Atompunk

Art by Alex Schomburg.

I have long called it a bored and tired trend in science fiction.

Just add "punk" as a suffix and you've got a new literary subgenre. It started (to the best of my limited knowledge) with cyberpunk and that made great sense at the time. After all, William Gibson was inspired by the increasing prevalence of computers, kids entranced with stand-up arcade games, and the punk movement of the late 1970s. Mix, shake, and serve, and you have something new and exciting.

Now we have steampunk. And dieselpunk. And biopunk. And nowpunk.

May I preemptively coin the term "Englishpunk" for campus novels about faculty? Why not? A few of these subgenres popping up don't have much "punk" in them, so that no longer appears to be a genre constraint.

I really am going somewhere with this.

On Facebook, I saw a fan page called "atompunk." I was skeptical at first, but something about the images people posted enticed me. They hearkened to a time that deceptively now seems simple. In the wake of World War II, our lives were destined to be brighter and better through the power of SCIENCE!

All our aircraft would be jet powered. Humanity would soon be moving outward to conquer space. Most importantly, all of it would be powered by atomic energy.

Of course the public at large hadn't yet come to fully understand the pesky side effects of radiation, but let's not harsh the buzz. For crying out loud, our lives were going to get better. Just look at this depiction of the family car, brought to you by atompunk:

It wouldn't all be a shiny utopia, though. We would face danger from alien invasion or monsters brought about by radioactive mutation. But those threats are nothing compared to the looming and omnipresent menace of Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union.

That's right, folks. I'm talking commies.

Once again though, the atom would save the day. All we needed do is make certain our arsenal of atomic weapons surpasses all rivals, therefore none would dare strike us.

Note: language use here is key. Things are all "atomic" at this point, and not "nuclear."

What exactly about it is "punk" though?

Well, I guess you could say it's found in the beginnings of social change during the Cold War. That was a time when teens had just started to grow defiant with adults. "I just don't understand my kid," was something of a common phrase. Just look to the popular culture of the times for this, the movies of James Dean just as a for-instance.

There are more novel and film examples of atompunk than you can shake a stick at. I'd recommend Forbidden Planet, The Thing (original one), and The Day the Earth Stood Still as being among the very best. If you're a true connoisseur so-bad-it's-good films, then you can't go wrong with Plan 9 from Outer Space.

For comic books, I suggest you look no further than The New Frontier from DC Comics with exquisite writing and art by the late, great Darwyn Cooke.

That's something else. Atompunk might even be seen as an art movement in and of itself. Just look at the above art by Cooke. It's bright. It's optimistic almost to the point of being Norman Rockwell. It's streamlined. It's still seen today, not just as kitsch but as serious marketing (note the logo for Sonic drive-ins.)

Would I like to write atompunk? Boy, would I. It has the escapist allure that I love, but then doesn't everybody these days? Only a jailer would oppose escapism. There is a naive optimism that is likewise tantalizing, even if my critical self keeps screaming "But it glosses over nuclear armageddon! Plus, the 'bright future' of the Space Age sure didn't seem to include anyone who was black or gay!" All too true. So would I write a snarky, critical parody? Too easy. Would I try to write it with every bit of seriousness as I could muster and attempt to treat it as high art while still remaining within the genre constraints? That might be a fun challenge.

Then again, maybe I shouldn't even try as nothing can beat Destroy All Humans.

Here are a few atompunk images I found that appeal to me. Don't know where the Japanese one is from, but it looks like fun.

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