Defending Utopia in “A Country of Ghosts”

via solarpunk magazine

Your community and society demanded utopia, and you won.
So you built utopia, and life was good.

But nothing is ever perfect. For all our creativity and goodness and compassion, people are also pretty good at ruining and destroying things. What happens then, when you have to defend utopia?

Utopia under attack is the central plot piece of Margaret Killjoy‘s latest book, A Country of Ghosts, which releases on November 23rd from AK Press as part of their Black Dawn series. The story follows Dimos Horacki, a journalist who gets shipped to the front of the imperialist war that the steampunk, Victorian-esque Borolians are waging against the anarchist utopia of Hron.

On the front, witness to the ravages of expansionist war, Dimos joins up with anarchist guerillas, who instruct him in their socio-economic and political philosophies while fighting to save the way of life they’ve built based upon those principles.

This is a didactic tale that’s a must read for anyone trying to grasp the landscape of contemporary anarchism. Told and taught through an entertaining scifi/fantasy story, A Country of Ghosts joins the growing ranks of utopian science fiction that is breaking the mold of storytelling in which dystopia is the end point, and is daring to dream bigger, of something better.

While not solarpunk per se, this is a book that demands utopia, and defends it. We need more of that.

There are 3 Comments

"this is a book that demands utopia, and defends it."
this is a bad thing, right?

A contrast to ---- The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas ---- by Le Guin. But then diversity of ideas permits the imagination to transcend the cynicism of the old and approach the future with a bold new youthful optimism. Everyone is just so tired of glum white perps blahblahblah or fake grinning rich white perps on anti-depressants poisoning the world with their corporatist greed.

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