SUMMER INTRO: THE SOLAR ISSUE
Welcome to the fifth season of Synthesized Sunsets: a seasonal mag about speculative fiction and the future of pop! This summer, Seattle WorldCon 2025 and the Hugo Awards have finally arrived. Gordon will be flying out from Chicago to come visit. If you are also coming to Seattle for WorldCon, we hope to see you there!
The biggest change this issue is that we are looking for paid fiction submissions. We will post more detailed guidelines soon, but if you’re excited already, you can send an email with subject line FICTION SUBMISSION to synthesized.sunsets@gmail.com.
Tentatively we will be paying $50 per submission and capping length at 12,500 words. We are only accepting speculative fiction at this time; that is, stories where some novel idea of “what could be” or “what could have been” is central. We will also be prioritizing stories that are on-theme, although this is not strictly a requirement.
Speaking of theme, this issue of the magazine is the SOLAR ISSUE. The issue will be focused on the Hudson River School, an American art movement that fused Romantic landscape painting with the natural beauty of the Americas. This movement helped establish the America mythos around wilderness, which in turn helped convince the public of the merits of conservation projects like the National Parks System.
Cotopaxi by Frederic Edwin Church is one of my favorite paintings, and I was lucky enough to see it in person at the Detroit Institute of Arts several years ago. I really like how the sun floats low over the landscape, giving the cliffs in the foreground a cinematic glow. And that volcano!! I’ve found that this painting can look either really ominous or peaceful, depending on my mood.
Compared to his Hudson River School contemporaries Thomas Cole and Asher Durand, Frederic Edwin Church was more maximalist and theatrical. His art was not especially meditative or allegorical, as he was more focused on glorifying the beautiful and the sublime qualities of nature in a more direct way. He was also something of a scientist himself, arguing that landscape painters should take scientific accuracy seriously in their depictions of natural beauty.
Like past featured artist John Martin, Frederic Edwin Church has fallen in popularity in recent years due to being perceived as melodramatic and perhaps a bit too “pop”. But his works certainly influenced the next generation of American artists and the general public due to their sheer popularity. While his works may not be remembered as “high art”, Church definitely succeeded at leaving his mark on pop culture.
This issue is particularly interested in the sun as a beacon, a symbol that has guided countless people across time and space. In the past, the sun has been an essential companion for terrestrial travel: telling us east, west, and the changing of the seasons. But even in science fiction stories set in the furthest reaches of space, humans still use our humble sun as a guidepost. Our first original fiction piece of this season will have a more explicit premise featuring characters guided by the sun: stay tuned!
Of course, given the environmental theming, we will likely also talk about solarpunk this issue. Solarpunk is a utopian genre that imagines a future in which humanity is able to reintegrate with nature and live sustainably. My primary exposure to the genre is A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys, which imagines a world in which well-meaning aliens try to save Earth from ecological collapse even though it may not actually need saving. While this genre is new in name, it often cites earlier SF works like Octavia Butler’s Parable series and Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home.
Solarpunk really appeals to me in light of Gen Z’s voracious appetite for pessimism. It seems like all the hottest speculative media is mostly good at innovating new ways that the world could be worse. But imagining better worlds is perhaps more necessary right now, insofar as we would like to aspire towards a better future.
Solarpunk also raises interesting questions about the ideal dynamic between humans and nature. The national mythos described above romanticizes the idea of a virgin wilderness untouched by humans. But considering the ubiquity of human influence, this idealism may not be the best model for improving our relationship with nature. Does it really serve us to consider, say, Central Park as less “natural” than a remote prairie in the American West? I’ve enjoyed talking to friend of the pod Isaac Olson about this “wilderness v. nature” question, which could also be interesting to explore.
So… lots of thoughts! We hope to cover these topics and more this season, including additional thoughts on Chinese science fiction1 and what the future of the Internet might look like. As a bit of housekeeping, we re-did some of the About sections of our website and created a new stickied post with a “Best Of” rundown for new readers. If you’re a more recent subscriber, you may want to check it out! Thanks for reading!
Kevin recently started learning Chinese as a direct result of his thoughts from last season!