It’s Time to End the Hero’s Journey
I don’t know about you, but I’ve absolutely had enough of it: the story structure known as the hero’s journey. While these stories make for great escapism, they’re not great for actually changing the world. Let’s let solarpunk stories dump the hero’s journey, even as a means to explore life in a solarpunk future. Let’s use all the other story structures instead.
A Self-Driving Auto Dystopia
Never mind the autos of the future, the cars of today are already a privacy nightmare. As in, if your biggest fear of a self–driving car future is of the hacker who takes over and crashes the car you’re riding in, guess again. Our biggest fear should be of the car companies themselves and the future they're aiming to create for us. And the present they've already got us corralled in.