A Guide to Retropunk - Part One

[espanolbot]

Working on a megastrip that I've been meaning to complete for a while now, but in the meantime, here are some of the cartoons I've been drawing explaining the differences between different types of retropunk.

Because not everything is steampunk.








Steampunk is next, followed by Electropunk, Dieselpunk etc.

And the Flintstones is totally what's going on on the groundlevel in the Jetsons.

Comments

[zapbiffpow]

So Dishonored is clockpunk? Or is it still steampunk?

Cracked did a mind-blowing article about nightmarish universes (Flintstones, Jetsons, Scooby-Doo) that somehow jives with that last theory.

[espanolbot]

Dishonored is a steampunk universe moving into an electropunk one, if that makes sense? The aethetic is a combination of Victorian London, as well as earlier stuff from round the Great Fire of London some two hundred year prior, but the majority of the tech operates on electricity generated from burning whale oil.

So it's kind of moving from one to the other, but so rapidly that chunks of society aren't moving at the same speed, see?

[wake_the_dragon]

Nice comic and very informative.

I really need to read more clockpunk books. I like the clockwork asthetic (and think it's interesting to read about a world where technology is at least partialy based on clockwork) and I think the historical eras involved are interesting (I always liked learning about the French Revolution in history classes).

[turtlefu]

I always thought the "punk" in "Steampunk" accounted for its anachronastic elements. So, for example, if a story takes place in Ancient Greece but is mostly historically accurate, then it isn't "Sandalpunk"

The line between Clockpunk and Steampunk is vague, because clockwork was still technologically important during the steam era and Steampunk loves clockwork.

[espanolbot]

The punk part comes primarily from the original term cyberpunk (which I'll get to later), which in its basic terms revolves around people living outside the law and against the system that uses technology against them. So like the Matrix, Neuromancer or Blade Runner.

Steampunk itself came around following works like the Difference Engine (itself a good book I'd recommend), though not all the tech was steampowered there. Essentially it's Jules Verne-style science fiction writ-large, which is interesting as he wrote at least one story based in our present that was oddly accurate in its predictions...

But yeah, there isn't always a clear line seperating these things. Girl Genius is mostly steampunk, but has a great deal of clockwork and electrically powered stuff in it as well, for example.

[his_spiffynesss]

I always took Steampunk in it's origin was more of a deconstruction to the Scientific Romance genre. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells often created fantastical worlds where scinece triumphed over all. Steampunk was more about adding some Charles Dickens cynicism of the oppressive nature of modern living.

Though in practice today Steampunk is the label applied to anything of quasi-Victorian origin.

[bewareofgeek]

In general, I prefer "Teslapunk" over "electropunk"

And you missed a couple of eras, like "Bronzepunk" (which is a bit later than sandalpunk, and usually mentions Archimedes, Atlantis and/or Alexandria) and medieval-based tech, which has been variously called Castlepunk, Candlepunk, or (if a bit dystopian) Plaguepunk.

[espanolbot]

I'd have thought that Bronzepunk would be covered by Sandalpunk, what with it technically covering both bronze and iron ages. Castlepunk I'll come to later.

[bewareofgeek]

It's a subjective thing, really. There's no "right" answer, because at the end of the day, genre labels are basically meaningless.

(Disclaimer: I can be a bit pedantic about this... I've been giving panels on the history of steampunk and the other -punks at conventions for almost a decade).

[glprime]

God bless TV Tropes and its indexes. Behold! Punk Punk!

(Sorry if this ruins some of the fun, I'll remove if OP wishes)

[espanolbot]

It's fine, I was just going by my definitions and doing this for drawing exercise anyway. :)

[salinea]

Remember when the "punk" part of the compoundpunk genres was important?

[espanolbot]

Over saturisation of retroscience fiction means the initial themes were lost some time back, though Steampunk itself didn't really share the "fight the system with technology" themes of Cyberpunk in the first place.

Cyberpunk's themes being of how technology can be used to oppress people, making it something to be feared, while Steampunk is more about how technology is awesome and is generally more optimistic (depending upon whether the creator wants to focus on how 19th century people sw themselves, how the writer saw them or what they were like from historical point of view).

[icon_uk]

Steampunk is more about how technology is awesome and is generally more optimistic

Not sure I'd agree with that, or it's at least somewhat slanted. Most of the steampunk I've read actually makes references to the fact that the class system is still in place and the peasants are still being grossly exploted, be it in the woolen mills or the acetate factories producing the vast number of punchcards their tech requires.

If the story is set amongst the upper classes, as they are wont to be, then the sad lot of the oppressed masses are frequently not referred to or are, in contrast, of absolute importance to the plot. There seems to be little middle ground.

[espanolbot]

The middle class don't really figure that much into steampunk, unless they find something that associates with something that working or upper class people are up to.

The middle class former army guys in the excellent Scarlet Traces comic, for example, investigating a mystery that takes them to a Scotland that hasn't faired too well in a Britain rebuilt with Martian tech after their failured invasion (the price of the wealth in the south is working conditions made worse in the north, with partial martial law and violently stamped out attempts to unionise the workers to get a better deal, for starters).

[icon_uk]

I didn't mention the middle class, I mentioned the middle ground. :)

[salinea]

Some steampunk work did. Though when it became popular as an aesthetic it was quickly lost.

While it was an era where people were very optimistic about science, there certainly was enough exploitation and alienation as result of the industrial revolution (as well as other stuff like colonisation) to be a theme highlighted in steampunk.

[curlyjo1]

If nothing else, I love the overall term, "retropunk."

[donnblake]

I prefer Retrofuturism myself.

[crinos]

You forgot to add the Sunday comic strip B.C. to the stonepunk list.

[deleonjh]

I don't know, how productive is all this hair-splitting? By which I mean, does all this sub-classification improve our understanding of a fictional work's themes, the author's intent, the context in which the intended audience would have understood the work, and so on and so forth? And how applicable is this -punk label when many of the creators of the works you've cited would have no idea that they're supposed to be part of some over-arching punk fictional meta-narrative?

Plus a lot of the works you've cited seem to have inadvertently become -punk more as a result of poor historical research or just not giving a shit as opposed to being a deliberate aesthetic choice.

[espanolbot]

I don't know, I did admit that my definitions, and they're just what I'd define as each of these things, are kind of splitting hairs.

But I was just having fun drawing people in different styles, making jokes and the cliches involved and sharing them with other people. :)

[bariman]

And the Flintstones is totally what's going on on the groundlevel in the Jetsons.

O_O That explains so much.

These are neat, I'm looking forward to the rest!