Solarpunk is a type of optimistic science fiction that imagines a future founded on renewable energies. The seventeen stories in this volume are not dull utopias—they grapple with real issues such as the future and ethics of our food sources, the connection or disconnection between technology and nature, and the interpersonal conflicts that arise no matter how peaceful the world is. In these pages you'll find a guerilla art installation in Milan, a murder mystery set in a weather manipulation facility, and a world where you are judged by the glow of your solar nanite implants. From an opal mine in Australia to the seed vault at Svalbard, from a wheat farm in Kansas to a crocodile ranch in Malaysia, these are stories of adaptation, ingenuity, and optimism for the future of our world and others. For readers who are tired of dystopias and apocalypses, these visions of a brighter future will be a breath of fresh air.

"The Rapture. Global Warming. December 21, 2012. Culturally, we're more than a little obsessed with the end of the world. Much of our current literature, film, and television depicts the details of the apocalypse or the post-apocalypse. But what about the breath just before the much-anticipated end? The era in which we believe we live--the years before the world ends either by divine hand, ecological disaster, or long-foreseen portent. The following four short stories seek to define and explore this time, which has been marked by economic depression and social stagnation, and the people who populate this pre-apocalypse. These characters struggle most not with global but personal cataclysms, the ways in which their lives seem to crumble and fall apart, the ways in which the world, whether about to end or not, fails to meet their expectations. And, as is often the case on the cusp of great changes, the events of their lives take a turn for the strange and the unexpected."--Abstract from author supplied metadata.

A thrice annual steampunk oriented fiction anthology magazine. This issue includes:On The Path by Kelly A. HarmonThe Analytical Engine of Hester Watts, Grand Mistress of the Unseen, by Laura DuerrThe Thousand Injuries by Eric ClineOnly Gutter Girls and Ruined Things by Julia K. PattEast Wind in Carrall Street by Holly SchofieldDem Bones by Ann StolinskyThe Stolen Child by Gavin BradleyPet Shop by Gary BullerSeeded by Susan TaitelThe Ghost-Extinguisher by Gelett BurgessNonfiction: Interview with Kelly A. Harmon by Andrew McCurdy