Punk Punk - Television Tropes & Idioms

In the '80s, semi-nihilistic visionaries like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote a lot of dystopian novels set twenty minutes into the future, where they explored the dehumanizing effects of technology and the growing class divide. They called this Cyberpunk, and it was good.

The stories also had a lot of badass longcoats running around wearing mirrorshades and other cool things. Other authors latched onto these elements, first turning cyberpunk away from the vision the original authors had, then applying the aesthetic to other time periods, creating Punk Punk settings.

A Punk Punk setting is generally based on either a historical period or another genre. The technology (and/or magic) level is turned way up, an ultra-modern sensibility is grafted on, and things are a lot more badass. This isn't to say they're necessarily ''bad'', of course; some of the works are quite poignant in their own right, or at the very least quite fun, but they do bandy the "Punk" ethos around like a fashion statement.

Examples

Atom Punk: The world of pulp sci-fi of the 1940s and 50s where everything from inter-galactic space ships to pens is atomic powered (Atomic is just, you know, BETTER!); i.e. before we discovered atomics actually make your hair fall out and force you to vomit up your lungs. We now know its pure silly fantasy as the science makes absolutely no sense but so what, lets regard it as atom punk and enjoy it anyway!
Bio Punk: Punk with genetic engineering instead of computing. Lots of self-modification, Gattaca Babies and Organic Technology. Bio Punk tends to either take a "that's so cool!" attitude and have things like Talking Animals, living buildings and Living Ships, or Green Aesops about creating what you can't control. It often explores both What Measure Is A Non Human and What Measure Is A Non Super, sometimes in the same story.
- Also note that Bio Punk is often held to, specifically, be a sub-genre of Cyberpunk.
Cattle Punk: Punk Punk in the Wild West. A lot of high-tech involved, whether it's Steam Punk tech or modern tech depends on the individual author. Shares a lot of flavor with The Western, since there's plenty of badass flavor already present. There is considerable overlap here with the Space Western. Wild Arms is mostly this with a bit of Desert Punk, as is Trigun. Brisco County Jr and The Wild Wild West movie were both Cattle Punk.
Clock Punk: Relies on artsy clockwork mechanica; may have a Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci kind of flavor.
- A Tabletop RPG example is Deadlands: The Weird West, though it seems to slide between Cattle Punk and Clock Punk as the players demand.
- Later Discworld novels combine this with some Dungeon Punk tropes.
- The Syberia Adventure Game duology revels in all kinds of clockwork mechanisms: from a Cool Train that has to be rewound at each station, to quasi-sentient clockwork robots... uh, I mean automatons.
  - The word Robot didn't exist until the 20th Century. Not sure why they wanted to avoid an anachronism by that point, though.
- Deadly Rooms Of Death has no form of power generation and no large beasts of burden, so the weights that power the clockworks of various machinery have to be rewound by human work.
- Pasquale's Angel by Paul J. McAuley is set in a Clockpunk-Rennaisance Florence with some Steampunk elements where Leonardo Di Vinci is an engineer instead of an artist. The protagonist teams up with investigative reporter Niccolo Machiavelli to solve a Locked Room murder and uncover a wider conspiracy.
- Gormenghast
Cyberpunk: The first Punk Punk setting, set Twenty Minutes Into The Future. It generally includes advanced cybernetics, ultra-powerful, totalitarian entities controlling the world with an iron fist (either governments or megacorporations), and a shockingly low value on human life.
- The definitive works are probably Neuromancer and Blade Runner from literature and film respectively. The Matrix is often suggested, but the fact that the protagonists are idealistic freedom-fighters disqualifies it.
~~Daft Punk: A couple of french robots who make techno music.~~
Desert Punk: The Punk Punk take on an After The End setting. Generally features lots of deserts (hence the name) and ruins, and Lost Technology being used to be even more Badass. Mutants and/or aliens are also a staple. Fallout is an example.
- Tabletop RPG example: Deadlands: Wasted West, made more obvious by listening to the soundtrack, which includes such tracks as "The Last War", "The Ruins" and "The Fight Goes On".
- Mad Max is probably worth a mention...
- Tank Girl
- DESERT. PUNK.
Diesel Punk: Chronologically between Steam Punk and Cyber Punk, or roughly between 1900-1970, with a strong Art Deco influence. Automobiles and gasoline are widespread, and electricity is the main energy source, though electronics are usually limited to radios, televisions, movie theaters and home appliances. A fairly rare setting, the most famous example is probably Metropolis (the book, movie and, to a much lesser extent, anime of the same name). Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow (2004) and the comic book series Iron and the Maiden qualify, and perhaps Batman The Animated Series. Tends to crop up in modern attempts at recreating the old pulp stories from the 1920s-1940s. Nazi super-science tends to have echoes of this.
- Diesel Punk + mind-croggling levels of electricity = Tesla Punk. Command and Conquer: Red Alert, obviously, as well as other bits of Sky Captain. The darker bits of Lensman show it too — of course, vacuum tubes are very, very power-hungry. Hints of it tend to show up whenever someone near the Cynical end of the Sliding Scale tries their hand at pulp.
- Also known as Raygun Gothic = Diesel Punk In SPACE!
- For a Japanese example, Last Exile. To some degree even stuff like Full Metal Alchemist.
- Texhnolyze is also an example of Deisel Punk, mixed with Cyberpunk - the only technology available even to the upper classes of the Lukuss society more advanced than a telephone are the titular Texhnolyze-prosthestics. The only computers seen are in the use of Doc, a former member of the Class, a distinct and technologically superior society, and among the Theonormals, another similar group.
- Bio Shock is Diesel Punk with gooey Bio Punk chunks and a heavy topping of Ayn Rand. Evolve Today!
Dungeon Punk: The logical extension of the Medieval European Fantasy. A heavily magical world where spells and enchanted artifacts take the place of modern technology.
- A similar case is the XCrawl setting for Dungeons And Dragons, though it has actual modern technology. Essentially, it is a horrible fusion of American Gladiators and the standard dungeon-crawl as the penultimate reality TV show, but with a surprising amount of effort put into explaining why there is a never-ending supply of goblins, etc., for the dungeons. Oh, and the North American Emperor is "Ronald I", so there are little bits of social commentary available for those who care about such things.
- Eberron, too.
Gothic Punk: Like the modern-day real world, only a lot more goth and emo. Various supernatural creatures control the world just below the surface, treating humans as at best cattle, and at worst expendable. There's also usually pandemic angst.
- There are currently too many Tabletop RPG examples to list them all, but arguably the first was the original World Of Darkness from White Wolf Game Studios, some editions of which even use the actual term.
- The Crow was probably the first noteworthy film example. Since then we've seen numerous examples in film (Blade, Underworld), television (Blood Ties, Moonlight), in print (the Anita Blake books, The Dresden Files, and dozens of other vampire romances) and occasionally in manga/anime (Death Note).
- Johnny The Homicidal Maniac is all over this.
Ocean Punk: aka Pirate Punk. Where, in contrast to Desert Punk, the whole world has been entirely or almost entirely engulfed in water, causing inhabitants to either evolve and live underwater or fight to the death over the few patches of dirt left. Usually comes with a massively Anvilicious anti-global-warming Aesop. See Water World, parts of Mega Man Legends and The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Tales of Legendia plays with this trope, but leaves a lot more land intact than usual for an Ocean Punk setting. Jabberjaw was an early, less dystopian take on Ocean Punk.
- The settings of The Pirates Of Dark Water could be called "Island Punk", as there is no mainland, just seas and tiny islands; you have to sail to get anywhere. One Piece may also be considered Island Punk.
- Skies Of Arcadia takes it up to Sky Punk.
Splatterpunk: A horror subgenre with emphasis on graphic violence and on driving ordinary people to psychotic brutality. An obsolescent term for extreme horror (or whatever the kids are calling it these days).
Steam Punk: The second Punk Punk setting, Steam Punk was originally an affectionate Deconstruction of the dismal Cyberpunk future. Typical plots are set during some period of the Industrial Revolution, especially the Victorian era, and, in imitation of the fantastic futuristic tech from Cyberpunk, includes incredible steam-powered machinery in the vein of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. This setting tends to be more romantic and heroic than most Punk Punk settings. Many animated movies by Hayao Miyazaki are prominent examples. For other examples, check out Phil and Kaja Foglio's Girl Genius or William Gibson's The Difference Engine. Kaja Foglio coined the term "Gaslamp Fantasy", both because Steam Punk is fundamentally different from all the other Faux Punks, and because there was already a comic which used "Steampunk" as the name.
Mash Up Punk: Taking a usable-sized chunk of the world outside your window (such as your hometown and a reasonable portion of the surrounding countryside) and hurling it through time and space to some-when else. Most effectively used in the Ring Of Fire Shared Universe created by Eric Flint (in which a small West Virginia town is ripped from its time/space coordinates and plopped down into Germany, 1631).
Post Cyber Punk is a kinder, gentler version of Cyber Punk. The protagonist tends to have higher social status, and computers are not seen as a tool of corporate domination.
Sumer Punk, or Sandal Punk: Splice "Ancient Astronauts" with Cyber Punk and Bamboo Technology at the dawn of classical civilization, and you come close to this.
- Snow Crash falls just short of this in saying that an ancient human/god programmed people like computers, in order to save the very Graffiti Punk world from a neurovirus
- Closer examples would be any kind of pseudo-dystopian world set on earth in prehistory, especially with absurd levels of technology. In the Illuminatus! trilogy, some descriptions of Atlantis and Mu fit this, but for most circumstances they are too utopian.
- The SCP Foundation's SCP-348 is an Aztec analytic engine, containing a sapient AI of superhuman intelligence.
- L. Neil Smith's Crystal Empire combines a Clock Punk hero with an Aztec Empire that has advanced tech thanks to a drug that enables it's enslaved savants to mentally travel across dimensions and steal their tech.
- The Antikythera mechanism is a Real Life Sandal Punk device.
Stonepunk, which focuses on pre-technological developments in pre-historic times, its juxtapositions of the modern world with the primitive; with action and adventure. The effects of an early form of 'advanced' technology on society, based on primitive materials such as rock, fire, clay, rope, wood and water. Unlike most classic steampunk influenced fiction, there is a modern template of technology inspired through the primitive base of material that is supplied by the elements and environment during the Stone Age.