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Deleted member 47027
Unconfirmed Member
One way to kill the interest in this topic is by bringing up other 'genres' of punk.
Let's talk Gutterpunks!
Let's talk Gutterpunks!
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Cyberpunk vs Steampunk: Battle of the Underutilized Sub-genres
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B_Rik_Schitthaus
Banned
I love Shadowrun on a tabletop too.Anerythristic said:
The Albatross
Member
I will forever love some Steampunk themes. Basically, anything with dysfunctional governmental societies and vaccuum tubes EVERYWHERE.
Which is why this is one of my favorite movies:
I also get hardons for dirigibles and fantastic flying machines.
But, as far as people dressing up in steampunk clothing and going to conventions. Not for me.
Which is why this is one of my favorite movies:
I also get hardons for dirigibles and fantastic flying machines.
But, as far as people dressing up in steampunk clothing and going to conventions. Not for me.
More Fun To Compute
Member
What I've found out is that most of what people actually like that can be described as Steampunk or Cyberpunk is actually better described as Dieselpunk. And if they hate it then it's almost always Steampunk.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
If I had to describe why I'm attracted to steampunk I'd say that I've always been attracted to the almost romantic attitudes towards science and invention in the Victorian era, and so I enjoy fiction that extends that.More Fun To Compute said:
Dieselpunk is just a natural extension of what steampunk and cyberpunk mean.Sqorgar said:
Biopunk, on the other hand, is a fucking ridiculous term. It doesn't make any sense and what idioms you can tease from the term already exist quite happily in near enough every genre going. Fucking TVTropes.
Awesome Animals
Member
The_Technomancer said:
I'm with you on this.
More Fun To Compute
Member
The_Technomancer said:
The romantic view of this era is pretty modern I think. Romantics of the era were all about dark satanic mills and the horrors of Dr Frankenstein.
BattleMonkey
Member
Sqorgar said:
Making shit up as normal. Something becomes popular with the mainstream so they have to segregate it to another genre by creating made up ones.
cj_iwakura
Member
Soul Hackers and Snatcher.
So make mine Cyberpunk.
So make mine Cyberpunk.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Romance in a broader sense, I'm not sure what better word to use. It was an era where inquisitive intelligent people working alone in a laboratory with bits of wire and glass bulbs could make fundamental discoveries in physics and chemistry. Gauss could give lectures on mathematics and it would be a social event like going to the theater. It was the beginning of the celebrity scientist.More Fun To Compute said:
Me personally, I've always had a fascination with mechanisms and mechanics, so I like how some steampunk (notably The Difference Engine, although some others) juxtapose an era like that with ingenious mechanical design.
You described STAR WARS as dieselpunk. I think you've just become attached to a particular label.More Fun To Compute said:
I've always heard dieselpunk being used to refer to a specific pulp sub-genre that is largely built around vehicles during the World War II-era. Planes, flying fortresses, massive fifty story tanks, and super engineered race cars. Now, it apparently means anything even remotely to do with the 1930s and 40s.
Art Deco? That was popular in the 1930s! Must be dieselpunk. Hey guys! Miami beach is dieselpunk! Film noir? Bogart is so dieselpunk. So what if noir is also a cornerstone of cyberpunk? We'll just take those too. Blade Runner isn't cyberpunk, despite being one of the foundations of the genre. It's dieselpunk because it has art deco and noir stylistic leanings!
THIS is why I hate steampunk. Because once you accept the existence of something so shallow as an actual genre, all this other bullshit starts bubbling to the surface, making everything anal retentive and confusing. Cyberpunk makes sense as a genre. Biopunk and cattlepunk don't make sense. Every little damn thing has a punk now. I will write a book about dolls that attack and kill Genghis Khan, and I'll call it Mongolpunk, and I'll bet actual money that within a year, people will be describing Blade Runner as Mongolpunk meets FeltTippedPenPunk.
BattleMonkey
Member
Steampunk is the worst thing to happen to cons since Naruto. Painting nerf guns with bronze paint and putting on goggles does not make you steam punk!
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Amen brother. GenCon 2010 was particularly bad about this, but this year it seemed to have toned down significantly.BattleMonkey said:
cj_iwakura
Member
Bubblegum Crisis and pretty much all of SNES to PS1-era Shin Megami Tensei is cyberpunk influenced, too.
Been a fan of cyberpunk since I saw the Ghost in the Shell film back in the late 90s. I enjoyed Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and GiTS: SAC 2nd Gig as well. It's hard to put my finger on what makes me enjoy the cyberpunk genre so much. I guess it's mainly the atmosphere found in many of the films, shows, etc. and the thought that some of the technology might actually be possible someday, among other things.
I actually like the steampunk genre too, but I've never been quite as big a fan of it as cyberpunk.
I actually like the steampunk genre too, but I've never been quite as big a fan of it as cyberpunk.
More Fun To Compute
Member
The_Technomancer said:
I guess that you mean the optimism of the Enlightenment. The thing that annoys me about Steampunk is how it replaces the idea of an age of reason with magical thinking where the figures of the age could perform miracles.
Sqorgar said:
I did not and am not. I used it as an example of how thin these punk genres can be and the reason for that in my opinion is the origin of the term cyberpunk. Cyberpunk doesn't mean that much and Blade Runner is only cyberpunk if you insist on thinking of it as cyberpunk.
Sirpopopop
Member
I'm a big fan of solarpunk.
Ever heard of it?
Ever heard of it?
More Fun To Compute
Member
I'm only really into flintpunk. Neolithic AIs made out of stone henges and that sort of thing.
Cyberpunk is an actual genre that was classified based on a particular science fiction movement that happened during the mid-80s. There were multiple works that came out that exhibited a similar set of characteristics - near future, high technology/low knowledge, corporate dominance, no middle class, and the increasing influence of asian culture. It also doesn't hurt if Syd Mead does your art design.More Fun To Compute said:
Take stuff like Strange Days or Max Headroom and you can definitely see more similarities than not. Steampunk is not a literary genre. Pick two works from the "genre" and compare them. If you can find more similarities between Difference Engine and Wild Wild West other than rivets and copper, then you are a better man than I.
Dieselpunk, as apparently it is currently being used, is literally just renaming pulp fiction into something more goth-friendly.
D
Deleted member 47027
Unconfirmed Member
More Fun To Compute said:
You're crackin me up
Er, no?More Fun To Compute said:
Cyberpunk is an actual literary term, used by critics, scholars and academics. Again, it means, quite plainly, 'technologically advanced setting (cyber) seen from the 'below' view - street level or underworld (punk)'
There is zero disputing Blade Runner as cyberpunk.
You've gotten so tied up with the aesthetics commonly associated with a genre that you believe if anything looks remotely similar to <term>punk then it must be possible to classify it as <term>punk if you so wish, hence your assertion that Star Wars could be classified as diesel punk, when it is neither a diesel-age setting nor is it overly concerned with showing the punk elements. About the closest you could get to arguing Star Wars as being something-punk would be that the key characters are members of an anti-government rebellion, but that is such a tenuous link that suddenly you'd have to classify a good bulk of literature and film as something-punk as well that you'd have defeated the purpose of genre classification in the first place.
Maybe it's my lack of experience with steampunk, but I like cyberpunk because there tend to be common thematic threads in it about what it means to be human, and about the power of the individual versus the power of corporations and larger entities. Steampunk seems to me to have nothing unifying it but a visual aesthetic, so there aren't any good reasons to seek out work of that type.
Am I missing something important?
Am I missing something important?
More Fun To Compute
Member
Suairyu said:
You can say that Blade Runner had a significant influence on people who wanted to write in the genre but you can only apply the label retroactively. As for me getting tied up in the aesthetics, I'm sorry, but aesthetics are key part of the genre. Discounting aesthetics Blade Runner much better fits in with the trend of post modernistic Science Fiction especially since it was based on a PK Dick story.
Gully State
Member
sonicmj1 said:
I believe the common theme in steampunk is nature (magic) vs technology. Other than that I don't recall any other themes.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
Cogpunk for me. Things made with tons of gears. Like that Greek computer.More Fun To Compute said:
You have zero clue what you are talking about please stop.More Fun To Compute said:
Most genres are applied retroactively. (Good) artists don't wake up one day and go "I want to tell a story exactly fitting of this label" - they tell their story. Fuckit, most device labels are applied retroactively. Shakespeare didn't go "this scene really needs a pathetic fallacy" and thus write that it was raining, Homer didn't decide "you know, what this tale really needs is looking forward and flashback" and thus employ it. These terms were invented after the fact by academics to make the process of analysis easier. It isn't retro-active application.
Blade Runner is cyberpunk because it is cyberpunk. That the term wasn't around before Blade Runner doesn't make it any less so.
It's because of people like yourself - who see things in terms of "writing for a genre" - that we're in the TVTropes mess we are today. Fantasy/sci-fi authors don't invent, they just want to re-write what some other guy did but with different character names. They want to write a steampunk story, rather than creating a story that happens to fit the steampunk descriptor.
Oh shit, in that Victorian-era tale of political intrigue, a character in a corset rides a steam train. Steaaaaaaampuuuuuuunk! In this tale of a little albini child stuck in an asylum, one of the pills the doctor gives him is blue JUST LIKE IN THE MATRIX. The Matrix isn't cyberpunk though because it's not neon and shit. Hey guys, you see how 1940s everything in Star Wars looks due to George being fascinated by 1940's serials? Quintessential dieselpunk!
And aesthetics, along with philosophy, rampant AI, monolithic mega-corporations and religious allegories are common trappings of cyberpunk, often assumed when the term is used, but not definitions of.
Again, the term has a literal meaning. This literal meaning has been invented and employed by people far more read and knowledgeable on the subject and literature as a whole than you. Stop fighting an uphill battle.
Star Wars is not dieselpunk and Blade Runner is most certainly cyberpunk.
Going to cast my vote for Cyberpunk. Loved Blade Runner as a kid and GitS is one of my favorite movies ever.
For me a lot of great Cyberpunk that I've experienced poses really interesting questions about morality, humanism and society in general. I've never gotten that from Steampunk despite being really into that genre as well.
For me a lot of great Cyberpunk that I've experienced poses really interesting questions about morality, humanism and society in general. I've never gotten that from Steampunk despite being really into that genre as well.
More Fun To Compute
Member
Suairyu said:
Many people more knowledgeable than you are no doubt able to argue that Blade Runner isn't cyberpunk. Who cares, why even make arguments like these. In terms of Blade Runner being cyberpunk about the only strong argument in the early days of the genre is Gibson arguing that the aesthetics matched his idea for Neuromancer.
And I wasn't going to mention this since I didn't want to get too snarky but cyber does not mean technologically advanced setting. It comes from cybernetics which was about electronic control mechanisms and the fictional setting is broadly about computer technology coming into the hands of people on the street level. Blade Runner did not feature computer technology and the main character was someone working for the authorities.
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