Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Post-steampunk movements

Cory Doctorow at 1:03 pm Sun, Oct 16, 2011

— FEATURED —

Book Review

Black Code: how spies, cops and crims are making cyberspace unfit for human habitation

Book Review

We Can Fix it! - a graphic novel time travel memoir

Science

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle

Some post-steampunk ideas I had at yesterday's preview screening of Vintage Tomorrows (a documentary on steampunk and its relationship to technology), premised on the idea that new movements will simply subtract letters:

* Teampunks: dress like athletes
* Eamespunks: design chairs
* M-punks: use mobile devices
* Punkpunks: inhabit a notional contrafactual alternate history where Malcolm McLaren is responsible for all technological innovation after 1977

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE:  Funny • nycc • Steampunk

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

  • http://twitter.com/travyeso travis

    As someone fairly critical of steampunk, I can’t wait.

  • http://www.tumbleweed.net/ tyger11

    In a Punkpunk world, Bow Wow Wow is the most successful band of all time. I’m SO there, like a TV Savage!

  • Bucket

    I was Eamespunk before it was cool.

    • geekcalif

      Isn’t that wonderful?

  • http://twitter.com/samari711 samari711

    what about Seampunk? Imagining a world where mass production of clothing never happened.

  • http://twitter.com/johnnylemuria John Robinson

    I want the New Sincere Futurism. I want people dressing in silver lame with sunburst patterns on it. I want people hacking their roombas to see how many gadgets they can stack on them, then give the arms that wave around. I want useless rings and big dumb fins on _everything_.

  • Aram Jahn

    The Tea Punks have already shown up at some political rallies, armed, incoherent, and proud that Paul Revere wrote the Declaration of Rights Bill.

  • Antinous / Moderator

    Don’t get me started on the sergedeNîmespunks.

    • RadioSilence

      Did you google “all the denim”?

      • Antinous / Moderator

        ‘Denim outfit’.  That was the first image.  I’m disappointed that there were no ads for eye bleach on the side.

  • http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

    Stonepunk

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flintstones

  • Craig Smith

    Tampunks have the bestest hats

  • unklstuart

    iSteam – bloggers ranting about the industrial revolution

  • trefecta

    Dieselpunk was always cooler, if less environmentally friendly.

  • http://twitter.com/travyeso travis

    Actually there is something called seapunk now, so you’re probably onto something. 

  • sagodjur

    Have we officially jumped the sharkpunk by attaching -punk to the end of everything? Overuse seems to have turned it into the new -nik.

    Just wait for the republipunks, democrapunks, librepunks, hipsterpunks, veganpunks, applepunks, androidpunks, et cetera.

    Or may there will just be the antipunks.

    • John Ohno

      Well, we already have mathpunk… so, yeah, probably.

  • http://twitter.com/wrecktheinfotec Devin Mack

    Seapunk is not a real thing; there is no wikipedia entry for it, therefore it does not exist.

  • http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

    I am surprised that there hasn’t been a real revival of the 1940′s art deco aesthetic, with the oversized public monuments to ozymandian/fascist iconography and in consumer goods the combination of curvy colorful accents with stamped steel, valves and dials.  Diesel and Howard Hughes.

    • jetfx

      It’s called Raygun Gothic.

      • http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

        Thanks – I hadn’t seen the term before, but that’s a perfect description of it.

    • Antinous / Moderator

      I am surprised that there hasn’t been a real revival of the 1940′s art deco aesthetic, with the oversized public monuments to ozymandian/fascist iconography

      Living in Southern California, where half the municipalities require faux hacienda style in order to get a building permit, I’d be happy to see anything else.

      • http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

        I hadn’t made the observation before, but LA is definitely filled with examples of that style, considering that this guy was right by my office downtown.

        Now that I look again, with the position of that column the shot fits better with the 7-11 post.

  • subhan

    Paleofuturismpunk – inhabiting where the futuristic dreams of the 40s, 50s, & 60s all came to pass, and the 60s-00s saw no further technological inovation.  Flying cars, android sex slaves, personal helicopters for commuting,  hover toasters in every kitchen, and a calculator in every pocket!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=5310808 Christopher Locke

    I did an interview about a specific series of artworks I’m producing.  The interviewer asked me if I would describe my work as “steampunk.”  I said, “no, I wouldn’t classify it as steampunk.”  He then went on to list some other ____-punk words, and I said “no, I wouldn’t use any of those words, either.  Really, taking a word and slapping ‘punk’ on the end would probably make me look like a real dickhead.  Please don’t print that.”

    When the work appeared in print, it was described as “steampunk.”

  • Mona Morgan

    Creampunk. A world where soft serve, fro yo, margarine and 1% don’t exist. All ice cream has 16%+ milk fat. It’s a delicious world!

  • racerabbit

    What, no Stempunk? Everyone dressing up as trees, staging mock-battles between the Pontifs of the Conifs and the Deci-dudes.

  • arifyn

    Memepunk. 

    Every other kind of -punk is just a version of it.

  • Sam Blanchard

    I have threatened my wife that I will foment a Stonepunk movement. Approximating todays technology and supposing what culture would be like if it had never risen out of stone based technology. Oh yeah! a whole subculture wearing bone nose skewers and leopard print loin cloths, and stone textured think pads. I think we can sign up Ted Nugent today.

    • subhan

      Sorry, Sam, The Flinstones already did it, and it is *so* over

  • mortis

    memepunks.

    oh wai…

    ^m^

  • Richard Melvin

    samepunk: an alternate history based on the premise that, by a bizarre coincidence, everything turned out exactly the same as conventional history.

  • Richard Melvin

    Tamepunk: the world where the basis of all technology and warfare is domesticating strange magical beasts, and this sucks.

    • billstewart

      “Tamepunk: [...] domesticating strange magical beasts” –
      Paolo Bacigalupi’s Hugo-winning The Windup Girl has elements of this and clockpunk and genepunk, with mutant megadonts winding up springs as the main source of mechanical energy available in a post-peak-oil-warmed-globe dystopia.    “Repent, Heffalump, said the Tick-Tock Man!”

  • Richard Melvin

    Mastpunk: it’s the 18C, and a fighting ship with only five sets of rigging would be sent to the breakers. Frigates have seven masts, and ships of the line twelve or more, stretching a half a mile. A young naval officer wearing outlandish clothing is annoyed by this.

  • Richard Melvin

    Meatpunk: the magical aristocracy of the city rule with not an iron hand, but a flesh one. In the towers they are called flesh constructs, on the streets they are zombies.
     
    Either way, a knife, or any other legal weapon, can’t stop them. Rebellion may be impossible, but it is necessary.

  • ahwoo

    We’re doing WW2Punk here and making a film about it this summer.

    • http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

      Cool… That reminds me, wasn’t there a trailer for a “Nazis on the moon” movie floating around a while back.  Iron Sky or something like that.

  • Hubris Sonic

    hatepunks…   covers the mass of people who hate the whimsey in the steampunk genre.

  • John Ohno

    I’ve been trying to push ‘ataripunk’ for a while. It’s what cyberpunk would have been if it stopped trying to keep up with actual tech circa 1983, though more elaborate backstories usually involve the PARC UI for whatever reason never being prototyped, leading to a technical aesthetic where graphics are still associated with video games and work that is not inherently graphical in nature is still performed using non-graphical interfaces, despite the normal progression of other tech.

  • JoshP

    Claypunk??… No wait, that’s Chuck Testa.

  • http://unlikelyexplanations.com laurasbadideas

    Screampunk: everything looks like an Edvard Munch painting.

  • Evil Paul

    Punkpunkpunk

  • http://www.tumbleweed.net/ tyger11

    Bork!Bork!punk – where Sweden took over the world.

  • http://twitter.com/stephendann ($) Stephen Dann

    AMPunk: A world inhabited by people dressed as talkback radio listeners and shock-jock DJs and callback phone line operators… oh. It’s been done already?

  • http://jere7my.livejournal.com jere7my

    I am sooooo ready for steamdisco.

  • Chris Lee

    Selfesteempunk – feeling really good about your gear-covered corset.

  • Chris Lee

    Extreampunk – BASE jumping with top hat and goggles.

  • http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

    So what’s the prefix for the universe we actually inhabit? I always imagined people in the Steampunk universe reading speculative fiction about people living in suburbs.

    • Angel Moberly

      That would be Tamepunk.

  • http://twitter.com/nevolution Daniel Neville

    Hate to self promote, but I wrote the Eamespunk manifesto a few years back. Better living through plywood!

    http://nevolution.typepad.com/theories/2008/07/the-eamespunk-m.html

  • Edward Pearse

    My biggest problem with the various “suffixpunk” genres is the re-invention of existing genres by people too lazy to bother finding out the proper name (cf. Dieselpunk or Atom(ic)punk) , or they’re inventing micro-niche genres so specific that you’ll probably only ever encounter the word as an example, not as a published description.

  • http://twitter.com/ThoseDarnCats Those Darn Cats!

    Themepunk: Obsessive and mildly hipster-esque fans of theme parks, especially Disney. I first saw the term used by Geoff Carter here: http://www.yoursouvenirguide.com/2011/01/epcot-20-welcome-new-corporate-overlords.html .

  • CSBD

    If you get more than two or three of these “punk” groups standing near each other… you would be able to finally film a remake of “The Warriors”.

    Who gets to be Cyrus?

  • Tim Gingrich

    Carbonpunk: once the world is out of fossil fuels, young people who are not familiar with the evils of CO2 will dream of driving a real internal combustion engine vehicle “like the good ole’ days.” I wrote a story about it! The Future History of Travel (www.gotoofareast.com/tfhot)

  • Strato Head

     SelfAbusePunk: People who wank off by adding the pseudo suffix “punk” on to everything as if it wasn’t allready a lame cliche

    • CSBD

      Clichepunk-  no really, this is how the really hip and cool kids dress.

  • Doug Flint

    Wait, are you saying Malcom MacLaren ISN’T responsible for all technological innovation since 1970?

  • subhan

    Nazi punk, nazi punk, nazi, punk, fsck off!

    Tales of a world where Jello Biafra leads a zombie political dynasty attempting to overthrow Space Nazis that won WWII and subsequently developed a taste for speed metal.