My name is Melanie Pahlmann, and I’m a graphic designer, editor, science fiction writer, and solarpunk enthusiast.

I have an unshakable belief in a positive future for Earth, despite all current evidences to the contrary. Humanity has come a long, evolutionary way from our distant past, and our pace is quickening, not just technologically, but morally. A new generation is demanding that adults grow up and respond responsibly to the crises we face. If they demand the same of themselves and rise to the occasion, they will usher in a new and profoundly evolutionary epoch of human civilization — an era marked by empathy, kindness, respect for all life, and the desire to do good. We were once animals motivated by survival. In the millennia ahead, are we not destined to become humans motivated by love? Yes, if we so choose. The world needs positive role models and positive visions of the future.

My middle-grade science fiction series Lin of Luratia chronicles the technological and social evolution of a solarpunk world as seen through the eyes of the protagonist-storyteller, a bright young girl who’s a frustrated progressive, given that she was born in a remote and backward fishing village.

My young adult sci fi series Cri of Egli explores what it means to be free — is it as much an inner state as an outer situation? Cri’s story offers a scathing view of ubiquitous surveillance — and specifically embedded surveillance — in which an implanted tracking device can be used to control a population.

Solarpunk wants to show us a better, more mature, more collaboratively creative side of human nature, cast against the backdrop of our emerging technological landscape.