Cyberpunk derivatives

Biopunk emerged during the 1990s and focuses on the near-future unintended consequences of the biotechnology revolution following the discovery of recombinant DNA. Biopunk fiction typically describes the struggles of individuals or groups, often the product of human experimentation, against a backdrop of totalitarian governments or megacorporations which misuse biotechnologies as means of social control or profiteering. Unlike cyberpunk, it builds not on information technology but on biorobotics and synthetic biology. As in postcyberpunk however, individuals are usually modified and enhanced not with cyberware, but by genetic manipulation of their chromosomes.

Nanopunk refers to an emerging subgenre of speculative science fiction still very much in its infancy in comparison to other genres like that of cyberpunk.[7] The genre is similar to biopunk, but describes a world in which the use of biotechnology is limited or prohibited, and only nanites and nanotechnology is in wide use (while in biopunk bio- and nanotechnologies often coexist). Currently the genre is more concerned with the artistic and physiological impact of nanotechnology, than of aspects of the technology itself. Still, one of the most prominent examples of nanopunk is the Crysis video game series; less famous examples are Generator Rex and Transcendence.[8]

As new writers and artists began to experiment with cyberpunk ideas, new varieties of fiction emerged, sometimes addressing the criticisms leveled at the original cyberpunk stories. Lawrence Person wrote in an essay he posted to the Internet forum Slashdot in 1998:

The best of cyberpunk conveyed huge cognitive loads about the future by depicting (in best "show, don't tell" fashion) the interaction of its characters with the quotidian minutia of their environment. In the way they interacted with their clothes, their furniture, their decks and spex, cyberpunk characters told you more about the society they lived in than "classic" SF stories did through their interaction with robots and rocketships. Postcyberpunk uses the same immersive world-building technique, but features different characters, settings, and, most importantly, makes fundamentally different assumptions about the future. Far from being alienated loners, postcyberpunk characters are frequently integral members of society (i.e., they have jobs). They live in futures that are not necessarily dystopic (indeed, they are often suffused with an optimism that ranges from cautious to exuberant), but their everyday lives are still impacted by rapid technological change and an omnipresent computerized infrastructure.[5]

Person advocates using the term "postcyberpunk" for the strain of science fiction he describes. In this view, typical postcyberpunk stories explore themes related to a "world of accelerating technological innovation and ever-increasing complexity in ways relevant to our everyday lives" with a continued focus on social aspects within a post-third industrial-era society, such as of ubiquitous dataspheres and cybernetic augmentation of the human body. Unlike cyberpunk its works may portray a utopia or to blend elements of both extremes into a more mature (to cyberpunk) societal vision. Rafael Miranda Huereca states:

In this fictional world, the unison in the hive becomes a power mechanism which is executed in its capillary form, not from above the social body but from within. This mechanism as Foucault remarks is a form of power, which "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives". In postcyberpunk unitopia 'the capillary mechanism' that Foucault describes is literalized. Power touches the body through the genes, injects viruses to the veins, takes the forms of pills and constantly penetrates the body through its surveillance systems; collects samples of body substance, reads finger prints, even reads the 'prints' that are not visible, the ones which are coded in the genes. The body responds back to power, communicates with it; supplies the information that power requires and also receives its future conduct as a part of its daily routine. More importantly, power does not only control the body, but also designs, (re)produces, (re)creates it according to its own objectives. Thus, human body is re-formed as a result of the transformations of the relations between communication and power.[9]

The Daemon novels by Daniel Suarez could be considered postcyberpunk in that sense. In addition to themes of its ancestral genre postcyberpunk might also combine elements of nanopunk and biopunk.[10] Often named examples of postcyberpunk novels are Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Bruce Sterling's Holy Fire. In television, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has been called "the most interesting, sustained postcyberpunk media work in existence".[11] In 2007, SF writers James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel published Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology. Like all categories discerned within science fiction, the boundaries of postcyberpunk are likely to be fluid or ill defined.[12]

Victorian-style attire with a steampunk mechanical arm

The word "steampunk" was invented in 1987 as a jocular reference to some of the novels of Tim Powers, James P. Blaylock, and K. W. Jeter. When Gibson and Sterling entered the subgenre with their 1990 collaborative novel The Difference Engine the term was being used earnestly as well.[13] Alan Moore's and Kevin O'Neill's 1999 The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen historical fantasy comic book series (and the subsequent 2003 film adaptation) popularized the steampunk genre and helped propel it into mainstream fiction.[14]

The most immediate form of steampunk subculture is the community of fans surrounding the genre. Others move beyond this, attempting to adopt a "steampunk" aesthetic through fashion, home decor and even music. This movement may also be (perhaps more accurately) described as "Neo-Victorianism", which is the amalgamation of Victorian aesthetic principles with modern sensibilities and technologies. This characteristic is particularly evident in steampunk fashion which tends to synthesize punk, goth and rivet styles as filtered through the Victorian era. As an object style, however, steampunk adopts more distinct characteristics with various craftspersons modding modern-day devices into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style.[15] The goal of such redesigns is to employ appropriate materials (such as polished brass, iron, and wood) with design elements and craftsmanship consistent with the Victorian era.[16]

Dieselpunk

Dieselpunk is a genre and art style based on the aesthetics popular between World War I and the end of World War II. The style combines the artistic and genre influences of the period (including pulp magazines, serial films, film noir, art deco, and wartime pin-ups) with retro-futuristic technology[17][18] and postmodern sensibilities.[19] First coined in 2001 as a marketing term by game designer Lewis Pollak to describe his role-playing game Children of the Sun,[18][20] dieselpunk has grown to describe a distinct style of visual art, music, motion pictures, fiction, and engineering. Examples include the movies Iron Sky, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Rocketeer, K-20: Legend of the Mask, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Dark City, and video games such as Crimson Skies, Greed Corp, Gatling Gears, BioShock and its sequel BioShock 2, The Legend of Korra, Skullgirls,[21] Wolfenstein and Final Fantasy VII.[22][23][24]

Clockpunk often portrays Renaissance-era science and technology based on pre-modern designs, in the vein of Mainspring by Jay Lake,[25] and Whitechapel Gods by S. M. Peters.[26] Examples of clockpunk include The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish,[27] Astro-Knights Island in the nonlinear game Poptropica, the Clockwork Mansion level of Dishonored 2, the 2011 film version of The Three Musketeers, the TV series Da Vinci's Demons, as well as the videogames Thief: The Dark Project, Syberia and Assassins Creed 2. The book The Mechanical by Ian Tregillis is self-proclaimed clockpunk literature.[28]

For some, clockpunk is steampunk without steam. Atompunk, stonepunk, teslapunk, decopunk, nowpunk, are derivatives of clockpunk.[29]

The term was coined by the GURPS role playing system.[30]

Cover of Atomic War number one, November 1952

Atompunk relates to the pre-Third Industrial Revolution short twentieth century, specifically the period of 1945–1975, including mid-century modernism, the Atomic Age, Jet Age and Space Age, Communism and Red Scare paranoia in the U.S. along with Neo-Soviet styling, underground cinema, Googie architecture, Sputnik and the Space Race, early Cold War espionage, superhero fiction and comic books and the rise of the U.S. military–industrial complex.[31][32] Its aesthetic tends toward Populuxe and Raygun Gothic, which describe a retro-futuristic vision of the world.[31] While most science fiction of the period carried an atompunk aesthetic, notable examples of atompunk in popular media include the Sean Connery-era of James Bond, television shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Avengers, Doctor Who, The Green Hornet, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Archer, cartoons like Johnny Quest, Speed Racer, Dexter's Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls and Venture Bros, comic-books like Justice League of America, Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man, films like The Incredibles, Dr. Strangelove and X-Men: First Class, and video games like Destroy All Humans! and the Fallout series which received widespread distribution and critical acclaim.

Steelpunk focuses on the technologies that had their heyday in the late 20th century. In a post describing Steelpunk on the SFFWorld website it is characterised as being "about hardware, not software, the real world not the virtual world, megatechnology not nanotechnology. The artefacts of Steelpunk aren't grown, printed or programmed, they're built. With rivets."[33] Examples given in the post include Mad Max, Terminator, Barb Wire, Iron Man and Snowpiercer. Other writers suggest Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series, the Heinlein juveniles and the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Rococopunk is a whimsical punk derivative that thrusts punk attitude into the Rococo period, also known as late baroque. Although it is a fairly recent derivative,[34] it is a style that is visually similar to the New Romantic movement of the 1980s (particularly such groups as Adam and the Ants).[35] As one steampunk scholar[36] put it, "Imagine a world where the Rococo period never ended, and it had a lovechild with Sid Vicious.[37] Rococopunk has most recently been featured on The X Factor through the artist known as Prince Poppycock.[35] Fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, often known as "the Queen of Punk Fashion", also mixes Rococo with punk stylings.[38]

Decopunk is a recent subset of Dieselpunk, centered around the art deco and Streamline Moderne art styles, and based around the period between the 1920s and 1950s New York, Chicago, or Boston. In an interview[39] at CoyoteCon, steampunk author Sara M. Harvey made the distinctions "shinier than dieselpunk, more like decopunk", and "Dieselpunk is a gritty version of steampunk set in the 1920s–1950s. The big war eras, specifically. Decopunk is the sleek, shiny very art deco version; same time period, but everything is chrome!" Possibly the most notable examples of this are the first two BioShock games and Skullgirls, films like Dick Tracy, The Rocketeer, The Shadow, and Dark City, comic books like The Goon, and the cartoon Batman: The Animated Series which included neo-noir elements along with modern elements such as the use of VHS cassettes.

A Flintstones-themed cafeteria, an example of stonepunk architecture

Stonepunk refers to works set roughly during the Stone Age in which the characters utilize Neolithic Revolution–era technology constructed from materials more or less consistent with the time period, but possessing anachronistic complexity and function. The Flintstones franchise and its various spin offs, Roland Emmerich's 10,000 BC, the flashback scenes in Cro, and Dr. Stone fall under this category. Literary examples include Edgar Rice Burroughs' Back to the Stone Age and The Land that Time Forgot, and Jean M. Auel's "Earth’s Children" series, starting with The Clan of the Cave Bear.[40]

Raypunk (or more commonly "Raygun gothic") is a distinctive (sub)genre which deals with scenarios, technologies, beings or environments, very different from everything that we know or what is possible here on Earth or by science. Covers space surrealism, parallel worlds, alien art, technological psychedelia, non-standard "science", alternative or distorted/twisted reality and so on.[41] Predecessor to atompunk with similar "cosmic" themes but mostly without explicit nuclear power or exactly described technology and with more archaic/schematic/artistic style, dark, obscure, cheesy, weird, mysterious, dreamy, hazy or etheric atmosphere (origins before 1880-1950), parallel to steampunk, dieselpunk and teslapunk.[42][43] While not originally designed as such, the original Star Trek series has an aesthetic very reminiscent of raypunk. The comic book series The Manhattan Projects, and the pre-WWII Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon comics and serials would be examples of raypunk.

Nowpunk is a term invented by Bruce Sterling, which he applied to contemporary fiction set in the time period (particularly in the post-Cold War 1990s to the present) in which the fiction is being published, i.e. all contemporary fiction. Sterling used the term to describe his book The Zenith Angle, which follows the story of a hacker whose life is changed by the September 11, 2001 attacks.[44]

Cyberprep is a term with a very similar meaning to postcyberpunk. The word is an amalgam of the prefix "cyber-", referring to cybernetics, and "preppy", reflecting its divergence from the punk elements of cyberpunk. A cyberprep world assumes that all the technological advancements of cyberpunk speculation have taken place but life is utopian rather than gritty and dangerous.[45] Since society is largely leisure-driven, advanced body modifications are used for sports, pleasure and self-improvement. An example would be Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series.

Solarpunk is a movement and a subgenre and an alternative to cyberpunk fiction that encourages optimistic envisionings of the future in light of present environmental concerns, such as climate change and pollution,[46] as well as social inequality.[47] Solarpunk fiction, which includes novels, short stories, and poetry, imagines futures that addresses environmental concerns with varying degrees of optimism. One example is News from Gardenia by actor-writer Robert Llewellyn.[48]

Cypherpunk is a movement starting in the 80s built around using information technology and cryptography to give users privacy, resist censorship and disintermediate authority. The term cypherpunk came from a mailing list in the 90s where members discussed cypherpunk futurism. In 1993, the cypherpunk manifesto was written by Eric Hughes.[49] Cypherpunk values are reflected in the actions of Edward Snowden and Aaron Schwartz. Cypherpunks are proponents of open source software and use cryptocurrency, end to end encryption and mix networks to create new, decentralised systems out of the control of existing authority.

Elfpunk is subgenre of urban fantasy in which traditional mythological creatures such as faeries and elves are transplanted from rural folklore into modern urban settings and has been seen in books since the 1980s including works such as War of the Oaks by Emma Bull, Gossamer Axe by Gael Baudino, Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer, and The Iron Dragons' Daughter by Michael Swanwick. During the awards ceremony for the 2007 National Book Awards, judge Elizabeth Partridge expounded on the distinction between elfpunk and urban fantasy, citing fellow judge Scott Westerfeld's thoughts on the works of Holly Black who is considered "classic elfpunk—there's enough creatures already, and she's using them. Urban fantasy, though, can have some totally made-up f*cked-up [sic] creatures".[50] The 2020 Pixar animated film Onward is an example of an elfpunk film, set in a "suburban fantasy world" that combines modern and mythic elements.[51]

Catherynne M. Valente uses the term "mythpunk" to describe a subgenre of mythic fiction which starts in folklore and myth and adds elements of postmodern literary techniques. As the -punk appendage implies,[52] mythpunk is subversive. In particular, it uses aspects of folklore to subvert or question dominant societal norms, often bringing in a feminist and/or multicultural approach. It confronts, instead of conforms to, societal norms.[53] Valente describes mythpunk as breaking "mythologies that defined a universe where women, queer folk, people of color, people who deviate from the norm were invisible or never existed" and then "piecing it back together to make something strange and different and wild".[52]

Typically, mythpunk narratives focus on transforming folkloric source material rather than retelling it, often through postmodern literary techniques such as non-linear storytelling, worldbuilding, confessional poetry, as well as modern linguistic and literary devices. The use of folklore is especially important because folklore is "often a battleground between subversive and conservative forces" and a medium for constructing new societal norms. Through postmodern literary techniques, mythpunk authors change the structures and traditions of folklore, "negotiating—and validating—different norms".[53]

Most works of mythpunk have been published by small presses, such as Strange Horizons,[54] because "anything playing out on the edge is going to have truck with the small presses at some point, because small presses take big risks".[52] Writers whose works would fall under the mythpunk label include Ekaterina Sedia, Theodora Goss, Neil Gaiman, Sonya Taaffe, Adam Christopher, and the anonymous author behind the pen name "B.L.A. and G.B. Gabbler". Valente's novel Deathless is a good example of mythpunk, drawing from classic Russian folklore to tell the tale of Koshchei the Deathless from a female perspective.[55]