“For the Snake of Power”

2019 Cooper, Brenda (b. 1951). “For the Snake of Power.” The Weight of Light: A Collection of Solar Futures. Ed. Clark A. Miller and Joey Eschrich (Tempe, AZ: Center for Science and the Imagination Arizona State University, 2019). https://www.dropbox.com/s/961pb8yve314a8r/Weight_of_Light.epub?dl=0 Rpt. in Beyond & Within. Solarpunk: Short Stories from Many Futures. Ed. Francesco Verso (London: Flame Tree Publishing, 2024), 130-149. Published in Italian as “Serpenti d’Energia.” In Solarpunk: Come ho imparato ad amare il futuro. Ed. Francesco Verso and Fábio Fernandes (Rome: Future Fiction, 2020).

A near future climate-change dystopia in which poor people in Phoenix die in the regular heat waves because the government is selling their solar power to other cities. The story is followed by the essays, Joshua Loughman, “Lessons from the Snake: Energy and Society;” and Esmerelda Parker, “Drawing from Nature: Designing a Solar Snake.”