Idea for June 2025: hopepunk

My idea of the month is hopepunk.

This is all a million miles away from my usual zone of operation, but a Swedish client told me about it. It seems to be a kind of fantasy fiction that’s the opposite of the usual dystopian mode (apparently called grimdark).

Invented by a fantasy author called Alexandra Rowland in 2018, the concept is still very much in play. And the word is great. Rowland says that ‘hopepunk isn’t pristine and spotless. Hopepunk is grubby, because that’s what happens when you fight.’

It’s the grubbiness that makes it interesting – the messy, the counter-cultural, the do-it-yourself, the imperfect.

There’s also a variant called solarpunk, which imagines a sustainable, solar-powered future.

And, by the way, it’s very different from noblebright (stories about a great hero): hopepunk is about collective action.

Some good words to know, particularly when at least two of my current clients are very much in the world of hopepunk.

(Image by Claude - I know, it’s not great, is it?)