Steampunk vs Cyberpunk

[Terminal Blue]

I'd say steampunk because I love the way the people in steampunk dress and the art-deco look of the buildings is nice. The gears everywhere are pretty cool too.

Ugh..

See, I hate 'Xpunk' arguments for this very reason. They've become utterly meaningless.

Cyberpunk as a literary and social idea was about the intrusion of technology into human life leading to alienation, materialism and the erosion of personal freedom in the face of increasing control over the human body and mind.

This was terrifying shit in the 80s, when free market capitalism and the 'end of history' was being sold as the way forward and the gap between 'haves' and 'have nots' was always widening. Cyberpunk became popular because it played on real social anxiety about class tension, social control and the destruction of any sense of individual human meaning or value

Now, what is Steampunk? If I were to write a steampunk story or make a steampunk film, what would it be about?

The answer basically comes down to 'top hats and airships are cool when you take them out of context.'

I'm not saying everything has to be deep or has to include a commentary on the world as it currently exists, it's just nice to be able to enjoy something on a deeper level. Heck, we still see the 'bad future' movies which the direct heirs of cyberpunk come out every couple of years, and that's worth something.

So yeah, cyberpunk by default. But the whole argument makes me sad. Originally, punk was the thing which inspired a visual aesthetic. Now they're just the same thing, and the world seems poorer for it.

 

[nklshaz]

Cyber Punk. It's usually just so much darker and sleeker, and it tends to have this light sense of noir about it. Steam punk kicks ass to though

 

[Wushu Panda]

love me some Steampunk. i love the idea of alternate universes where mechanical technology evolved. likewise, alternate forms of sciences erupted (alchemy, plasmids, etc)

 

[WinterOrbit]

I'd say steampunk because I love the way the people in steampunk dress and the art-deco look of the buildings is nice. The gears everywhere are pretty cool too.

Ugh..

See, I hate 'Xpunk' arguments for this very reason. They've become utterly meaningless.

Cyberpunk as a literary and social idea was about the intrusion of technology into human life leading to alienation, materialism and the erosion of personal freedom in the face of increasing control over the human body and mind.

This was terrifying shit in the 80s, when free market capitalism and the 'end of history' was being sold as the way forward and the gap between 'haves' and 'have nots' was always widening. Cyberpunk became popular because it played on real social anxiety about class tension, social control and the destruction of any sense of individual human meaning or value

Now, what is Steampunk? If I were to write a steampunk story or make a steampunk film, what would it be about?

The answer basically comes down to 'top hats and airships are cool when you take them out of context.'

I'm not saying everything has to be deep or has to include a commentary on the world as it currently exists, it's just nice to be able to enjoy something on a deeper level. Heck, we still see the 'bad future' movies which the direct heirs of cyberpunk come out every couple of years, and that's worth something.

So yeah, cyberpunk by default. But the whole argument makes me sad. Originally, punk was the thing which inspired a visual aesthetic. Now they're just the same thing, and the world seems poorer for it.

I'm a cyberpunk fan (hell, my handle is a reference to a Gibson-Sterling story), but I take issue with this assessment of steampunk. Fundamentally, as it helps explain the present, steampunk is about feeling that technology is accelerating at a rate too fast for us to be able to understand the consequences. Just in the past fifteen years, internet developments like near ubiquitous Wi-Fi, smartphones, masses upon masses of user-generated content, social media, Amazon, iTunes and the way it has completely transformed the music industry, Wikipedia, Anonymous, and especially Google, which is so important to modern first-world countries that it has become a verb, have changed the way modern society operates.

The closest comparable time of technological change causing huge societal change I can think of is the Industrial Revolution, which naturally leads to steampunk. We feel like we have too much tech to handle; so we assume did the Victorians. Don't forget also that in the Victorian era we saw class struggles (Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street?), a rise of concern about pollution (climate change?), and worldwide expansions of power (globalization?).

Honestly, steampunk is really an extention and reformulation of cyberpunk, and while I like cyberpunk better, there's still quite a lot of the same social criticism you can ring out of steampunk.

 

[Sebass]

This has been mentioned before but whatever.

Cyberpunk all the way.

Steampunk designs seem cool and all and individual pieces of steampunk technology look nicer than cyberpunk (check out some of the steampunk stuff like an xbox or a PC) but I'm sure that's actually due to the nature of genres. As a genre tho it feels fairly shallow. It's more of an aesthetic than anything. You could take a story and replace the setting with steampunk and have basically the same story.

Cyberpunk however is quite defined: the dark atmosphere, the dystopian (corporate) future, advanced technology, the underground fighting against the system, .. And the way these things influenced people and society as a whole. A good cyberpunk story is about these things rather than using them for aesthetics alone.

Also I just like the feel of cyberpunk more.

There seems to be a big movement to steampunk, the creator of Akira more recently did Steamboy.

I think cyberpunk will make it's grand return.

We last had it with The Matrix. I don't know where next.

I hope so, there's not alot of good recent cyberpunk movies out there. And I think the Matrix was quite atypical cyberpunk, half the time it's just the normal world and the other half it's completely apolyptic, far beyond mere dystopia.


Steamboy was awesome.


Edit: Has anyone seen Spartacus: Blood and Sand? I thought that show had some cyberpunkish feel to it, despite being in Roman times .. The lack of morality, the subjugation and hopelesness of the underclass, the dominance of the rich, the dark atmosphere, .. Anyone else? Maybe I'm just being stupid

 

[Shadu]

Edit:

To be a tw*t about the topic's mispelled title, I think Seampunk is pretty damn fine old-school. To let the seams show on everything, that's really epic stuff. The way you can have seams in metal, wool, cotton, cakes, and so on.

Oh ho, I see what you did there. My brain skipped over the fact the title was missing a "t," but very clever. I bow to you both.

Can you bend time? You managed to quote slvrwolfen before he made his comment.

I'm secretly from Gallifrey, but shhhh! Don't tell anyone.

 

[similar.squirrel]

Nanopunk trumps them both.

Edit: Alongside Biopunk. For the record, though, I'm going to go with Cyberpunk.

 

[Wuggy]

I'm not gonna be a tw*t because the title is corrected.

Concept wise - Cyberpunk
Aesthetic wise - Steampunk

In other words, cyberpunk feel (corporations are more powerful than the government, intelligence is a form of resource, etc) is way more cooler to me, but steampunk wins in terms of how it looks.

 

[Treblaine]

I'm not gonna be a tw*t because the title is corrected.

Concept wise - Cyberpunk
Aesthetic wise - Steampunk

In other words, cyberpunk feel (corporations are more powerful than the government, intelligence is a form of resource, etc) is way more cooler to me, but steampunk wins in terms of how it looks.

what stops you having both?

I suppose the intelligence/memes element is a part of the recent and real information-revolution seems to only be possible with huge advancements in computers and networking. But my problem with that as a storytelling device is how fiendishly complicated it gets with so many loose ends and phenomena its hard for an artist to craft a world within one imagination.

For example, don't you think it's weird that in Blade Runner everyone is still using payphones? No one uses a small computational device like an iPhone?

That's the limitation of the artist within the time period where they write, small pocket-computers/communicators were not in people's though process in the 1980's. Star Trek the Next generation was curiously prophetic as the crew all essentially use Tablet computers (wide, lightweight, 100% touchscreen-based, rich-interface computers that offload most complex computing to large installed computers so it largely works like a terminal).

The thing about going BACK to an alternate-history steampunk world is how you can organise things a lot better. You don't have to worry about the technology that is going to come out next week and revolutionise the way we communicate for the next 50 years.

Bioshock had a simple one-way transistor radio as the plot device, it allowed the various other characters to communicate directly with the protagonist at any time without having to worry about return dialogue. And it was an established technology of the era.

Now what if Bioshock had instead been set on a space station 200 years in the future, you'd have to extrapolate on the current trends in communication and monitoring technology.

I like steampunk for how with a bit of magic and speculative technology it can be an allegory for TODAY'S techno-society while Cyberpunk pretty much has to be an extrapolation of todays technology where it can so quickly become inaccurate and irrelevant as with the Blade Runner payphone scenario.

PS: one thing I noticed about Blade Runner, it's almost always night or dusk. This is a trope that is replicated far too much, as Deus Ex and Human Revolution both are inexplicably always at night time. I know why this is done, as without the sun you are forced to use unnatural lighting, this sets the time period illuminating things in futuristic neon rather than 20th century flourescen or incandescent lighting Same for Steampunk, nothing says Victorian London quite like the distinctive glow of gas-lighting. The thing is the Sun hasn't changed its light in the past billion years. A shot in the sunlight could only be determined by clothes.

PPS: I also realise how (other than the payphone-stuff) Blade Runner has aged so well in terms of visuals, the universal use of practical effects. The CGI of today will always look crap compared to the CGI of tomorrow, the textures will always look that little bit more convincing, but scale models look as real as you could ever hope. Example, look at the CGI in A New Hope (1977) vs Revenge of the Sith.

 

[Chased]

Both are cool though my personal preference is steampunk, just by a hair. I think I like more steampunk themed media (Warmachine, Abney Park) than I do cyberpunk (Deus Ex).

 

[SecretsOfMoon]

Cyberpunk. Well, dieselpunk really is superior to both but either one preferrable to the wretched pestilent tumor that is steampunk.

 

[everythingbeeps]

I can do without any subgenre that ends in the word "punk".

 

[-Adracko-]

Gotta say.


(and for you tabletop rpg gamers, Abney Park has their own Airship Pirates RPG)

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I know this has probably been done about a million times but screw it I'll ask anyway. Which do you guys think is better out of steampunk or cyberpunk? I'd say steampunk because I love the way the people in steampunk dress and the art-deco look of the buildings is nice. The gears everywhere are pretty cool too.

I- I just- I don't even- *cringes*

I'm sorry. I'm terribly, terribly sorry, but I hate it when people reduce Steampunk or Cyberpunk to "wearing tophats and goggles and frilly dresses and being an airship captain" and "dressing up like Neo or Trinity and having plugs in our heads", respectively.

You say you like Steampunk? Fine. Read some Michael Moorcock. Understand what Steampunk means *socially*. See it in action. Understand that it has its ties with the Industrial Revolution and with Victorian England. Go and study these currents and mesh them together closer than they already were. Go and read "The Difference Engine".

Then we'll talk.

The same goes with Cyberpunk, really. It's a lot more than katanas and futuristic flechette pistols and diving into the Net or Cyberspace or however you choose to call it. Cyberpunk was born out of a sense of worry and the perception of some sort of dehumanization in the face of the eighties' corporate culture and technological development. People like William Gibson felt that the human element was in danger of being stamped out. It's a very, very gritty setup that typically takes more than a few cues from Film Noir, thanks to "Blade Runner".

Again, I'm sorry. If you were strictly referring to aesthetic elements, specifying it would've gone a long way. I'm just sick and tired of seeing some of my cosplaying friends go "Oh, and I think I'll make a Steampunk selkie costume. I'll just put on a nice Victorian dress, a fake seal pelt and stick some goggles on, LOL." without ever trying to go deeper. Not to mention that ever since The Matrix came out, you say "cyberpunk" and people think of nothing else than Badass Longcoats and sunglasses at midnight. Not to mention that a lot of people think "steampunk" and immediately flock towards Girl Genius, which I (personally) intensely loathe. Agatha Heterodyne's concept basically makes a glorified Mary Sue out of her, and I can't believe people let that fly because, oh, she's QUIRKY and ECCENTRIC and stuff.

I'm a lit geek. I read a lot. I understand it's not a conscious attitude on anyone's part, but it really, really, really bugs me.

 

[Squilookle]

Steampunk, definitely, mostly because it tends to NOT be so downright depressing all the damn time like cyberpunk is.

That said, there has been some amazing cyberpunk too. Take a bow, Deus Ex 1...

 

[MercurySteam]

So SS2 vs Bioshock?

Bioshock isn't really a good example of steampunk. It's more dieselpunk thank anything else. Bioshock Infinite on the other hand is much closer to steampunk than its predecessor.

 

[winginson]

I really can't say. I'm a huge fan of both, for different reasons. So I can't really compare them.

 

[penguindude42]

Dieselpunk.

Thread terminated.

[extratextyay]

~TOM<3