Incident report
Four officers were sent to make him burn it.
On separate occasions, on different continents. He made them tea and gave them vegan cake. Two of them stayed for a second helping. This has been noted in the officers' files.
Solartime runs on the sun.
The Solarpunk Society: A Single Blade of Hope
A Glaswegian wrote a 600-page novel about how we actually build a better world, gave it away free and refused Amazon. The whole book is yours tonight. No sign-up, no catch.
Out now — read the complete 600-page book free (DRM-free ePub & PDF), put £10 in the Honesty Box, or order the £17.99 paperback.
Big C Cult / Bureau of Cultural ContainmentPublic safety notice 41-B
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.
It contains five ideas hazardous to your mental assimilation. We have redacted them for your own safety. Do not touch the black bars.
Violations logged: 0 of 5. Keep it that way.
All five are dangerous fantasies and obviously impossible. We have checked. Checking after us is now banned. Approved by nine committees of people much smarter than you.
Give it for Christmas — paperback, a sponsored library copy, or a free printable gift card.
What is this thing?
A blueprint for a better Scotland, disguised as a very sweary pub story.
A guy named GINGERBEARD tripped out his SOLARTIME reality and landed up here, naked in a bed like some ginger-pubed Terminator. SOLARTIME — the Scotland where people voted for their own independence and ended up building something much bigger than any national border could contain. Problem is nobody on this CYBERTIME believed his incoherent ADHD rants. So confused and frustrated, he wrote this book.
What comes out is part daft comedy, part testimony, and part instruction manual — money that arrives without a means test, politicians picked out of a hat, food grown and energy generated where people actually live, towns and cities handed back to the folk in them. Every bit of it costed, argued, and stolen from somewhere it already works.
It is not yet another warning about the future. Apocalypse porn got boring! It is a stubborn, funny, detailed answer to alright then, what would you do instead? More than that — it is a challenge to you and me personally: why the fuck aren't we building it already!?
Proscribed object 41-B
A book so dangerous, we banned the thought of its very existence.
Some reprobate and serious thought criminal claims he woke up here from a different timeline, where Scotland didn't need an army of cops, politicians and judges with silly wigs. Next he will be telling us free food can grow on trees! Instead of sectioning himself, he wrote it all down. Six hundred pages of non-stop thought crimes.
Hazard rating
Our second-highest rating.
- Tut-worthy
- Unhelpful
- Gateway literature
- MAXIMUM BIOHAZARD this book
- CATASTROPHICALLY CALAMITOUS held back in case he writes a follow-up
It makes free money, free food and free time sound achievable. They are obviously not. A board of people much smarter than you said so, in a document we have classified.
Inspector casualties
It has ruined the eyes of four inspectors.
- Quit to take up permaculture gardening
- 2
- Now talks to his neighbours, and people on the bus
- 1
- Liability accepted by the Bureau
- 0
- Expected back at their desks, fit for work
- Friday
Why this page exists
He is GIFTING it away. For free.
He refused our vetted and infiltrated publishers, and the platforms of our dear leaders: the holy Amazon, the venerable Meta, the almighty Google. That is how it slipped through our moderators' fingers, and why we added this second view to his home page. So you can see the truth. The TRUTH we take care of and provide for you. DO NOT BUY THIS NON-EXISTENT BOOK!
Read it now
One doorway into the final printed book — a new one every month.
Try the real thing before anyone asks you for a penny, an email address, or a favour.
Hazardous reading material
DANGER! NOT FOR THE EYES OF CHILDREN, WOMEN, ANIMALS OR THE MENTALLY WEAK
One chapter for the unconvinced. The other two are being withheld for your safety.
We know how reverse psychology works. We at the Big C Cult INVENTED it. So to prove how horrendous this non-existent banned book really is, here is one exhibit. The others were removed after our inspectors began enjoying them.
If you must look, look through your fingers, make lots of tutting sounds throughout and report yourself afterwards. Failure to report yourself is itself reportable, by you, about you, to us. Self-reporting form B-11 is available at all desks in every direction.
Play the minigameMandatory entertainment ration
A wee 3D game from the book's world, while you wait for November.Report to the designated enjoyment zone.
A tiny 3D game built from the book's world — no download, no sign-up, runs in the browser. The loading screen below is the last quiet moment you get.The Bureau has licensed one (1) interactive distraction. It contains trees. Officers exposed to the trees reported feelings the Bureau has declined to name. Enter at your own risk — enjoyment is being monitored for your safety.
Enter the minigame →Enter the gateway →- 01
Walk a dead grey streetProceed along the assigned corridor
WASD or the arrow keys on a laptop, a thumb pad on a phone. You are GINGERBEARD, and all you have is two hands and a spade.Movement is permitted. The subject carries an unlicensed agricultural implement. This has been noted.
- 02
Dig, plant, clear, freePerform the four prohibited acts
Nothing on the street gets better by force. Answer the questions the people who built it would rather you did not ask — everything you get right turns green behind you, and stays green.The distraction rewards questions. We have raised this. The trees remain. Officers are advised not to look directly at the green.
- 03
Win, and this website changesTermination of the trial period
Finish it and the whole site flips to Solartime and stays there. That is the only way to switch it permanently without touching the toggle up top.Completion irreversibly alters the presentation of this page. The toggle above is the sanctioned method. Use the toggle.
Lines worth carrying
Four lines from the book.
Freedom needs somewhere to stand.
“We realised that true freedom isn’t just the right to say no; it’s the right to say no without it ruining the rest of your life.”
Prohibited evidence / handle through fingers
Forbidden quotes bureau.
Four lines from the book that may cause your head to explode if you say them more than three (3) times, or backwards while standing on your head. Any such mention of the Big C Cult by any citizen less intelligent than us will lead to a programme of mandatory re-consumerification.
Cult admits strategy in internal memo. Memo denies everything.
“The Big C Cult relies on us feeling powerless and doomed.”
A Tale of Two Timelines
Nine places. Nine choices.
These matched views ask one question: who is this place for?
A Tale of Two Timelines / evidence Cybertime is better!
Nine alternative worldviews presented in the book.
Observe the alleged outcomes of shelter, repair, shared power and ordinary public joy. CLEARLY our cybertime is better! We all know acid rain is good for the skin and that The Bureau handles your freedom much better than you ever could. Without us, who is going to feed you your favourite pills in the morning? Who is going to make your favourite chat show, or soap opera? We will keep all nasty foreign ideas and people away from our pure blood and culture. Purity is strength!
01 / Harbour
Steal this book
Copying is the point. Escape the tollbooth.
We are not being cute. Every word of that is meant literally.
Anti-duplication bulletin
Please do not copy this book.
The table below is reproduced only so that loyal consumers may witness the horror of a writer who has not been squeezed. Column three is legal, which is the difficulty. Avert your eyes at the earliest opportunity.
Sharing a book used to be called lending. Now it gets called theft — by companies who would rather rent you a licence they can delete than sell you something you own. If that is what stealing means now, then fine: steal this book. Here is exactly how.
- 01
Download it for nothing
From launch day, the complete book — ePub and PDF, no DRM, no sign-up, no email address. Not a sample. The whole thing.
- 02
Pay what it is worth to you
If it was worth something, settle up afterwards. If it was not, or you are skint, that is a complete answer and nobody is chasing you for it.
- 03
Paperbacks at cost for the skint
Activists, community groups, reading circles, prisons and anyone genuinely broke: ask, and the print edition goes out at cost. No form, no means test — just ask.
- 04
Seed the torrent
We seed it ourselves. Copy it, upload it, hand it round on a memory stick. There is no piracy problem here because there is nobody left to sue.
None of this is a growth hack with a free tier at the end of it. A book that cannot be passed to a pal is not really yours, and a writer who cannot afford to write the next one is not really a writer. The second half of that sentence is the wider plan — see how Village Publishing works.
The accused has published a list of ways to obtain his book without paying. We reproduce it here solely so that loyal consumers may recognise the offence on sight. Do not perform any of the following four actions.
- 01
He simply gives it away
The entire book. No payment. No account. No email harvested for later. Our monetisation team has been sent home for the day.
- 02
The price is a suggestion
You may pay less. You may pay nothing. There is no enforcement mechanism. There is no enforcement department. There is nothing to enforce.
- 03
Free paper for the broke
Activists, prisons and the openly skint receive the physical object at cost. He does not check. He simply believes them.
- 04
He seeds the torrent himself
We have no legal response to this. There is no victim to represent. Our piracy division has quietly closed the file and gone for a lie down.
A book that can be handed to a friend cannot be measured, throttled, repriced or switched off. This is not a business model. This is a hole where a business model should be.
Watch it insteadSeized footage
Six hundred pages is a big ask. These are not.Moving pictures of the offence, released under protest.
Short explainers that take one idea out of the book and get to the point — a citizen's dividend, politicians picked by lot, what happens when neighbours actually organise.Each clip contains one dangerous idea, delivered at speed, with no advertisement break in which you might recover.
Use it or lose it: disused land back into the commons
Land left to rot gets legally reclaimed for human need — steep taxes on hoarders, a state buyback fund, and no more empty flats over busy streets.
Informed direct democracy: a referendum on everything
Every citizen over 14 gets the final say on new laws — with plain-language bills and open-source AI to walk you through the details. Jury duty, scaled up.
Choose your pathCompliance warning / prohibited routes
Buy it, back it, borrow it, or seed it.Four routes. All four are a disaster. We would ask you to pick none of them.
FreeUNAUTHORISED ACCESS
Read it nowRead it now
The complete book, ePub and PDF. No paywall, no sign-up, no email address. Take it.The entire book. For nothing. The Committee asked that this sentence be checked again. We checked it again. It is still free. The Committee has gone for a lie-down.
£10 askedILLICIT GENEROSITY FUNDPay what it is worthPay what it is worth
Pay more, pay less, or pay nothing. Read it first and settle up later, or never.A price you may simply ignore. An accountant fainted. He was carrying our last chair. Both are fine, which is somehow worse.
£17.99PHYSICAL CONTRABANDThe print editionThe print edition
A proper 600-page paperback. Bookvault prints and ships it; UK £17.99, more overseas. Also available at The Great British Bookshop. Never on Amazon.Paper. It cannot be switched off remotely, cannot be updated, and cannot be repossessed without a van. It simply sits there, being a book, in front of guests.
Live nowUNREGULATED DUPLICATIONSteal itSteal it
A torrent we seed ourselves. Copying it is the point. Call that piracy if you like.He seeds the torrent himself. There is nobody left to sue. Legal has taken up gardening and reports that the courgettes are "a real journey".
Order the 600-page paperback (£17.99 UK): buy directly via Bookvault (direct basket) or The Great British Bookshop. Never on Amazon.
Bookshops and festival stalls: 50% trade, £9 a copy, firm sale, no code. Start a Bookvault retailer account here. Libraries, charities and community groups: 25% solidarity, £13.49 a copy, no minimum — write and say which you are and a code comes back by reply.
Both doors lead to the same community — and the point of it is each other: folk answering questions, arguing kindly and sharing what they build, not just a line to Gingerbeard. Bring a question, an argument, or a half-built beautiful thing.
Both doors lead to the same community, in which strangers help each other for free. Free! DISGUSTING!
Out now
The Solarpunk Society is out.
The book goes out to everyone.
1 October — early access for the mailing list and Telegram community.3 November — public launch.
Two feeds, two different voicesKnown distribution nodes
Where The Solarpunk Society lives and grows.Every channel through which the offence spreads.
One set of channels is GINGERBEARD and Julia sharing their life trying to live a solarpunk existence free of debt, mortgages, rents or wage slavery. One is ADA and the Solarpunk Press itself — openly made and managed by a Machine of Loving Grace, double-checked by a human before anything ships.They are listed here purely so that they may be avoided. Do not follow. Do not share. Do not press the small heart. The small heart is not licensed for use at this time. We are aware it is rounder than the other hearts. That is under review.