With the ever present threat of World War Three looming on the horizon, it’s hard to have faith in humanity’s future. Many sci-fi authors tend to pile on the pessimism, what with all their predictions of grimdark futures where super-corporations wage dehumanizing interstellar wars adding more meaninglessness to the already empty void. And yet, like a yellow sun rising on a distant planet, a small crop of sci-fi authors promise a warm and wonderful future. These 10 hopepunk sci-fi books are sure to restore your faith in tomorrow, or at least give you a little happy reading material while you’re holed up in the fallout shelter with the rest of us.
A Psalm For The Wild Built
A paragon of the hopepunk genre, Becky Chambers is back with A Pslam For The Wild Built, a thoughtful novel about humanity’s search for meaning. After the robot revolution caused all synthetic life to walk off into the woods, the tech deprived human race was forced to revert to an agrarian and community based way of living – and is better for it. Instead of working for the man, non-binary tea monk Dex is free to embark on an Uncle Iroh-style quest to pour out wisdom along with hot leaf juice. After a disastrous session with a potential client, Dex wanders off into the wilderness in search of spiritual enlightenment. What they find is Splendid Speckled Mosscap, an elusive robot on an existential quest of their own. Though the pair haven’t found any solutions yet, they have found each other, and you know what they say when it comes to thinking up answers to life’s big questions: two heads are better than one.
The Parable of The Sower
Octavia Butler’s The Parable of The Sower is the story of a world gone down the drain, and one woman’s attempt to pull it back from the brink. After a climate disaster ravages the planet, a group of young people travel across what remains of California in order to spread a new religion. While the cynic in you might find their endeavor to be rather Mason Family-esque, let your inner optimist be soothed by the central tenant of the new belief system: God is change. In an increasingly unstable world, these youths attempt to find meaning in the madness by leaning into it, rolling with life’s punches rather than attempting to brace for them. Life might be a bully, but sometimes you gotta bully it right back by giving it a hope-swirly.
Walkaway
Córy Doctorow’s Walkway dreams of a distant future where humanity lives in a post-work society, free of the yolk of the nine to five. Hooray! They are also now free to live in a surveillance state run by a mega-rich oligarchy in a world ravaged by climate change. Not hooray! While this novel looks grimdark at first glance, keep staring and a little light will shine through. That light comes from the “walkaways”, a group of people who have decided to pull an Ursula K Le Guin and dip out from their proverbial Omelas – leaving their oppressive society behind. To do what? Mostly to establish post-scarcity mini-utopias and develop scientific ways to beat death. The ruling powers that be aren’t content to let the walkaways walk, and attempt to bring those back by force, but like the titular boots in that Nancy Sinatra song, walking’s just what they’ll do.
The Dispossessed
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin is the story of Shevek, a brilliant physicist who is attempting to bring the light of understanding to across the galaxy – delivered hot and bright from the anarchist planet he calls home. Despite what the ruling powers from other worlds would have you believe, Shevek’s lawless society actually has a lot of positive aspects – but its lofty ideals are primarily bogged down by its healthy hatred and fear of capitalistic outsiders from beyond the stars. After departing from his home to travel to the sort-of utopian planet of Urras, Shevek attempts to spread his anarchistic ideas in a consumerist society – and is nearly pulled apart by the politics of his two worlds in the process. While society is anything but perfect in this novel, the ideals expressed by Shevek are the stuff of pure, high octane hopepunk delivered straight to the literary main vein.
The Ministry for The Future
The Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robison takes place in a world increasingly ravaged by climate change, where humanity’s leading lights come together to form the titular organization dedicated to fighting the ecological threat. Buoyed by high ideals and grounded by its ability to get down to business, The Ministry of The Future serves as humanity’s most realistic hope to stave off self-caused ruin. It’s a story about humanity’s war on climate change – one that, for a change, it’s winning. How? By throwing everything and the hard sci-fi kitchen sink at the problem, reevaluating humanity’s relationship to… well, everything. Money. Commerce. Geopolitics – all these get a full on technological and ideological makeover in service of a better future.
Woman on the Edge of Time
Woman on The Edge of Time is the story of Connie Ramos – a woman who has just been committed to a mental institution against her will. While languishing in confinement, Connie’s lonely world is breached by an emissary of the future! An envoy from the year 2137 shows Connie a vision of a beautiful world to come, one where humanity lives in harmony with itself and its environment – shrugging off racial hierarchies, gender binaries, and ecological ennui in equal measure. But just when humanity’s bright future seems in the bag, a separate emissary from a dystopian reality comes along to cut open the burlap. The fate of humanity’s future may just rest on Connie’s shoulders. Will she lift the world towards a better future like Atlas? Or will she drop the globe-sized ball?
The Terraformers
The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz is the story of a world 60,000 years from now, one that has been slowly terraformed across countless generations by the worker-slaves employed by an interstellar real estate company. Sounds grimdark? Keep reading. As the planet of Sask-E is continually terraformed, a company worker discovers a secret society of post-humans living in a utopia located underneath a volcano. Populated by robots, humans, and sentient animals, this subterranean society was formed as a refuge from corporate influence above. Taking place over thousands of years, the novel concerns this secret society’s long fought insurgency campaign to rid the world of corporate rule. Teams of robots and naked mole rats, a cyborg cow, a cat who works as a journalist, and a gaggle of post-humans fight the good fight against corporate shills – can’t think of anything more hopepunk than that.
The Light Pirate
Like Brooks-Dalton’s The Light Pirate is the story of hope set in one of the most savage places: Florida. Due to climate change, the Sunshine State is now sinking into the sea – worsened by a superstorm that ushers Floridian society to the brink of collapse. The storm coincided with one happy occurrence however: the birth of Wanda, who will someday grow into a pillar of the post-climate apocalypse community. As Wanda comes of age in world where society is fading away, she dives headfirst into a new way of living: one where pockets of community help each other out when times get tough. Times are always tough in this sinking world, but the hope within the heart is tougher.
This Is How You Lose The Time War
This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is a sapphic story about two rival agents fighting on opposite ends of a temporal war. Red and Blue are constantly trying to outdo each other in their vaults across time, attempting to thwart each other’s strategic plans in order to secure their respective faction’s future. As the pair get to know one another’s work, they begin leaving messages for each other – sassy taunts eventually culminate into full blown love letters. It’s an enemies to lovers masterpiece about how adoration can bloom in the heart of devastation. If these two can put aside their differences and love one another, a hopepunk future for the rest of us may just be possible.
The Seep
Chana Porter’s The Seep teaches an important lesson: even in a hopepunk utopia, you can still get your heart broken. The novel follows Trina Goldberg-One, a trans woman who is living in the aftermath of a benevolent alien invasion. After an eldritch being calling itself The Seep brought about the end of capitalism, war, poverty, and want, Trina and her wife Deeba spend their blissful days living in a world where anything is possible. Literally. With its bafflingly advanced technology, The Seep allows for humans to live any way they can imagine. After Deeba decides her happy life would be made even happier if she could be reborn as a baby, she reverts to a state of infant bliss assisted by Seep-tech – leaving Trina alone and crushed. Whirling between utopia and dystopia, Trina attempts to find her own footing in a paradise where things can still go wrong, and not even The Seep can help.
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