Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to differentiate the ____PUNK GENRES (Guest speaker!)

A friend of mine talking about the different ____punk genres. Give a warm welcome to Daniell, everyone:

Hi everyone Daniell here. I'm going to explain the punks to you, or rather the steampunk and cyberpunk genres. There seems to be a lot of confusion going on lately about what they are so hopefully this will clear things up for some people.

Steampunk is a very open genre that tends to take place in a Victorian style setting or during a industrial revolution.There tends to be a heavy reliance on machinery and new inventions galore. The idea of combining new technology with old style workings tends to dominate the genre, however electricity tends to be a more recent invention or not around at all. There are no pretty screens, no TVs or computers. Guns are in existence but not things like missiles. There might be cars but they’ll be extremely old fashioned. Other than that there are no central themes. So long as this sort of industrial world full of machinery is there it can be considered steampunk.

Cyberpunk as genre is a lot more specific. It’s believed to be the first “punk” genre and because of that it lives up to it's name with both punk and cyber aspects. The punk tends to deal with rebellion, the most common being rebelling against the government or some higher agency that has far too much power. The cyber aspect comes in while dealing with the technology. There tends to be an abundance of computers or computer like technologies and other advanced technologies. Hackers run wild and cyberspace can become a battlefield. What cyberpunk isn’t about is anything out of human control. Massive disease comes and kills people? Not cyberpunk. Earth blows for whatever reason? Still not cyberpunk. cyberpunk is all about humans as a species causing their own problems and then a minority trying to fix them or at least prevent them from getting any worse. cyberpunk also takes place a near future, within the next hundred years or so.

Now cyberpunk is not dystopian anymore, Nope, nada, not happening or at least not with how dystopian novels are now written. Twenty years ago that wasn’t the case but in modern times I repeat; dystopian is not cyberpunk. dystopian novels deal with the aftermath of an event. The Hunger Games for example. The world got into a massive war, tons of people died, thus the districts and capital were established. The books all take place after this happened. cyberpunk novels would take place right before the war or during, not after. cyberpunk novels revolve around a theme of rising to action before things are in complete ruin. dystopian novels are all about complete ruin. While the two are very similar they are not the same.

Now steampunk and dystopian can sometimes work together. The idea with those is that after the massive horrible event technology reverted back to a time of things mostly being steam powered and without all our pretty flashy screens. However, then steampunk becomes a sub genre of dystopian seeing as it happens after the event.

I highly suggest looking into steampunk, cyberpunk, or any of the other punk genres out there if you think your novels might be one of them. Looking into other books, or even at movies and clothing styles will give you a better feel for the genres. However remember that things like the various punk fashions are not the same as book genres. While they may give a general feel for what you’re working with they are still a different medium and thus work differently than books do.