Aside from aesthetics, I don’t want any cyberpunk. I’m not sure I can handle even a dash of “I slot this chip in my head to behave like this dead celebrity so other people can fuck my body, but on the plus side I’m not aware of it while it’s happening”.
Sign me up for solarpunk tho.
I mean, it’s supposed to be a dystopian world. You’re not supposed to want the world they’re giving you, hence the “punk” part. Too many people ignore that punk movements are meant to fight against an established system. That’s what punk is. When you say something is solarpunk or steampunk you are implying a downside to the established order. If nobody is rebelling it’s not punk.
Personally I see appeal in virtual worlds and a bit of the asthetic. But putting screens on everything isn’t sustainable at all. I guess cyberpunk is a sufficiently abstract concept for everyone to have their own qualifiers for what counts.
Virtual worlds are fine. Less so the armed gangs stealing cybernetics out of living people. And corporations doing the usual corporation thing.
Dieselpunk!
I’m ready for Great War: The Remake. Put me in an A7V and send me to my death; I am ready!
HEADS UP!
BANDITS COMING IN ON THE PANDORA!
I MAKE FOUR PEACEMAKERS, BRITISH MARKINGS
Rifftrax version, sure, but not on its own.
I unironically love it. The fact that it has a big tribute to the Fleischer Superman cartoon The Mechanical Monsters helps. I had it on VHS when I was a kid.
Also, come on, zeppelin battle!
I’ll watch The Rocketeer for my zeppelin fix. Plus Jennifer Connelly.
I love both. And both are dieselpunk.
What’s cypherpunk?
Free and open access to encryption and therefore privacy, usually by developing FOSS encryption.
The manifesto is a good and quick read. Steven Levy’s Crypto covers the movement a bit too. It’s a bit strange to use it in this context because there’s not much more to it than PoC or GTFO, communication is key, encryption for everyone. You can’t really replace a more complete paradigm like cyberpunk with cypherpunk. I’d even go so far as to say you can’t combine solar and cypherpunk because cypherpunk is a direct response to the misuse of tech and government whereas solarpunk is about great government tech without the negativity.
Is solarpunk really punk though? Its like saying Utopias are punk.
It is. The difference is cyberpunk is “this is what will happen if we don’t fight back against the system” and Solarpunk is “this is what we could have if we DO fight back against the system”.
There are also problems in solarpunk worlds, they’re just different from our own present day issues. It’s like, we solved the climate crisis, but there is still an ever expanding frontier of injustice to rally against.
It only looks like a Utopia if you have 000 hope for the future
Solarpunk is often displayed as pretty post apocalyptic, but in a green, scrapper, free way
Solarpunk seems positioned pretty firmly against the established corporate world. If being anti-establishment isn’t punk, I’m not sure what is.
In this scenario, solar energy is the establishment though.
That’s not what establishment means
I get what they’re saying though. It’s so unimaginable that we switch to sustainable tech with the current economic and political apparatus as-is, that it makes that kind of post-climate-crisis world seem Utopic.
Anyway solar punk is about the audacity of imagining a future where we win on even that one tiny point, if not (necessarily) dismantling capitalism, fixing inequity, fascism, etc etc.
It is inherently NOT punk.
How so?
You know how the stuff -gate means scandal? -punk means fictional genre, or aesthetic.
Maybe now but that is not what it meant in the 80s when cyberpunk and cypherpunk were coined. I am sure the punks are quite pissed off that their movement has been reduced to an aesthetic.
Solarpunk is best punk ngl
Anything in the hopepunk area is a win for me
None of the above.
BIBLEPUNK LET’S GOOOOOOOO
His Dark Materials series then
Any solar punk recommendations other than “Monk and Robot”?
