Steampunk |
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48.4% (74) |
Cyberpunk |
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30.1% (46) |
Aren't punks those british guys with the nails in their face? |
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21.6% (33) |
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Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2664 Joined: 4 Nov 2007     | |
Muckraker  Posts: 272 Joined: 22 Nov 2007    |
Retro-futuristic is how people in the past expected the future to be, think The Jetsons. Steampunk is a culture like the Victorian era (1830 ~ 1901) with advanced steampowered technology. Steampunk can be a sub-genre of retro-futurism, but a lot of retro-futurism is not steampunk. |
On the Record  Posts: 5674 Joined: 2 Dec 2007    |
Ah, I see. Doesn't Steampunk also extend to the 50's as well, during the time of WW2? |
Muckraker Posts: 272 Joined: 22 Nov 2007 |
It can be stretched to that era, but it's borderline and in the eye of the beholder. |
On the Record Posts: 5674 Joined: 2 Dec 2007 |
Oh ok, thanks. The way I work it out, if it has fins on it, it's retro. If it has steam and pipes, it's steampunk. Most parts of Fallout are very steampunk(ish). The alien laser gun, the ship to the Enclave base, some of the rbots and some of the general feel of what yesteryear was before the nuclear war. Although some of the robots are very retro like the speedy hooving robots. And then some are sort of pulp action like the brain-bot things. I guess it's a nice mix of genres like Trifle. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2108 Joined: 13 Dec 2007  |
Snow Crash was supposed to be punk? I didn't really get that aspect, but I guess maybe. |
On the Record  Posts: 7327 Joined: 23 Dec 2007    | What we need is a Skyland-type RTS game. Homeworld meets Rise of Legends. What do you think? |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2275 Joined: 13 Sep 2007  | Idlewild is my favorite book ever, and I'd say it's Cyberpunk from this, but not being too much of a fan of genres, I'm not exactly sure what Punk entails. |
Paperboy  Posts: 30 Joined: 23 Feb 2008     | I love them both, I'm a proud owner of a top hat and pocketwatch and love the whole I make stuff fly with coal! kinda thing about steam punk, but I voted Cyberpunk. Or more Cybergoth. Now that fun stuff. How do you look creepy while wearing neon? People found a way. Plus, Ghost in the shell is the coolest show ever. Ya rly. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 2664 Joined: 4 Nov 2007 |
Well from my limited understanding cyberpunk has the punk suffix because it used many of the same themes as punk itself (and because writers were trying to be hip). Steampunk evolved separately and I think the punk part is largely meaningless. Correct me if I'm wrong. |
On the Record Posts: 5674 Joined: 2 Dec 2007 |
I think that's right. They added the 'punk' at the end of Steampunk because of the term Cyberpunk. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 2664 Joined: 4 Nov 2007 |
Well it's wikipedia entry says it "followed in the footsteps of" some cyberpunk novels. Snow Crash seems much bubblier than real cyberpunk has any right to be, true, but it's story, setting and protagonist are taken right out of the cyberpunk playbook. |
On the Record Posts: 7327 Joined: 23 Dec 2007 | Necro! I think there's not enough crossover between both of these genres. (Make sure it's written well if there's going to be, Video Game Developers.) |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1871 Joined: 11 Jun 2008    | i still don't get why the word "punk" was co-opted for the "Steam Punk" term since it has literally nothing to do with anything punk. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2279 Joined: 16 Aug 2008     | Steampuuunk!!! |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 4347 Joined: 9 Jul 2008  | I chose the third choice because it's too hard to choose between the two. And aren't punks those british guys with the nails in their face? Seriously. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2163 Joined: 15 Jun 2008    | Don't...make...me... choose... -argle-
No, it's not cyberpunk- where's all the nifty technology? It's just normal tech- cars, boats etc. with added bits of metal and guns. It has an almost dirty feel about it. It's post-apocalyptic punk, if anything. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2843 Joined: 1 Feb 2008   | Cyberpunk was supertrendy when steampunk first came out, and one of the first and most influential of the steampunk novels, The Difference Engine, was written by the two pioneers of cyberpunk, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. The media sees two cyberpunk authors applying their cyberpunk sensibilities to steam technology, replaces cyber- with steam- and that's how you get steampunk, because the media didn't have a convenient marketing buzzword to describe the hybridizing of Victoriana and scifi. Really, you could make the argument that Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were the first steampunk authors. |
BANNED  Posts: 740 Joined: 19 Jun 2008   |
I always figured in the case of steampunk, steam was relatively the only attainable resource. User was banned for: I'm Finished. (Permanent) |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2079 Joined: 1 Jan 2008 | Would A Clockwork Orange qualify as steampunk? |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2892 Joined: 6 Mar 2008  | Geez, with all this terminology flying around, it's almost as bad as the sub-genres of hard rock (metal, death metal, metal-core, et al.). Anyway, I voted Steampunk - I find it has a more pleasing aesthetic. BioShock is incredible, even though I wouldn't have really called it Steampunk myself. I'm not sure what you would call it... Pulp-punk? Mad Science-punk? |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1113 Joined: 19 May 2008  | Damn you for making me choose! Nrgghh.... cyber. It's kinda limited what you can do with steampunk. Cyberpunk has endless possibilities.
Not really. It's just... bizarre. Orwellian is the term that comes to mind, but I'm not sure if it fits. |
Gone Gonzo Posts: 1113 Joined: 19 May 2008 | Sorry for double post, I'm very tired. I'll go to bed now, I promise. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 3364 Joined: 23 Oct 2007    |
Are you sure it was the Difference Engine and not the Analytical Engine? They had plenty of designs similar to the Difference Engine ever since the 1880s, I believe. The Difference Engine was just a giant steam calculator; it was the Analytical Engine that would have been the first computer. Interestingly, if it had been built, Babbage's Analytical Engine would have been not only the first progammable computer, preceding the Zuse Z3, the first computer ever made and developed in 1933, by about eighty years, and would have been compliant with the Church-Turing Thesis, essentially meaning that it could do any calculation that a modern computer could do, and compliant more than ninety years after the thesis was formulated. |
On the Record  Posts: 6739 Joined: 10 Apr 2007  | You can also add in the _Space: 1889_ role-playing world as a great example of steampunk. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1579 Joined: 6 Jun 2008    | Well, seeing as the only other internet forum I post on is cyberpunk.co.uk, I think that gives you the answer. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1900 Joined: 22 Jul 2008   |
Wait, you met William Gibson? Now that is freaking awesome. I wish he hung out in cafes round my area, especially because I'm using his works as my influence for my 4 Unit English major work. Oh and by newer works do you mean Spook Country? |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2585 Joined: 27 Sep 2008   | The Daft kind obviously :P Or steampunk. The combination of the old and new sparks my imagination more, cyberpunk got a bit old. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 772 Joined: 25 Jun 2008   | Steampunk, cyberpunk, Magipunk, Any punk. I likes them all. Give me an airship full of Bombchu equivalent constructs and a few release mechanisms to drop them off on the unsuspecting world and I am one happy little halfling in ANY D&D setting, or RIFTS, or just about anything. They are all just amazing and fun ways to play a game or write a book, I just think we need more 'punk' subsets. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2621 Joined: 27 Aug 2008  | Although I like the Steampunk aesthetic a lot more Cyberpunk seems to have created the better films/games/literature. Cyberpunk is described as "high technology meets low life", to me that is more exciting than the admittedly cool steampunk worlds. Plus, if its a choice between Bioshock and Deus Ex I am always going to be sticking with the Denton boys. |
Muckraker  Posts: 348 Joined: 25 Nov 2008   | I guess for me the definition of steampunk is but one thing: Arcanum. |
Muckraker  Posts: 245 Joined: 27 Dec 2007 | This thread has been done before. |
News Room Contributor  Posts: 3895 Joined: 21 Feb 2008   | I don't have a favourite really. On the one hand, Steampunk harkens back to an almost elegant period in history, whereas Cyberpunk looks forward to a future that might be. I love both of them because I like technology. There's an inherent beauty in a clockwork device, be it a watch, a giant robot, or a flying machine, and there's an inherent beauty in tiny devices that connect people together and can access libraries full of information in the blink of an eye and biology and technology fused together. The one problem I have with cyberpunk though, is that far too many people get hung on 80s cyberpunk, like the Neuromancer/Sprawl Trilogy. Cyberpunk, like any futurist writing, moves with the times. William Gibson's next set of books, the Bridge trilogy, shows a completely different future, one shaped by the present it was written in. Steampunk doesn't really suffer from this, as it's much easy to read about what came before, then to guess what might be coming. Still love them both though. EDIT:
If you check the dates on the earlier posts, this may be the thread that you're thinking of. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2345 Joined: 14 Jan 2008  | Neuromancer/Count Zero/Mona Lisa Overdrive books are amazing cyberpunk gets my vote just cause of those books Although steampunk sounds interesting. All Clockwork stuff just seems cooler, so im torn between the two. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 931 Joined: 17 Sep 2008   | Steampunk because of the whole using what's left off the world to make things while still using our knowledge of science. I was going to say Daft Punk and hope for a pity laugh but I was beaten to it... who cares, I choose Daft Punk. |
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I was disappointed by Neuromancer too, for the same reasons. Plus I'd already finished several later cyberpunk books (eg Snow Crash) before I tracked it down and by then I was sick of the same characters, tropes, settings and writing style. It's sucks that the cyberpunk's inventor suffered because I'd already sated myself on other genre paragons and imitators.