Adding “-punk” to the end of words to describe a setting and design aesthetic is a staple of speculative fiction. It began (as a language construct, anyway) with cyberpunk, a type of fiction which suggests a dystopian future dominated by cybernetics, virtual reality and people running around in tight black things one minute and poorly rendered green 3d wireframe graphics the next.
Steampunk, despite having highly disputed origins, has a very consistent aesthetic involving high technology powered by steam and mechanical means. The dress code is all about brown leather, tweed, brass accents and anything else that looks vaguely Victorian.
While cyberpunk and steampunk have become widely understood, there is, in my mind, a third x-punk aesthetic. While it’s equally as prevalent, codified and overused as its brethren, it has not, until I named it just now, had a name. Its name is “Zombiepunk”. It just is. Because I said so.
Zombiepunk fiction is based on the idea that some event has effectively ended modern civilization, leaving the survivors to fight over the scraps. The name comes from the fact that this event is often the outbreak of a disease which turns most of the population into a horde of murderous zombies. This isn’t always the case, sometimes the event is a nuclear war or an alien invasion. It creates a world where the events of Sex and the City could not take place, or at the very least, they would become watchable televison. As far as design sense goes, it is effectively an a kind of “un-aesthetic”. Its technology is cobbled together from the remains of a dead civilization. As far as fashion goes, there’s a lot of denim, canvas and inexplicably, bondage gear.
In the service of clarity, I have prepared this handy chart:
| Cyberpunk | Steampunk | Zombiepunk | |
| Essential Book | Neuromancer | The Difference Engine | The Road |
| Essential Movie | The Matrix | League of Extraordinary Gentlemen | The Road Warrior |
| Building Materials | steel, virtual reality | brass, polished mahogany | plywood, garbage bags |
| Dress Code for Men | black, with black on black. | tweed, plaid, vests, brass accents | leather and spikes |
| Dress Code for Women | tight synthetic rubber | tight tweed corsets | tight canvas with too many straps |
Just to be thorough, let’s look at some examples. (Mouse over each for alt-text.)
Cyberpunk – Dress Code
Cyberpunk – Vehicles
Steampunk – Dress Code
Steampunk – Vehicles
Zombiepunk – Dress Code
Zombiepunk – Vehicles
You may wonder why I’ve suddenly become obsessed with this, and you would be right to do so. (I even did a pretty major overhaul of my website visuals.) I’m not sure, really, other than I am not-so-secretly planning for a zombie apocalypse. It’s by far the most plausible speculative fiction there is. Sure, you can wait until it actually happens and then figure out what to wear. Me? I’m already stockpiling canned food and ammo and warming up my welding gear.
On December 14th, 2009 at 7:54 am SMD said:
How exactly is Mad Max related to the zombie genre? It’s salvagepunk, certainly, but it has no connection to zombies unless you really want to fudge the connection.
On the other side of this, I see no point in adding the postfix “punk” to the zombie genre. There’s nothing punk about the genre, just as there’s very little punk about steampunk. The whole punk movement has been mistakenly turned into an aesthetic genre, easily applicable to any seemingly standardized subgenre within speculative fiction. The problem is that the attachment of punk ignores what is actually embodied by the original punk movement (before Hot Topic killed it) and by the literary forms that eventually made up cyberpunk (also not an aesthetic genre, despite being bastardized into the visual wasteland like all other buzzword genres that have sprung up in the last forty years).
That said, you can’t ignore the power of the zombie genre these days. It’s certainly made a lot of headway in the last fifteen years, pulling what was essentially a cult genre out of the land of obscurity into the mainstream. It’s good stuff. Zombie movies are the only horror flicks that actually scare me these days…
On December 14th, 2009 at 8:54 am velvet said:
great post. thanks for the “punk” breakdown. love the new term – zombiepunk!
On December 14th, 2009 at 8:58 am Jaybill McCarthy said:
@SMD Thanks for commenting. I think you kind of missed the point. I think the codification of genres and sub-genres is easily the worst thing that ever happened to fiction. It provides a lazy way for writers to crap out something they know will sell. As a result, we end up with piles of crap that exist for no other reason than to monetize a fad. I had hoped that by taking this idea to a humorous extreme that point would get made.
The fact that you devoted a paragraph plus to responding to this is almost as absurd as the article itself. (I’d give it to you, but hey, I did dig up that awesome cyberpunk picture.) But it’s like my great grandfather used to say, “There’s nothing funnier than arguing on the Internet.”
Also: You leave Sid Vicious out of this. The term “punk” has been co-opted by a lot of stupid things, not the least of which was early 70s punk music. Terms are repurposed. Meanings change. English is a living language. Deal with it or go work for the MLA. By your logic we should all still be speaking Middle English.
On December 14th, 2009 at 9:43 am Mike said:
I’ve never heard the term “salvagepunk” before! That’s awesome! I’m gonna start using that!
On January 9th, 2010 at 1:12 am Doc B said:
I have to be honest; I am very new to the whole Steam Punk movement attributing my first experience with the term “Steam Punk” with the movie Steam Boy, but now that I look back and think about it, I find that there are a large number of books, movies, and games that I have been exposed to that delved heavily into the aspects of Steam Punk. For me I think the entire Victorian Era is what attracts me the most. As I am currently limited to my exposure as I am deployed being in the military, but what I do get intrigues me and with sites like this that keep me informed on the ever growing theme. Thank you for your efforts and work keeping me entertained and giving me something to pass my time writing short stories about. (P.S. I also find it funny how we use the term punk, that we mostly use as a discriptive word for upstart or alien. ie that young punk kid… So would we be saying that Steam Punk is the new upstart in the neighborhood? And are we the old crusty adults looking down at the new kid on the block?)