“Our Forests” is out

“Our Forests” is out in All Worlds Wayfarer 14.

On a peaceful planet in the non-exploitation-age, Wren starts hearing the noise of a far-away war that’s none of her concern. Or is it?

It feels like this is the only kind of Solarpunk story I can write: one in which a peaceful, post-exploiting society has to reckon with the existence of exploitation and war elsewhere, or with the existence of such things in its own past.

I always ask myself: what conflict remains if everything’s solved in a Solarpunk future?

In this story, the main character loses her hearing for the world she lives in because all she can hear is the noise of war from another inhabited planet.

The character’s de facto deafness isn’t a huge deal in her world – I imply (admittedly roughshod) that issues of accessibility are mostly solved in this character’s experience. She is also in an inexplicable mental/physical situation without precedent, but everyone believes her: her family, her doctors, her society – she isn’t doubted and doesn’t have to prove her assertions constantly. She is offered mental health resources to help her cope with witnessing the agony she hears. Those issues are implied to be ‘solved’.

What isn’t solved in this world is complacency. While everyone is helpful to Wren on an individual level, nobody but Wren seems to really care that a war is tearing apart another planet. Wren ultimately breaks with her planet’s culture of non-involvement and joins an organization which does seek to arbitrate in resource-conflicts. Perhaps the optimistic vision here is that since Wren doesn’t have to expend energy struggling for access, acceptance, and mental health care, she is able to contribute her unique perspective to finding solutions to a non-local conflict.

The question that looms and isn’t answered (I hope) is: does knowledge of a conflict situation always imply a moral imperative to act? Wren’s home society (perhaps alongside Star Trek’s Prime Directive and an argument also presented in The Orville) would say, “No. Some societies aren’t advanced enough – they need to get to a certain level before we offer help.” Whereas Wren would say, “we are all sentients and we are obligated to help each other through bad times.”