or too cold is to set up mobile bases. These mobile bases would chase terminator, so Mercurians can get some solar power, but to where it hadn’t heated around or cooled down that much.

People would set up their camps where it’s cool and move on when the light and heat are too much. They would drive ahead to someplace that’s cold. But not so cold that they couldn’t work there. This would be good for mining.

An example of this in science fiction is what people did in Dune when they were avoiding giant sandworms while harvesting the Spice Melange.

People living in mobile bases would need to set up backup vehicles and engines in case one died. And they could use the extra energy from these backup vehicles while moving in order to power smelters and refineries.

Heating things up on Mercury to smelt them wouldn’t be too hard. A solar oven would work quite well because of the proximity to the sun and the fact that there are are no clouds in the atmosphere.

Mercury’s night side is also a good place to get rid of heat—something hard to find anywhere else near the sun. If one is generating a lot of heat, they can only get rid of that by radiating it away.

Down on Mercury’s light side, people could use conduction too, so they might have mobile factories at work, not just mining and refining operations.

The Great Flat Track of Mercury:

China has the Great Wall. Mercury might have the Great Flat Track.

As I mentioned earlier, getting what you want off of Mercury wouldn’t be that hard. The planet has an escape velocity of just 4.25 km/s, and an orbital velocity of just 3 km/s. It has no air. If Mercurians had a flat track from where vehicles could take off, without having to worry about air drag, leaving would be easy. However, landing would be hard. (A sort of opposite Hotel California situation, where it’s easier to leave than arrive).

Since there is no air, ships cannot aerobrake to shed velocity for free. Though one might be able to hit a very long track, very precisely and slowly shed speed off without friction, or run down a magnetic tube to let it leach off speed.

This gives Mercurians good reason to consider building a track all the way around Mercury, and it need not be at the equator either if people wanted to keep it shorter. Mercury gets hot, but is still cool enough for many metals to handle. Even steel, which is fairly mundane considering some of the materials Mercurians might use, retains its magnetic and conductive properties at those temperatures, and one thing Mercury is not lacking in is metals. Though one’s concern would be metal fatigue, as metals are expanding and contracting to various degrees as they run up from temperatures cold enough to liquefy air to hot enough to melt lead, but this is happening once a Mercurian day, which is very, very, very long (it takes 59 Earth days to complete one rotation on its axis Universe Today). So the Flat Track would not be getting heated and cooled constantly, and even today we know a lot of tricks for various alloys and composites that would minimize metal fatigue.

The Planet Down Under:

If one digs down a little bit on Mercury, they would start to see livable human temperatures underground, once they get away from the craters and closer to the poles, and in one of the more optimistic models, even room temperature underground at the equator at 90 degrees west, which would help with the expansion and contraction fatigue and other construction problems caused by varying temperatures.

Mushroom Habitats:

If one doesn’t want to use mobile bases or live underground, they could try mushroom habitats.

These habitats would have a retracting option, where things fold down during the night and the brighest day, and pop back up when things are more moderate.

The habitat would be built up on stilts that aren’t thermally conductive. Then one would put a big umbrella over it, covered in mirrors, to bounce light away, one that could flip open or move aside to let in however much light a person wanted. Stilts would be made of something that doesn’t conduct heat well, like the silicate beneath the ground. Spinning habitats could use centripetal force to create Earth-like gravity in the habitat.

Water in the Poles:

There could be some water at some of the craters near Mercury’s poles. Wires underground could bring the water to people.

Making Mercury Earth-like:

One doesn’t have to make a planet like Earth, if they want to live there.

But if people did want to make Mercury Earth-like, massive mirrors and shades in orbit could help cool down the planet. Mercury is massive enough to hold a breathable atmosphere. People could also collect solar wind from the sun, rich in hydrogen and helium, things that could be sold, using a giant mirror or shade acting as a giant windmill driven by the solar wind. “Star Wheel.”

MERCURY IN SCIENCE FICTION

As I stated, Mercury isn’t mentioned frequently in Science Fiction, which is why it would be a great thing to write about. However, if you do want to read some works that mention a colonized Mercury, check out the works below.

BOOKS

2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson

The 2005 novel, by Ben Bova.

Sundiver, in David Brin’s Uplift Saga.

Singularity Trap, by Dennis E Taylor

The Sirens of Titan, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

SHORT STORIES

The Burning Soldier – A Microfiction (Stories From Tomorrow)

The Blind Mystic by Jessica Brook in Vanishing Point Magazine and reprinted in Bullet Points Magazine

Runaround, by Isaac Asimov

Retrograde Summer, by John Varley

The Coldest Place, by Larry Niven