Dieselpunk, part 2: Are ya feeling punky, punk?

Posted on April 25, 2025April 9, 2026 by Kaleb

In the last post, I discussed what makes something a genre or not, relying on the fuzzy set theory of fantasy and applying it to the three main punk genres- cyberpunk, steampunk, and dieselpunk. Today, we’re looking at the two main thematic concepts I see across all of these genres- technology and society, and the relationship between them and the protagonist.

Cyberpunk

We can begin with cyberpunk, since that was the first of the three genres to be firmly identified. In this case, the technology is primarily cyber. It focuses on the technology of computers and the internet (or its equivalent) and has a somewhat more dystopian vision. Not necessarily of technology itself, but certainly about the impact of technology on society.

Society in Cyberpunk & Society in Real Life

Much of this derives from its original historical context- the 70s and 80s. Starting in the 70s, we see the end of the post-war economic boom, the start of personal computers, the end of the Vietnam War, the start of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution, broader awareness and pressure for feminism, civil rights, and decolonization. Meanwhile, the tiger economies in Asia disrupted the traditional concept of Western economic dominance.

As has become abundantly clear, technology and society are closely intertwined, and I’m not entirely sure they can be separated, or if they are, they are the twin strands in double-helix DNA. This became particularly notable in cyberpunk, where we have the glimmers of what will become cyberspace, the internet, hacking, advanced personal digital devices, and so much that we take for granted. Neuromancer is the archetype of course, featuring an ex-hacker-turned-contract-killer having to complete a heist in exchange for a cure to his injuries that keep him sidelined in the game between corporations, governments, and those in power. Technology and society have become the same, and both exist to extract value from the people beneath them.

Hence, cyber punks. We touched briefly on the etymology of punk in the last post, but we can revisit it here. Prior to the development of the punk music genre, a punk was a social undesirable— an outcast, misfit, criminal (especially juvenile or petty criminals), or men on the receiving end of homosexual acts (willing or not). Cyber, of course, refers to computers and the technology around them. The Shockwave Rider is a great example of the intersection between technology and society. The protagonist is a fugitive from an authoritarian dictatorship that uses his computer hacking skills to hack into public telephones (after all, this was published in 1975) and create a new identity, in a society run by technological oligarchs who use information control for their advantage, financial and political, after destroying the country through laissez-faire economics. Ahem.

Brief Case Studies

Blade Runner is the one cyberpunk example that most people think of, given its huge success. This one twists the archetypes somewhat, as Deckard begins as an enforcer of the status quo. He is the titular blade runner, a bounty hunter who tracks down synthetic, bioengineered replicants to ensure they remain on space colonies. Throughout the movie, we see numerous examples of corruption and double-dealing. Not only a cyberpunk cornerstone, but it also has significant influences from film noir.

Switching mediums, we have the classic tabletop roleplaying game Shadowrun (and its many, many d6s). This one takes fantasy tropes- like Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Humans, etc— and transfers them into a future setting where technology and magic co-exist. Its setting is more complex, but take everything we’ve discussed in cyberpunk, add magic, shapeshifting dragon CEOs, and orc mercenaries. It keeps many of the same tropes and archetypes of the previous examples. Otherwise, the setup is much the same. Super-rich corporations rule the world, and they hire criminals to do their dirty deeds as a form of corporate espionage.

These all have some pretty strong thematic threads tying them together. The story focuses on criminals, renegades, social dissidents, and others who don’t fit into mainstream society or abide by its rules. Again, the essence of punk. Most of these rules are not created by constitutional or democratic methods, but through wealth. Corporations, when they aren’t openly ruling, make their own laws and use the government to enforce those laws to protect their profits. The true villain of cyberpunk is capitalism. And in this world, technology is a two-edged sword. It is used as a tool of oppression and corruption, enforcing the will of the rich on the rest of us.

Punk is fundamentally political. Cyberpunk is fundamentally political. Steampunk and dieselpunk are going to be fundamentally political because politics is about how people interact with and interpret the world. So yes, art and literature are inherently, fundamentally, and inescapably political. The *punk genres are no exception, despite the wishes of many of their adherents. (Check out this article from Never Was and then read the comments.) Unfortunately, when we deal with any part of retrofuturism, there will be those who romanticize the past, whether they’re teens thinking they were born in the wrong generation because they prefer older music or trad wives with multi-thousand-dollar stoves pretending to be a pioneer.

If you don’t believe me about steampunk, refer to one of the originals- Jules Verne. Its submersible captain/antihero, Captain Nemo, is the son of an Indian prince whose family was murdered by the British during one of the fights for independence in the 19th century. Nemo then takes that intellect, what remains of his fortune, and uses his burning desire for vengeance to forge them into the famed submarine Nemo to enact his revenge against a colonial and imperialist system. Tell me how that can be apolitical. Cyberpunk’s social commentary has been explored in the previous examples: anticapitalist, anticorporation, antimonopoly, anti-imperialist, and anti-fascist. What about steampunk and dieselpunk?

Steampunk

Steampunk is messy, as you may have guessed by Dr. Christopher’s article. Here’s another article from 2011, by Margaret Killjoy, talking about the radical political origin of steampunk, citing H.G. Wells, socialist and anarchist. Here’s another, including social media comments and commentary, including a comment that proves so many points. Here’s one, once again from Never Was, saying steampunk isn’t political at all, and we return to Nick Ottens with another one, more recent, and one on how he changed his perspective on “Victorientalism.” All that to say, it’s complicated, and the steampunk community has been arguing over this for more than two decades.

Some Case Study Attempts

It’s difficult to identify common themes in the 70s/80s steampunk novels. Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates, for example, starts with Egyptian magicians attempting to use time travel to bring the Egyptian gods into the present to destroy the British Empire, but that isn’t the main story. James Blaylock’s Homunculus is a bit more of a comedic science fiction in the Victorian era, playing with space aliens, necromantic science/magic, and some rather madcap shenanigans. Jeter’s own Infernal Devices maintains comic, or perhaps absurdist, elements, including a clockwork double, mistaken kidnapping, people who invented a machine to see the future and learn 20th-century slang, plus various secret societies within London.

If we look at the pre-Jeter, proto-steampunk work of Michael Moorcock, The Warlord of the Air, we see something else entirely. That is about a man sent forward through time (again by magic) into an alternate future where World War 1 never happens and never leads to the dissolution of the colonial empires/ As a result, the protagonist ends up supporting anarchists against his own country. Moorcock picks up this thread of alternate futures in The Land Leviathan, which features a devastated and barbaric Europe and North America receiving the same treatment they gave Africa and Asia in our world. In The Steel Tsar, the story continues in a third alternate future where the Confederate States of America won the Civil War and Russian history worked out differently. In this case, it leads to an atom bomb being dropped on this universe’s version of Stalin, destroying his theocratic army.

Then, more recently, there’s the 2012 Mammoth Book of Steampunk, edited by Sean Wallace, which, according to the Amazon description, “is steampunk with a modern, post-colonial sensibility.” Several reviews referenced in a few other places described the book as being very “politically correct.” I haven’t read this one, as I was not overly impressed with the Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk (couldn’t finish it, sadly). The invention of the term silkpunk and Afropunk suggests there is a significant movement within steampunk to expand beyond its British imperial obsession.

I suspect part of the complexity is the nature of steampunk’s connection to the Victorian era. American society (and Anglophonic society in general) is still heavily influenced by the Victorians. And, while I can’t say this definitively, I think much of modern steampunk, at least mainstream steampunk, is very emblematic of the neoliberalism and imperialism of post-9/11 America. It tapped into the zeitgeist at the time that celebrated the possibilities of technology. That technology was the internet and the developing world of social media, which were going to revolutionize the world and bring about a new golden age of democracy, prosperity, and international goodwill.

Yeah, I can’t read that without hearing the irony either. I suspect that’s why steampunk began to fade toward the beginning of the 2010s. The optimistic and idealized view of technology no longer seemed to mesh with our lived experience, in which social media became a tool for government surveillance and the internet turned a shocking amount of people into far right fanatics who consider themselves sane and normal centrists and “classical liberals” (how’s that for an Overton window shift?).

Maybe, in time, steampunk will rediscover its identity and have a resurgence. I could see that being the case with what Radio Retrofuture is doing with their videos, tabletop RPG, and fiction. I think the perspective of their definition, that steampunk is cyberpunk in the Victorian era, will help them out, as it can tap into a different set of themes and tropes that feel more applicable.

Dieselpunk

This is where things get even more ambiguous. Dieselpunk has no fuzzy set or identifiable genre-defining works. I can’t go back and look at proto-dieselpunk or the pre-term examples and see what trends connected them. In this case, we’re even more heavily influenced by the interwar (and immediate post-war) era and generation than we are by the Victorians. Many people from this era are alive and remember it as part of their childhoods. Add in the disagreement over what makes something dieselpunk— is it Mad Max or The Man in the High Castle?

Based on the other two genres, we can start looking at the two elements discussed so far: technology and society. I suspect that the diesel– part will be significantly more difficult to untangle in the future, but the popularity of Iron Harvest and Scythe may be starting to settle that debate.

Technology in Dieselpunk

Let’s start again with technology. Now, I’m operating under the definition that dieselpunk is based on the technology or aesthetics of the Interwar years. I expand it roughly to 1906, with the commissioning of the HMS Dreadnought, but that’s because I’m a maritime geek, and yes, I know she used steam-powered turbines. I end the dieselpunk era at roughly 1947 with the invention of the transistor, laying the groundwork for what becomes the proto-computer age.

Media at the time was broad and very diverse, although much of the science fiction and fantasy stories were published in pulp magazines. That explains Indiana Jones being called dieselpunk, as he was a direct homage to the pulps of the past. That is also true for the Rocketeer and Sky-Captain. Ghosts of Manhattan has a much stronger noir influence, but there is still some pulp influence.

Pulp science fiction led directly into the more “sophisticated” science fiction of the 50s, which, in turn, led to the rebellious sci-fi of cyberpunk. That means there’s not as much of a divergent break between reality and science fiction as in steampunk. Retrofuturism is probably the best term to describe that divergence. Steampunk imagines a future technological system based on how people in the past imagined the future would be. Looking at pulp and other early sci-fi, we see a strong line of continuity between what they imagined and how the world ended up.

What we see is the end of the technological optimism of the Victorians. The First World War traumatized the world, and the Spanish Flu added to that by showing that humanity was not the master of the natural world. There’s more ambivalence toward technology, except perhaps the new technology of heavier-than-air flight. That still held a great deal of romance and optimism, which turns up quite a bit in dieselpunk (Crimson Skies, Sky-Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Rocketeer). Flight was a means of escape, of a new future in the clouds, of a life far from the trenches of the mundane.

Having read many of the original pulps, technology is both a weapon of oppression and a means of defense. The reliance on technology and gadgets (as in the original Tom Swift books) is less important in pulp than the hero’s human capabilities. Doc Savage uses super-science, but many of his mysteries are solved through his intellect, strength, and willpower. The Shadow uses no technology except a red ruby ring and a .45 Auto.

There are, of course, a great many supervillains with doomsday devices. That suggests a significantly greater awareness of the danger of technology, especially industrial technology. Weapons of war and mass destruction are the most commonly thought of vehicles across all dieselpunk media. The elegant zeppelins of steampunk end up replaced by skyfaring, ironclad battleships.

Dieselpunk & Society

If anything, the weightiest thematic element of dieselpunk is war. The ghosts of the world wars haunt the shadows in dieselpunk, lingering in the background, hinting at more catastrophes on the horizon. Which, again, is very appropriately derived from its era of inspiration.

Global war followed by global pandemic followed by global economic collapse, with people trying to survive and then trying to live with what they did. The rich lived gilded lives above the dirt and misery of the working poor (The Great Gatsby), while radicals on both sides of the aisle grew more and more extreme. An entire generation had been hardened to violence and taught to kill in an industrialized, organized manner. We get the Prohibition level of organized crime as a result. Both Communism and Fascism reached their peak, often in direct response to the other, with the Spanish Civil War being the first hint of what was to come. Decolonization began to take root and cracked the rotted foundations of the old world order, and no amount of technology could fix them.

It makes me wonder if that’s because dieselpunk tech is more industrial and institutional compared to the quirky steampunk tinkerer or the cyberpunk outlaw hacker. In the Interwar period, science was a tool of economic and military power. There were optimistic and beneficial developments in science, especially in medicine. It wasn’t all gloom and doom, although there were horrifying outcomes (lobotomies and eugenics).

That lends credence to the idea that war, and ideological war, drives dieselpunk. And that takes us to the Nazi problem. The Man in the High Castle, Wolfenstein, any video game villain that wears an officer cap and a black leather trench coat– Nazis are very prevalent in dieselpunk. And unfortunately, there is a broader fascination with their aesthetic (and horrifyingly widespread acceptance of their ideas). A brief google search for images reveals a long line of war machines in gray and black as the image results. Swap to Decopunk and the results are Art Deco cityscapes instead. Gas masks and black trench coats are everywhere in dieselpunk media. There’s a perverse fascination with the aesthetic of fascism.

The Future of Dieselpunk

Where does that leave us? Can dieselpunk ever become a genre? What would a dieselpunk genre look like? Using my definition (science-fiction inspired by or extrapolated from the aesthetics and technology in use between 1906 and 1947), we may establish ourselves as a genre. It’ll be difficult and will take a great deal of luck to have a widespread break into the mainstream.

For that, I think we need to evolve dieselpunk beyond its current confines. Time to leave the Nazis in the past and look elsewhere. I wouldn’t even lean toward adapting RadioRetrofuture’s definition of steampunk as cyberpunk in a different era. The social context has evolved from the 70s. The media landscape has evolved since then as well. Rehashing the same tropes from the past will condemn us to irrelevance.

To accomplish that, we need to look beyond Nazis, war mechs, and gas masks. I see the dieselpunk timeframe as spanning 40 years. The Nazis and World War II made up less than half of that time. Let’s look elsewhere for inspiration and ideas. Let’s look at new types of stories. What are new connections and combinations that we can experiment with? I’ll talk more about my dieselpunk project in a couple of weeks, so I’ll dive more into that then. We also should lean into the punk elements. The punk elements made the early cyberpunk works stand out from the crowd. Right now, dieselpunk leans more toward “the 30s with fancy technology” and neglects the punk elements. Where is the rebelliousness? The anti-fascism? The anger at a corrupt society? What would a world where the technology went a different direction look like? So much of dieselpunk is focused on big cities- what happens outside those cities? What happens in the rest of the world or worlds? What would subcreation, to use Tolkien’s term, look like in a dieselpunk secondary world? Or dieselpunk mythopoesis?

We had the short-lived swing revival, but that’s hardly punk. Paul Shapera is a great example of what I’m talking about. He’s told an overarching story that goes from steampunk to dieselpunk to atompunk through very innovative opera. It’s so good and so unique and so punk. That’s a direction I think dieselpunk needs to move toward– innovation, unique styles, and innovative new forms.

That’s something that will take many of us working as part of a community, perhaps like the Dieselpunk Creators of the World. Collaboration and community discussion, like the Inklings, will be critical if we want to establish ourselves as a genre. Do you have ideas on how to do that? Toss your ideas in the comments!

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

Posted on April 18, 2025April 9, 2026 by Kaleb

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.