The word Lollapalooza is an American idiom originally meaning “remarkable or wonderful person or thing.”  I think Cyberpunk is a remarkable thing.  It was just the beginning to a change in the way writers and readers viewed the science fiction genre.

In this post I’ll be discussing all the other “punk” derivatives and what I think is wonderful, or not so wonderful about them.

Postcyberpunk

Lawrence Person wrote in an essay he posted to the Internet forum Slashdot:

Postcyberpunk uses the same immersive world-building technique [as cyberpunk], 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.

The idea that cyberpunk has changed because the authors that read the original cyberpunk novels, went on to use the genre and improve upon it is amazing to me.  I’m not sure how deeply I would go into researching such things, but it’s certainly enjoyable to read what others have come up with in regards to the changes in science fiction.  I’d say this sort of evolution is to be expected.  Much like technology itself is always advancing; we see a thing then we improve upon it.

To quote Wikipedia for examples:

Good examples 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.”^[4] 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.^[5]

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has to be my all time favorite television show.  Hands down.  It explores so very many aspects of what could happen if technology were able to take over our lives and minds so easily. And it does it WELL.

Cyberprep

I mention Cyberprep only because any punk worth his salt would scoff at the use of the word “preppy”.  Cyberprep is the opposite of cyberpunk in terms of quality of life.  Instead of dark and dangerous, life is happy and bright.  Cyber technology is used to upload one’s awareness for leisure or recreation.  Most definitely not the gritty cyberpunk I know and love.  If anything gang wars in cyberprep would be like West Side Story with cybernetics.   That image alone is horrifying.  Moving on!

Biopunk

The name should say it all, but if not then I’ll add a bit of detail.  Biopunk focuses on the underground biotechnology revolution that was thought to be a major part of the 21st century.  Biopunk focuses on what would happen if synthetic biology was used to modify humans instead of straight technology.  Usually these worlds have totalitarian governments or mega-corporations involved to muck up the works.  Biopunk is admittedly less popular than cyberpunk, but is just as firmly planted in modern technology as its predecessor.

A series of books that can be describe as Biopunk are the Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia E. Butler.  Movies of note for biopunk leanings are the Fly, Jurassic Park (huh!), and Gattaca (a personal favorite of mine).

Clockpunk

Clockpunk was a term coined by a role playing system named GURPS.  Much like Steampunk, Clockpunk shows advanced technology set in a post-modern world with the exception of using springs and cogs as opposed to steam.

This one doesn’t strike me as particularly more fascinating than Steampunk.  I suppose I just don’t have the appreciation of clocks that some people do.  I like my digital alarm, okay?

Dieselpunk

The absolute first thing that should come to everyone’s mind is Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, right?  Actually, not so much.  (Though anyone who doesn’t think of Mad Max is just out of touch.  Why haven’t you seen this movie!?)

Dieselpunk has some Steampunk elements in it, but has progressed past steam to using petroleum as its primary source of power.  Along with this there is a sort of modern noir setting to it that might remind you of Casablanca if they had laser beams.  A good example of this would be the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.  Another movie I enjoyed though I don’t think it did well in the box office.

I’ve not yet read a book with this theme that I can remember, but I will likely seek a few out to see how the genre holds up on the page.

Cyberpunk Wannabe Derivatives

Apparently these last few are not officially recognized sub-genres; they’re just made up terms by readers or even by authors in a tongue in cheek reference to their own work.

Elfpunk was suggested as a subgenre of Urban Fantasy where elves and fairies are transplanted to modern day settings.  One example that I know of is Laura K. Hamilton’s Merry Gentry series.  Though if that series is like Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, there are lots of blood, violence, violent sex and then some words of love tossed around as if they have any place in such a setting.

Er… what was I talking about?

Mythpunk takes myth and folklore, tosses it into a blender, then adds urban fantasy, a twist of some academic fantasy and pours it over the rocks of world building.  Truly I’m not sure I understand the reasoning behind this particular title, except that it’s not using mythology, but rather myths, like the Rougarou in Louisiana, as its basis.    Wikipedia lists Theodora Goss as a writer of Mythpunk.

Perhaps it’s time to expand my reading horizons and check this made up genre out.

Nowpunk is the most confusing of all the made up “punk” genres to me.  I’ll quote from Wikipedia because I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it.  It sounds like normal fiction to me.  Perhaps someone out there can set me straight.

Nowpunk is a term sometimes applied to contemporary historical fiction set in the time period in which the fiction is being published.^[21] The most noble example of the sub-genre in recent history is The Zenith Angle by notable cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling.^[21] The Zenith Angle follows the story of a hacker whose life is changed by the September 11th, 2001 attacks.^[22] What makes it nowpunk is that the story concerns the way the real world was actually being affected by a real event and that it was written as those changes were occurring, not afterwards, with the benefit of an historical perspective.

Like I said, sounds like… contemporary fiction to me.  I think someone is splitting hairs, but that’s just me.

Now then, there is one final entry mentioned on the Cyberpunk derivatives page in Wikipedia, but as I’m not a horror fan, I’ll only mention its name.  Splatterpunk.  I don’t even want to know because that name alone squicks me.

Punkapalooza Wrap Up

So, all in all, Cyberpunk was the granddaddy to all of these other “punk” movements and yet it’s still the most popular, even with the postcyberpunk movement coming in to clean up after it.

Cyberpunk will likely always be my favorite science fiction genre just because it fascinates me.  That humans can build things in order to interface with one another in a manner that we weren’t born with is fascinating and scary all in one.  That’s one reason why I love science fiction.  It’s not real, but you have to wonder if it couldn’t be possible sometime in the not to near future.

My next series of posts will deal with Fantasy, my all time favorite genre ever.  I’ll have many more reading selections to offer in those posts because I’ve read much more fantasy than science fiction.

Not to worry gentle readers, I’ll be hitting on romance too.  It’s one of my other favorite genres.

Author Notes

And finally, a note of apology.  This post was supposed to be out last Monday and I had someone attempt to break into my house that afternoon while I was cooking dinner.   I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to write anything that night, nor the next few nights.  Thank you for your patience and understanding as I move forward in my attempts to make regular postings on this blog.

And, as always, thank you for stopping by to read, whoever you are.

What a post-industrial dystopia just might look like. Only cleaner.

Cyberpunk seems, to me, to be one of the more widely used science fiction genres.  There are so many books, short stories, comic books and movies that use cyberpunk.  The general setting is usually a post-industrial dystopia.  Basically you have lots of cheap technology (cybernetic implants, etc.) that everyone has access to while the majority of the cities are slums and the majority of people struggle to eat on a regular basis.

So why is this such a popular genre?  Most likely because it’s a situation that so many people fear we’ll find ourselves in very soon.  If technology continues to develop as fast as it has in the last half century, we’ll have cybernetics within a century or less.  And if that happens, what will happen to humans and their happy, shiny lives?  Technology makes things easier, but that tends to go hand in hand with a relaxing of work-ethics and morality.

At least, that’s what many people fear.  It certainly seems to be the case if you compare a farm of today with a farm from fifty years ago.  Then again, farmers still work hard, they just have machines to make things easier and allow them to do 20 or even 50 times the production their forefathers did.

The first cyberpunk story I encountered was Bladerunner.  Yes it’s a movie, but movies still tell stories.  And this movie just happens to be based on a story named Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.  I have yet to read the novel (I know, I’m terrible), but even reading the wiki entry of the novel tells me right away that there’s things lacking from the movie that are important in the novel and to what makes the story uniquely Cyberpunk.  I won’t give spoilers, because I hate spoilers myself.  But I will say that the movie shows a great deal about how humans may and likely will deal with androids if we get that far with technology.  Exploring the difference between a human and a robot who looks human can at times be both fascinating and depressing.  In the end, one has to wonder if we aren’t just squishy robots who learned empathy.

Cyberpunk has always struck me as uniquely depressing because of the dystopia element that is almost always present.  But people (I include myself among that catch all word), tend to enjoy depressing settings for the stories they read or the movies they watch, but only if the ending is satisfying.  Let’s take the Matrix as another example.  The reality of what humans had become was monstrous and shocking.  And yet, Neo, the protagonist, was still willing to fight and in the end he prevailed.  His reality outside of the Matrix wasn’t the best, but at least he was free.  So the end was satisfying in that there was hope things would improve for Neo and the other free humans.

Humans, while generally pessimistic, still have that sliver of hope inside that tells them to fight no matter how bad things seem.  And to read (or watch) such a struggle is fascinating to us.  Obviously we don’t want to experience such a thing first hand, but we certainly like the entertain the idea that if we were in that same position we’d do the same thing.  Or maybe that’s just me.

Psion - The first of Three Cat Stories

The first book I read in regards to cyberpunk was Psion (1985) by Joan D. Vinge.  That book was one I couldn’t put down, I was simply fascinated by it.  The story is about a vagrant boy who gets taken into an institution and shown how to use his telepathic powers.  Of course said institution wants him to do their dirty work and he does because of his affection for a particular woman who took him under wing.  I was in high school when I read that book.  It didn’t occur to me at the time that the story was cyberpunk because the main focus wasn’t on the technology, but on the extra abilities of “Cat” (the main protagonist) and the others at the institute.  And yet, it still had the same kinds of themes as the other cyberpunk movies and books.

While sci-fi isn’t my first love, I do have a “world” and a character who is uniquely cyberpunk.  The character is a genetic mutation with extra powers at her disposal, though she tends to rely more on guns and explosives to do her mercenary work.  I have to say that my attachment to her is in part because I created her first as a roleplaying character on a roleplaying forum and I have fond memories of the people I played her against.  The rest of my attachment simply stems from this cyberpunk character being such a unique character to me.  She’s my one indulgence in pure science fiction.

This entry was more rambling than I would have liked, but I thought I’d try a more stream of consciousness style for this entry.  Cyberpunk is one of the many reasons that I love science fiction.  And while I rarely delve into the deeper meanings, it’s still interesting to take a peek into them now and then.  Cyberpunk is one way for us to examine our humanity in a world grounded in reality.

My next entry will focus on the sprinkling of off-shoots the “punk” movement has caused.  Dieselpunk, biopunk, even elfpunk!

"Or my tigers will eat your brains!"

Oh and as a side note I received an e-mail confirmation of my registration with the 3-Day Novel Contest.  So it’s official, I’m dedicated to do this Labor Day Weekend.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.  I need to find someone around here who’d be willing to be my witness for the contest.  Perhaps I’ll ask one of my writer friends or a co-worker.

Along with the e-mail confirmation they sent this nifty little graphic.  I like the caption.  They should add “Or my tigers will eat your brains.”

Never mind, I added it for them.  Ha!