When I heard about the Imagine 2200 climate fiction contest, I quickly figured out exactly what I wanted to write about for my submission. After some reflection and research, I wrote a short story called “Welcome to Solardale.” The bad news is that my story didn’t win the contest. The good news is that it’s now available for publication elsewhere, including my Patreon campaign!
What is Solardale?
Solardale is an idea that’s been floating around the Carbondale community for years. The basic idea is to take the “carbon” (coal-fired power) in Carbondale and transform it into “solar” (solar power). The result is a new and improved city named Solardale.
The simplest vision of Solardale involves installing a bunch of solar panels to reduce and ultimately eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels. But in my mind, Solardale has the potential to be so much more. Solardale is a vision of a small city in Southern Illinois completely transformed by our understandings of social justice and climate justice.
This short story is my first attempt to describe that deeper vision of Solardale in a work of fiction. It’s a quirky tale that doesn’t delve too deeply into the nuts and bolts of life in Solardale. But I hope that it will entertain you and possibly inspire you to transform our community, region, and world for the better.
“Welcome to Solardale” is currently only available to my Patreon members. If you support my Patreon campaign at the Quarterly Fiction, Short Stories, or higher levels, you’ll get immediate access. As a special treat, if you choose the Novel Chapters membership level, I can email you a copy of the story too. Now that there’s a dedicated membership level for short stories, I usually don’t share short stories with my novel chapter members anymore. But I’m so excited about this story that I’ll make an exception in this case.
If you’re not one of my Patreon members, you’ll have to wait! I will definitely include this story in my next climate fiction anthology. If you’re eager to read it, let me know. That will help motivate me to get to work on that anthology. These are busy times, but I love reading and writing climate fiction!
My name is Treesong. I’m a father, author, talk radio host, and Real Life Superhero. Follow me on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and Ko-fi for my latest climate fiction releases and superhero adventures. Sign up for my newsletter to receive free climate fiction in your inbox. Check out my bookshop for climate change books, including reading lists for climate fiction, climate nonfiction, and climate poetry!