Green Stories is a writing competition about what a sustainable society might be like. Further details are here, and I was immediately tempted to nominate John Huckle's Bedford 2045 which I mentioned the other day. Surely there are no better examples around, I thought, but then I saw that they have to be unpublished. Such a pity as it would have romped home.
The organisers say:
"Stories are powerful means of inspiring positive change. The Black Mirror series reflects anxieties about our future, and climate change discourse further creates fear and avoidance. What we really need are some positive visions that allow potentially transformative solutions to be showcased and played out.
The difficulty in promoting sustainable behaviours is that they are often seen negatively as ‘doing without’ and the typical fear-based discourse can turn people off. This matters as in turn, political parties tend not to see environmental issues as ‘vote winners’ which limits potential for green policy making.
Just as some books/films product place products, we aim to ‘product place’ sustainable attitudes behaviours products and policies. The story doesn’t have to be specifically about climate change or catastrophic shortages, it can be any kind of genre – rom com, crime drama, legal drama, children’s book, sci fi etc. as long as it showcases sustainable technologies, practices, products or ideas in the background. Or another acceptable approach could be to focus on characters. Currently characters in fiction who are green/ethical are often portrayed as priggish or aggressive, we’d like to see attractive characters behaving in sustainable ways. ...
We want you to write a story of up to 3500 words in any genre that looks at the ideas around sustainable societies. The story might be set in a sustainable society; it might include characters who engage in sustainable practices: for example, your story may be a thriller but the hero may have a carbon credit card, or a rom-com but the heroine has a garden on her roof. ...."
I'd say it will be tricky to judge if realism is one of the criteria.
Respond