Punk Punk - No love for the 60s-70s?

So I realized something while looking over the list of Punk Punk sub genres. There's a pretty clear line of progression from the dawn of man to modern day that is for the most part unbroken:

Stonepunk (Stone Age)

Sandalpunk (Bronze Age through Iron Age)

There's really nothing that covers medieval times, but I'm not concerned about that right now. Dungeonpunk mostly takes care of that.

Clockpunk (Rennaisance through the advent of steam power)

Steampunk (The beginning of steam power right up to World War I)

Dieselpunk (Beginning of World War I through the end of World War II)

Atompunk (The end of World War II through the early 60s)

And here's where my problem lies. From here, it jumps straight to the early 80s through 90s with Cyberpunk. My question is... what about the 60s and the 70s? Why is there no retrofuturistic sub genre for that era? Not even one like Stonepunk that hasn't really been used, but exists in theory? Sure, I've seen people mumble about "Weedpunk" here and there, but there's not much information about it, and I don't really think it works, because while marijuana was a major component of the 60s and 70s, it didn't drive the technology the way the rest of the eras were run by the technology in their name. After all, we call it "Dieselpunk," not "Bootleg Alchoholpunk."

I've become obsessed with this potential but seemingly nonexistent genre. I want to know about it, I NEED to know about it, even if it doesn't actually exist. And so, I turn to you, fellow tropers. If there was a 1960s-1970s subgenre of Punk Punk... what do you think it would be like? What would the style look like, what sort of technology would they have? What fiction from the 1970s would it be based on? I'm not familiar enough with the era or the Punk metagenre in order to come up with this on my own, but maybe with you guys help, well, who knows? Maybe we can come up with something completely new.

Thoughts?

Are you sure atom-punk doesn't apply to that era?

I'd imagine it would look like Clockwork Orange or Logan's Run. Or one of those other "it's suppose to be the future but it's actually the 70's" sci-fi stories.

Is there a technology that could be said to be emblematic or even simply widespread in that era, at least that isn't present in some form today?

I suspect that the only reason that the 80s and 90s are represented at all is that they were either the present or future when cyberpunk was born, and thus were used as settings for the stories that founded the genre.

That said, perhaps Zeerust or "Rocketpunk" might work: rockets are used to propel everything, and one might even use miniaturised rockets connected by arms to wheels to make catherine-wheel motors.

How about Environpunk, with an emphasis on hippie-style mysticism, attunement to the natural forces of the Earth, and unrealistically effective renewable forms of power like wind and solar?

If there's a single big change between the 50s and the 60s-70s that can be pointed to, it's social, not technological.

Lovepunk, then? Essentially a setting in which free love is common, communes are the standard form of settlement, drugs are commonly used (and may well provide effective sources of information via visions and the like) all forms of violence are held in contempt and one of the core philosophies is "share and share alike"?

[edit]
It occurs to me that it might combine well with the aforementioned rocketpunk and likely the enviropunk mentioned above: the society described in the first paragraph of this post uses rocketpunk technology powered by enviropunk energy sources. Overall it might take the name "Flowerpunk"; the name doesn't really cover the "rocket" aspect, but does, I think, include the "love" and "environmental" elements.

edited 4th May '13 8:40:35 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

I for one imagined a similar idea, only it was more oriented around a war with the Soviet Union, so the military gear looks like it was pulled from Vietnam, but you had things like humanoid drones, battlefield computers, and Future Copter versions of Hueys. Of course, there is a prominent counterculture movement. It just got stalled by nuclear war. Most people on the East Coast were bashing each other's brains out for a can of beans when the Beatles should have become a cultural thing.

They also have cybernetics, but it really sucks. One of the major characters was Johnny Got His Gunned during the war and was rebuilt as a supersoldier. The results were less than super. Sure, he could lift heavy objects and run fast, but any fod needed to be sterilized, put in a blender, and sucked through a feeding tube in his throat. Obviously, Used Future abound.

That kind of punk is called "Transistorpunk."

An example of Transistor Punk trope is the original version of Iron Man's armor. The technology was miniaturized, high-powered transistors.

To be frank, when I think "60s and 70s", I think Life on Mars (2006). It's a great aesthetic to use, but not easy to turn into sci-fi.

If we're talking about wunderwaffe technology, now, that's when the future was defined by such marvelously impractical designs like the M60A2 Starship Patton and the MBT-70 project.

edited 7th Feb '15 5:32:55 PM by SabresEdge

I really don't see much of a difference from Atom Punk. If anything it's all the same stuff, and maybe based on different decades. Think of it more like mid-50s to the 70s.

Also, I think Diesel Punk kinda bleeds into the early 50s. Think of all those movies with technicolor cars and ice-cream-shop dates. To me, that feels more like the cutoff point of "Diesel Punk" than the start of "Atom Punk."

I once thought of "analoguepunk" (or "analogpunk" for you on t'other side of t'Atlantic)- kind of taking off cyberpunk but most of the technology is analogue (somehow) and computers take a back seat. Thought The Prisoner might be a kind of example- there seems to be lots of advanced technology in The Village but minus "The General" no computers, and you have Six as the guy who stands up to the system. Now, move it to a gritty urban environment instead of a quirky seaside resort, and you probably have it.

There's plenty of vintage sci-fi that you can find where computers haven't been thought of, though most is from the '50s. Even Asimov's Robots had some sort of artificial "postironic" brain and the early forays into computing machines were, IIRC, described as a technological dead end.

Dieselpunk lasted through the 50s where Atompunk started to take over, the latest you can go with Dieselpunk is the early 60s (Ala Bioshock).

But as for the 70s-80s. No punk era ever really fit there, when you look at it, all of their sci-fi ideals didn't have any neat fancy looking devices or looked like they were powered by diesel fuel, nuclear radiation or just plain imagination.

The 70s is where Alien and Star Wars started and thus began the era of the Used Future.

edited 20th Feb '15 5:04:22 AM by EchoingSilence

Yeah, that's my thoughts on dieselpunk/atompunk too: dieselpunk runs until 1950s, and 1960s are atomic-powered. I have no idea for The '70s, though - it would still be transistor-powered Atom Punk, just with the society getting more decadent after the Summer of Love and more reliant on atomic power after the Oil Embargo of 1973. Further than that, I would consider the eighties some early sort of Cyber Punk - neon lights, crime waves, first popular computers and so, first hackers.

Pretty much. Hell the first Cyberpunk stories were in the 80s. But 70s is so Used Future.

Ok, I found this topic page from Writer's Block and left it abandoned for two years.

And let you know that we found kinda example of late 20th century (includes probably for the late 60s and the 70s) as Cassette Futurism or otherwords as 'Formica' Punk. So at some point, this forum will be locked.

edited 21st Oct '17 6:24:50 PM by Franco-America2018

I grew up in the 70s, and I suggest that the defining technologies of the era were plastic and transistors.

Plastic wasn't invented in the 70s by any stretch. They had bakelite at the beginning of the century, and nylon just before World War II. Plastic use accelerated through the 50s, but it exploded in the 70s. This makes sense, as the 70s started to see products derived from the space industry (the early part of the 70s used to have products advertised as using "Space Age <insert material>").

The defining plastic is probably polyester. Again, polyester wasn't new in the 70s but its use exploded. The early half of the decade is known for its polyester leisure suits and the garish colors that were suddenly available. Even as a kid, I had a maroon polyester suit for church in the early part of the decade and a mint green suit almost half way through. (When I graduated high school, I had a navy blue three piece suit that was mostly a wool blend, as the polyester fad had run its course.) This aesthetic extended to other areas, particularly furniture. Garish colors were all the rage, particularly in oranges, yellows and golds.

Products started to become cheaper (both in cost and in build quality) as plastics and, in regard to electronics, transistor technology took hold. T Vs in the 60s were treated as furniture, with wooden enclosures (sometimes as large as cabinets). By the mid 70s portable T Vs were taking over, with plastic bodies replacing wood. Our first "portable" TV was a heavy 21 in (which was big for the era) and must have weighed 60 lbs or more. It was "portable" only in that it had a handle and no feet (you had to put it on some sort of stand, much as you do today).

Speaking of T Vs, I think our portable was the first "solid state" (i.e. transistor) TV. Prior to that they still used vacuum tubes. I remember going with my dad to a hardware store to get a replacement, and watching him plug several into a "tube tester" to see which one was blown.

Cheap transistor radios hit the market, allowing you to pick up radio signals everywhere. This was the start of truly portable music and one of the most obvious signs of electronic miniaturization.

It's funny how 70s nostalgia never really took hold. You don't see a lot of 70s "coming of age" stories. I think part of this is demographic, as the boomers were more nostalgic for the 60s, and their kids were nostalgic for the 80s.

Stuff from the '60s and '70s tends to focus more on social issues and how they bring about changes in human society, than on how new technologies affect humanity. For example, Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, just to name a couple off the top of my head.

So, just call it "Socio-punk."

edited 7th Mar '18 6:41:17 PM by pwiegle