Science Fiction Aficionados discussion

This month's edition of Perihelion Science Fiction Magazine features my article.."Punk Fiction: Back to the Future": www.perihelionsf.com/1410/article_1.htm

The aesthetics of punk sci-fi...."If you've ever seen a book jacket with a hero and/or heroine dressed in Victorian garb, festooned in leather accessories, wearing round brass aviator goggles, standing on the deck of a steam-driven airship holding an octopus as a pet, and there are lots of clockwork gears in the background, then you’ve probably come across the visually quirky genre of Steampunk."

Defining punk fiction and Retrofuturism... "Melodramas inside a mélange; a melding of genres together like the ceaseless hammering of wrought iron in a forge... As a Dieselpunk author who is constantly asked “what is punk fiction?” I think it’s time to organize my neurons around some foundational principles that put all this punkishness into some kind of cosmic order. Like an intergalactic peace treaty between the rulers of classic science fiction and the mutants... Retro-futurism allows the writer to meld various elements of science fiction together, often blended within an alternative set of historical events, or set in a future world with anachronistic social outlooks typical of that bygone era."

How can you tell if a novel is a work of punk fiction? I answer that with a concept called the 'Spectrum of the Fantastic'. Alternative history, time travel, space opera and Retrofuturism are various settings on the 'dial of imagination' like turning the knob on a stove.

DragonFly

I think it's a shame that *punk is now so often seen as just a synonym for retrofuturism.

Cyberpunk introduced not only the idea of a setting dependent upon technology but also thematic (paranoia and conspiracy, dehumanisation and depersonalisation, the capture of power by elites) and stylistic (audacity, novelty, and the 'eyeball-kick' use of imagery and analogy) features. Steampunk was originally just importing cyberpunk into a different setting by changing the technology. But because they chose a retrofuturist technology, there seems to be a tendency just to focus on the retrofuturism and to forget the rest of it.

And even then there's been a drift away from the core idea of dependency upon technology. 'Dieselpunk', for instance, wasn't meant to be just generically 'it reminds me of the 1930s', but more specifically an exploration of a future society still dependent on diesel (and equivalent) technology and everything that that entails. That's why you can have multiple terms for the same period: retrofuturism based on the '40s and '50s may indeed be "atompunk", but it can also be "rocketpunk", depending on whether you're looking at the aesthetics and technology of early nuclear fission or at the aesthetics and technology of early rocket technology (of course, the lines can blur).

But of course, genre terms can come to mean whatever people need them to mean.

Wastrel wrote: "I think it's a shame that *punk is now so often seen as just a synonym for retrofuturism.

Cyberpunk introduced not only the idea of a setting dependent upon technology but also thematic (paranoia ..."

You bring up some exceptionally good points. Cyberpunk in particular was groundbreaking, is difficult to categorize and can be devoid of retrofuturism and still be called punk. I think there is a glass ceiling for those of us who write punk fiction. It's not considered to be serious science fiction and any blending with fantasy or the paranormal is considered breaking unwritten rules. In many ways punk fiction is still experimental and apart from Steampunk certainly less well known. The intent of my article was to broaden perspectives for both readers and authors and help people recognize the aesthetics when they're there in the story. Thanks again for your comments.

To me the term "punk" has been so loosely and often used that it's just become meaningless (Arcanepunk, Biopunk, Cyberpunk, Decopunk, Dieselpunk, Fashionpunk, Steampunk...).

It's like in electronic music's sub-sub-sub genres where you can take anything and add "step" or "core" to the end of it and come up with a new (meaningless) term--Dubstep, Funksteip, Hardstep, Jazzstep, Technostep...none of them really mean anything but it sounds good.

Even the original cyberpunk was never consistently applied (Gibson's Neruomancer and Rudy Rucker's Ware tetralogy were very different beasts), yet it's still a better defined genre than any of the other "punks" of the SF world.

I guess I just don't see the point in obsessing over grinding genres down to the point where they fray apart into complete fuzz. The more you try to define any given work or sub-sub-sub genre, the less agreement you'll end up with. And in the end what does it really gain us? Nothing I can see.

Genres are really only useful to point readers toward a general direction. "Go north west for 6 to 8 hours and you'll be in the vicinity" rather than the precise, GPS-guided things we'd like them to be...if we can only nail down their definition to the Nth degree (but of course that definition is a moving target, changing with each and every written work that borrows from a previously known, broader genre).

Micah wrote: "To me the term "punk" has been so loosely and often used that it's just become meaningless (Arcanepunk, Biopunk, Cyberpunk, Decopunk, Dieselpunk, Fashionpunk, Steampunk...).

It's like in electroni..."

Micah, I agree with you. I think era based 'umbrella' punk is helpful but sub-sub-sub genres go too far. The three terms, Steampunk, Dieselpunk and Atompunk span the early 1800s to the 1970s in regards to their respective retrofuturistic aesthetics. I think they help readers much like 'paranormal romance helps define 'romance' a bit further. But 'ghost-lycan-vampire ménage a trois romance' would be silly.

just wanted to jump in here to say that I think this conversation is fantastic and has been helpful for me in thinking about all of these subgenres. particularly Wastrel's comments about cyberpunk.

and great article, Charles.

mark wrote: "just wanted to jump in here to say that I think this conversation is fantastic and has been helpful for me in thinking about all of these subgenres. particularly Wastrel's comments about cyberpunk...."

Thanks, Mark! Glad it was helpful.