The genre I write and publish in under this name generally falls unto the steampunk and cyberpunk headings. These themselves are subsets of science fiction, and as far as my fiction is concerned, science fiction with a hint of fantasy.
Steampunk seems to me to be more easily defined in the literary sense. Broadly speaking, it is an aesthetic, which for many people involves dressing up in victorian clothing and having a lot of clocks and gears. I’m not going to go into steampunk cosplay; I’m only considering the literary genre.
Steampunk could be defined as retro-futurism, wherein we imagine what science fiction would look like from an 19th century perspective. Think Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. It would tend to involve mechanical engines and analogue computers (if they exist), advances in late 19th century technology and play upon the mores of that time period. A period of invention and enthusiasm for scientific advances.
Cyberpunk is a little harder to define, since it falls more easily into mainstream science fiction, a kind of future futurism, where advances are further along than our own time period, pushing the limits of what can be imagined today, but at the same time, drawing on current advances and speculating what the evolution of that technology might lead to. William Gibson is the prime example of cyberpunk, in most of his writings that I’m familiar with. We might also include Philip K. Dick’s works as well.
For both genres settings tend to be urban dystopia but they don’t have to be: decaying cityscapes, pollution, extreme class divisions. In the case of cyberpunk, there is the open ended universe of cyberspace.
Themes often include technology versus technology or technology versus humanity. Much of it involves the ugly underbelly of technological advancements and the effect this has on humanity and nature.
For period flavor, again in both cases, there seems to be concentration on “the look” but then again this is typical of any sort of period period literature, victorian clothing in the case of steampunk or futuristic (whatever that means, synthetic?) clothing. Central characters have access to and use advanced tools or weapons that aren’t commonly available to random background characters.
That is a brief overview of the steam- and cyber- but there is also the punk part that seems to get overlooked by a lot of authors. Punk at its essence is antagonistic to social and societal norms. It tries to shock and it is iconoclastic.
This is not meant to be a graduate school dissertation. It’s the first draft of a blog post. Feel free to disagree with any or all parts of it. I’m writing this mostly as a response to questions I’ve seen posted on r/steampunk on reddit. I’ll try to update and repost it going forward.
#steampunk #cyberpunk #scifi #science fiction #fantasy
Ion Fyr 