u/Connect-Weather444

First, the stupid ass name. It is Cyberpunk because it is in a cyber world that is dystopic and the punks are fighting against corrupt mega-corps or rouge AI or such; it is Steampunk because we get to see the horrors of industralization and pollution and 19'th century factories, same deal with dieselpunk. "Solarpunk" is not punk, it is already a fucking utopia. In these cases we call it -core (cottagecore) or wave (vaporwave) etc. Unless the Solarpunk story is about rebel teenagers secretly running diesel engines and creating illegal securities markets to bring back capitalism the name makes no fucking sene.

Second, it is soooo uninteresting. I read "A Psalm for the Wild-Built" and gave up halfway through because every conflict in the story is so benign and gets resolved basically instantly. If you read Tolkien he also constructs a seemingly idealised society in the Shire and they have actual problems that need to be resolved in interesting ways and even the small conflicts they have like the problems Bilbo has with his relatives because he lived too long are far more fun to read than anything solarpunk can come up with.

Third, it is painfully unrealistic. In Thomas More's Utopia written in 1516 he also constructs his ideal society except instead of saying "oh, yeah, in my ideal country no one has to work because they pray really hard and God just gives them everything" he actually considers the problems they might face; who will fight if they are invaded, who will have to do the dirtiest tasks, how will they deal with crime? Consider how everyone seems to be a part-time hobby gardener, part -time yoga teacher in Solarpunk and despite that they are all living in perfect luxury. Who is doing the farming? "Robots" you say? Who is making the robots? "More robots". At the end of the line there is going to be some poor sod having to mine lithium in the Atacama desert inhaling toxic fumes all day under the hot sun because there is always someone having to clean the toilets and assuming that robots are solving every problem is just taking the piss. I'm not trying to do political commentary here, I've read Rosa Luxemburg, Ayn Rand and Plato and all of them actually thought these hard questions through while trying to construct a perfect society meanwhile Solarpunk just handwaves them away. If you want to have Fully automated luxury gay space communism think about how we got there before spewing dumb shit about how its going to be so great and perfect.

Here is a writing prompt if anyone wants to try their hand at a good Solarpunk story: Humanity decides that de-growth is the way to go and they construct a self replicating AI to take care of the few million humans left where they live in modern pastrolic idyll. Eventually the AI starts failing and needs to be repaired and the leaders of Earth are so against industry and doing meaningful work that they refuse to fix it, causing humanity to slowly regress to the middle ages. So, a teenage girl and her two hunky companions (its YA, there has to be a love triangle) most venture to the forbidden lands of Detroit and Slough to learn the ancient technology of making steel.