Back in February, before the novel coronavirus reshaped the world’s social landscape, I had the privilege of participating in my first short story hackathon. I was invited by ASU’s Center for Science and Imagination, in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Denver, Colorado. Unlike a software hackathon, the purpose of this was not to win a contest but to create a book of fiction, art, and essays.

Here’s how it worked: each team had one science fiction author, one graphic artist, and several subject matter experts. Over the course of two days, four such teams collaborated to produce ideas and outlines for a short story, an image, and several essays. Our mandate: to come up with a positive vision for life in a solar-powered U.S. city of the near future, roughly 10-20 years from now. We saw presentations from experts on various topics, got a tour of the NREL facilities, socialized over meals, and spent many hours brainstorming. We also made short presentations about our progress along the way, with opportunities to get feedback from the other teams.

My team chose the city of San Juan, in Puerto Rico. At my table, we had an architect who also runs the Land Art Generator Initiative, a local artist from Denver, two specialists from NREL, and a PhD student in informatics who was Puerto Rican and partly inspired our choice of locale.

We discussed what a solar-powered, positive vision of the year 2040 might look like for Puerto Rico, including transportation, agriculture, urban and rural living, education, and climate. We came up with plausible technologies that wove in art and culture, and spent time thinking about how this might change the way Puerto Ricans live. We also gave a lot of consideration to whose story we should tell, and why.

By the end of day 2, I had a story synopsis, our artist had a rough sketch, and our experts had topics for their essays. Each team made a final presentation of the results, with general members of NREL in attendance. After that, we went our separate ways to complete our work at home. The final product will be a book, available for free in multiple formats, that incorporates the creative visions of all four teams. You can find the previous volume here: The Weight of Light.