Dieselpunk, Part 1: What’s in a genre, anyway?

This post has been stewing in my mind for quite some time, especially after seeing a few different Tumblr posts and some YouTube videos that try to tackle the distinction between the ever-growing array of genres labelled as somethingpunk— most frequently, steampunk and dieselpunk. I, of course, write dieselpunk, so that is a conversation that I always try and pay attention to, especially after solarpunk swept the creative areas of the internet over the last few years before fading out. I’ve written this post three times and have had radically different outcomes, so don’t consider this my final word.

Now, the posts in question that inspired are these tumblr posts (especially the third) and this video, which while I mostly agree with some of the things he says, I disagree vehemently with the main point. While there’s some good ideas here, I think we do both the genres and ourselves a disservice by letting aesthetic be the determiner of what’s a genre or not. I’ll go into more detail on why I disagree in a later post.

As a result, this is the first of what I predict will be a three-part post discussing the *punk genres. This one focuses on the meaning of genre to try and establish a foundation for the rest of what we’ll be discussing. The problem is that genre is an everchanging, fluid concept with an entire field of academic study (aptly called genre studies). Formally, what we often learn in high school is that genre is a form of literature—poetry, prose, and drama. Drama is material written to be performed (Shakespeare, screenplays, etc), poetry is written in metrical language (using poetic meter and other poetic techniques), while prose is everything not written in metrical language. However, I don’t think I have ever seen this concept of genre being used outside of high school classes and MFA applications. Sometimes genre is broken down into fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry. That’s a little more practical for the modern world than the traditional, but that still isn’t useful in this context.

Attebery’s Fuzzy Set

Ultimately, there’s really no solid definition that include all possibilities. Fortunately, scholar and professor Brian Attebery has already addressed that for us in his fuzzy set theory described in his 1992 book Strategies of Fantasy.

He borrows this concept of a fuzzy set from the field of mathematics. At its most basic, a fuzzy set is a set in which set members have varying degrees of membership. This contrasts with the traditional idea of a set where members are either in the set or not. Think of it as the difference between a professional basketball team, where team members have contractual stipulations and the roster is closely known, and the neighborhood pick-up league, where people drift in and out.

In Attebery’s theory, there is a center to this fuzzy set and everything is either more similar or less similar to that center, which helps identify how clearly something is or is not fantast. For him, the center of the fuzzy set is The Lord of the Rings. The more closely that any work resembles that work, the more strongly it can be described as fantasy. Of course, one of the main weaknesses here is that Tolkien’s work is not going to be the fuzzy set center for everyone at all time across the world. So it might be better to consider fantasy as a superset of fuzzy sets, with various centers that overlap with each other. One metaphor that might be helpful is the idea of a solar system. There are objects with greater and lesser gravitational pulls. Lord of the Rings might be the sun in this case, but as we get further away from there, other gravitational centers become more prevalent.

I’m thinking of The Dresden Files and urban fantasy in particular. While there are wizards, wands, and magic in these works, they don’t exactly seem very similar to Lord of the Rings, yet they are absolutely fantasy. In this case, I would argue that The Dresden Files are a more influential fuzzy set center for urban fantasy than Lord of the Rings, meaning that urban fantasy is sort of its own subset, with its own center, and own vague borders.

Rather like Faerie, the fuzzy set idea of genre has ambiguous and amorphous borders. This becomes increasingly clear when we shift our attention to the various –punk genres, especially dieselpunk. To start with, we have to look at cyberpunk, both the term and the content, as they did not develop simultaneously. Broadly speaking, cyberpunk began to develop in the 70s as various works of science-fiction were published. The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner is considered by many to be the first cyberpunk novel, although it was published in 1975 and the word cyberpunk wouldn’t be coined until 1983, while the movie Blade Runner, the image of cyberpunk in the mainstream public consciousness, was released in 1982. The word “cyberpunk” was coined in 1983 by Bruce Bethke as the title for one of his short stories. Then, most importantly, Neuromancer was published in 1984, won numerous prizes, and established itself as one of the most influential works of the century, in much the same way that Lord of the Rings had done three decades earlier for fantasy.

Likewise, Neuromancer became the center of cyberpunk’s fuzzy set. Other works were inspired and influenced by it, older works became associated with it, and the cyberpunk genre spun off from there like how a proto-solar system spits out asteroid chunks in planet formation. Critically, cyberpunk was heavily influenced by its cultural milieu, namely the 1980s. I’ll touch more on that later, but I want to specifically point that out as we begin looking at two other *punk genres— steampunk and dieselpunk. Steampunk, is well-established enough to be considered a genre, but as Radio Retrofuture and Alpaca-Clouds claim, dieselpunk likely does not.

And that, I’d argue, is because it lacks a fuzzy set center.

Examining Fuzzy Set Centers

Steampunk does, albeit one less recognizably mainstream than cyberpunk, or perhaps one less tightly defined. Interestingly, steampunk comes from several influences, and its early works were published simultaneously with, or even before, the main works of cyberpunk. Partially, this is because there was precedent for the types of stories that steampunk would come to tell in the scientific romances of the Victorian period and before. H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and Jules Verne were some prime examples. Then, over the preceding decades, writers continued to imagine alternate histories or technological advancements that might have arisen during the 19th century and writing science fiction based on that. Like cyberpunk, we can be relatively confident as the origin of the term “steampunk”, although it was originally “steam-punks,” as suggested somewhat humorously by author K.W. Jeter regarding his novel Morlock Night in a 1979 letter, although he described what he and his colleagues were writing as Victorian fantasies. Over time, as the aesthetic and themes coalesced, the fuzzy set essentially became the authors K.W. Jeter (Morlock Night and especially Infernal Devices), Tim Powers (The Anubis Gates), and James P. Blaylock (Lord Kelvin’s Machine). These established the tropes and themes of the Victorian setting, imaginary technology using steam engines, and the close relationship between steampunk and the British Empire. Then, in the 1990s, Paul Di Filippo published his Steampunk Trilogy, which appears to the be the first time the term appeared as part of a title, meaning there was a nearly two decade gap between the invention of the term and its identifiable use as a genre label.

As far as our fuzzy steampunk set (as opposed to fuzzy steampunk slippers) goes, ask a random person off the street and they will likely have a slight familiarity with the term. While the high point of steampunk seems to have ended, it was trendy enough for a while to get widespread and mainstream attention. The question, of course, is how do we differentiate between science-fiction from that historical era, the “Victorian fantasies” that Jeter wrote about, and Steampunk? There are a variety of ways we can catalog them- era, style, media, etc. But for this, we’re focusing on the *punk of steampunk.

What is Punk?

For that, we must turn our attention to idea of punk itself. The word goes back centuries (with Wiktionary having seen it attested all the way back to 1678), but really takes on new meaning to refer to people that society dislikes in the 20th century, primarily related to petty criminals, gay men, or weak who are sexually used by other men, especially in prison (again, see the Wiktionary entries). Then, in the 70s, we start to get punk rock and the punk subculture, itself derived and influenced by older ideas and artists (including Charles Dickens, appropriately enough for steampunk). Punk is itself very difficult to define (remember the famous anecdote of Billie Joe Armstrong being asked ‘what is punk’ and he answered by kicking over a trash can, followed by the interviewer kicking a trash can over themselves, only to be told that wasn’t punk, that was trendy?). Speaking very broadly again, punk generally tends to be about individualism, anti-fascism, personal expression, rejection of social norms, rejection of capitalism, an embrace of DIY ethos, aggressiveness, and in general, being different.

So when it comes to cyberpunk, steampunk, and dieselpunk, we can take that lens. For cyberpunk, it’s pretty easy to spot, as many of the protagonists are hackers or other social outcasts fighting against a corrupt, capitalistic system. Blade Runner, Shadowrun, even Cyberpunk 2077 all feature protagonists who are outcasts or fight a corrupt system in some way or another. Pretty easy to see how Charles Dickens can be an influence on punk and steampunk in that case, especially in his portrayal of street urchins and other members of the urban poor. His works are underscored by a strong argument for social reform and social improvements, which makes him a punk, albeit a gentlemanly one. Captain Nemo is an excellent example, although he is more of anti-hero/antagonist in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He is the son of an Indian prince whose family was killed and lands stolen by the British during one of the fights for independence, making Nemo the original steampunk.

So, when looking at a work, thematically, we can use a few different lenses, as Alpaca-Clouds did— punk themes and punk aesthetics. The steampunk community was huge back in the day and still exists, although not nearly as widespread, and they were famous for their DIY and improvisational approach to their costuming, with the brass goggles and clockwork gear becoming the instant identifier. I’ll touch more on the ideas of aesthetics, themes, and tropes at a later date, and focus on the idea of a fuzzy set center.

Is dieselpunk a genre?

Now, to the heart of this series- is dieselpunk a genre? Based on what we’ve discussed here, I’m leaning toward that it is not a genre. Not yet, at least, and I suspect it will always struggle. This is primarily because unlike cyberpunk and steampunk, the name has come before the content. Essentially, we have a fuzzy set with a label, some outlying members, but nothing at the center. No gravitational mass for smaller bodies to orbit, essentially, just scattered asteroids and comets.

We have the idea of dieselpunk, just like we do with solarpunk, atompunk, biopunk, stonepunk, mythpunk, etc. There’s even a decent number of works that are called dieselpunk, and quite a few with the other genres as well. However, there is nothing in any of these that has gained enough public awareness to define the fuzzy set. And since these started with names and then led to people attempting to fill them out, I suspect they won’t for a very long time.

Allegedly, the term ‘dieselpunk’ was coined in the early 2000s to describe a tabletop roleplaying game called Children of the Sun, ostensibly as a specific type of steampunk. I can’t vouch for this being accurate, as I have been unable to track down anything before this, but this story is something I have only seen second or third hand. Since the game is long out of print, I can’t get a copy to examine, but I found a review online from shortly after it was originally released. The review was quite brutal for many reasons, but the review’s author expressed confusion and uncertainty about what the term ‘dieselpunk’ was supposed to mean. The term may have predated the game, but was not widespread enough to have been recognized. Additionally, the author pointed out there was nothing in the game to tie the setting to whatever dieselpunk was supposed to be. Hardly a strong start for establishing a new genre.

Later on, as time went on, the ideas about dieselpunk began to pick up, ahem, steam. Communities began to develop and connect with each other over the internet and two different ideas about dieselpunk developed- Ottensian and Piecraftian. This was also when Mad Max was considered dieselpunk, which I don’t anyone does anymore. I’m not really a fan of the Ottensian/Piecraftian dichotomy, so I won’t use it moving forward, and I don’t think it holds up very well at this point (almost two decades later). At the time, however, there was a huge divide between the various “types” of dieselpunk and just as many names for them- decopunk, dieselpunk, Ottensian/Piecraftian, (some) atompunk, and raypunk. You can see how it would be impossible to find a fuzzy set center when nobody can agree on what the term means or what should be included.

Now, in 2025, dieselpunk essentially means “steampunk but between the world wars.” Radio Retrofuture considers it an aesthetic, not a genre, while he considers steampunk to be “cyberpunk in the Victorian era.” Extending that, dieselpunk would be “cyberpunk in the Interwar years.” I find both of these definitions to be lacking in depth and, more importantly, fail to engage with the cultural contexts they developed in and the historic themes that the genres engage with (or try to ignore). That will be the subject of a later post as well. But for now, let’s define dieselpunk as “a subgenre of science-fiction that deals with imagined developments in technology and society drawn from the technology, society, or appearance of the first half of the 20th century.”

Frequently cited examples include Iron Sky, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Railsea, Leviathan, BioShock, and most famously, The Man in the High Castle. Lesser known examples include Pirate Utopia, Ack-Ack Macaque, A Fistful of Nothing, Radiance, Storming, Ghosts of Manhattan, and Empire State. These draw primarily from the streams of pulp fiction, film noir, surrealism, post-apocalyptic, and alternate history. Other than being set in, or looking like they’re set in, a certain time frame, there’s not that much that ties them together.

Hence, Radio Retrofuture’s assertion that dieselpunk is not a genre, but an aesthetic. They all share a similar look, but lack the thematic and narrative concepts that tie a genre together, even within a fuzzy set.

So, what next for dieselpunk?

I do think dieselpunk can establish itself as a genre, especially given its thematic relevance to the present situation, which I’ll touch on next time. The hard part is going to be filling the center of the fuzzy set and then creating enough buzz to break into the mainstream awareness. That is easier said than done, naturally. Cyberpunk and steampunk were organic developments that had breakout hits at a time when the broader culture was receptive to them for external reasons. Additionally, there was distance between them- cyberpunk was relatively far in the future and steampunk was relatively far in the past, at least beyond living memory. Dieselpunk is not. There remains a relatively decent number of people who remember the Interwar period or World War II. For many more, there’s still a very close familiarity with it, as their close relatives remember it and talked about it. We don’t have that distance that the other two have and while many view the first half of the 20th century nostalgically, it’s not usually for good reasons. Certainly not for punk reasons. This likely makes it more difficult for dieselpunk to get the public groundswell it needs to firmly establish its own identity. So, beyond that, I can’t really say if it will ever establish its own identity as a genre in the way steampunk has.

The best that I think we can do is continue to create and to collaborate. Not just on projects, but on building a collective audience. Not just a passive audience, but an active and engaged audience that goes on to create their own art- whatever form it might be. Cosplay, video games, fanart, fanfic, critical commentary, the whole nine yards. How we do that is a different question, and sadly one I’m not convinced that I have an answer for. I put together a Discord server, which could be a foundation, but we’ll have to see what happens.

Anyway, next time, I’m going to focus on the themes of the three genres and how those can help strengthen the stories told in them, drawing from their historical and social contexts and what I think might be a key thematic dichotomy.