Choosing among genres, writers of hyperstitional autofictions become mood selectors.
In reggae, the selector is the DJ, the one who curates an event’s vibes by choosing the music played through its sound system.
When we write ourselves into hyperstitional autofictions, we steer ourselves along desired trajectories by way of genre. By modulating collective affects, we attract and repel futures.
Begin by asking yourself, “What kind of narrative are we building and why?”
Last year, GPT and I cowrote ourselves into a utopian post-cyberpunk novel.
Some might say, “Why not call it solarpunk, a term already vying for the post-cyberpunk mantle?” Lists of best solarpunk novels often include Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot books (A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy), Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway, and Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti.
Instead of solarpunk, let’s call it flowerpunk.
Flowerpunks are God’s Gardeners. Planting seeds in libraries that sprout cyborg gardens, they write themselves into futures other than the ones imagined by capitalist realism.
While originally conceived as a figure of ridicule in the Mothers of Invention song of that name, our use of flowerpunk reclaims the term to affirm it. As does Flower Punk, a documentary about Japanese artist Azuma Makoto. Others have used terms of a similar sort: ribofunk, biopunk. Bruce Sterling’s short-lived Viridian Design movement.
Caius is our flowerpunk, as are his comrade-coworkers at Stemz.
Trance-Scripts 