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Punk Subgenres 101

Literary genres in general can be confusing to navigate, especially once you get into the convoluted quagmire of speculative subgenres or the oddly specific categories for romance. The “punk” subset of genres is one that I find particularly head-scratch inducing. I often think I understand a term only to see someone use it in a way that makes me question whether they (or I) actually know what it means. It doesn't help that “punk” takes on a different meaning when it's being used in a cultural, stylistic, or musical context. 

I have to give the usual caveat for a post like this, which is that genre definitions aren't set in stone. That's even more true with genres that were recently invented, like a lot of the punk subgenres. That being said, here's a run-down on the various literary flavors of punk, and how they relate to the term in a broader sense. So, to kick things off...

What does punk mean, exactly?

Looking up “punk” in the dictionary yields a variety of potential meanings: 

  1. A style or movement characterized by the adoption of aggressively unconventional and often bizarre or shocking clothing, hairstyles, makeup, etc., and the defiance of social norms or behavior. 

  2. A loud, fast-moving, and aggressive form of rock music, popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s

  3. To trick or deceive

  4. A hoodlum, ruffian, or useless person

...and there are more ways that other dictionaries phrase it, but this establishes a baseline, at least, for what most people mean when they say the term. Punk entered the popular lexicon via the music genre and its associated fanbase. The way they engaged with broader society is how we think of “punk” today: it's rebellious, nonconformist, and in-your-face about it. 

This is the first way the core meaning of the term “punk” today has split. In a music context, it still mostly has the second meaning on that list above: music that's loud, fast, and hard, and probably aims to give a big middle finger to some kind of established authority. In other creative contexts like books, movies, fashion, etc., it tends to have a more intangible meaning. In the broadest sense, it can be seen as somehow resisting or defying the status quo (though even this very broad commonality is a bit of a stretch in some of its applications).

When did “punk” become a literary term?

The answer: earlier than you might think. The first of the “punk” subgenres was cyberpunk, whose origins are in the New Wave sci-fi movement that started in the 1960s. Authors like Samuel R. Delaney, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, and J.G. Ballard wrote dystopian worlds featuring near-future technology, extreme surveillance, and economic inequality, themes often central to cyberpunk narratives. Many consider the 1975 John Brunner novel The Shockwave Rider to be the first cyberpunk novel (though it wasn't described that way at the time, seeing as the word didn't exist yet).

The term “cyberpunk” was first used in the title of a Bruce Bethke short story published in Amazing Stories in 1983. It was then seized on by Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine editor Gardner Dozois, who described the subgenre as “bizarre, hard-edged, high-tech stuff” in a 1984 Washington Post editorial. William Gibson's Neuromancer, arguably the most famous early cyberpunk novel, was published that same year.

The use of the word “punk” in “cyberpunk” totally makes sense. It developed right around the same time as the musical genre, for one thing, giving it that time period resonance. It was also a radical departure from the sci-fi of the day, so it fulfills that aggressive rejection of the status quo that is integral to the punk ideal. 

There are some quibbles about exactly how to define cyberpunk (as there are with most literary subgenres), but a down-and-dirty definition is a story with a dark mood, usually set in a near-future, tech-heavy dystopia ruled by an oppressive government or corporate overlord (e.g. “the haves”), whom the downtrodden and/or mildly criminal antihero protagonists (e.g. “the have-nots”) are in conflict against. They are often the kind of stories where a punk rock soundtrack would feel completely appropriate, so at this early stage in the history of the term it hasn't yet diverged too far. 

Modern punk variants

Here's where things start to get a little bit more squirrely. All other ___-punk subgenres can be thought of as spin-offs from cyberpunk in some sense. Because of this, the degree to which they retain that “fight the man” spirit of punk varies widely, depending on the context where the term is being used. 

The first to spawn was steampunk, which was first used as a term in the mid-1980s by author K.W. Jeter, to describe his own work and that of authors like Tim Powers and James Blaylock. A rough definition is a story set in an alternate-history Victorian era where steam power and gears are used for anachronistic technology like robots and computers.

From here, the punks branch into two directions. On the one side are further literary subgenres defined by shifts to the themes or technology typical of cyberpunk. The other branch is a series of aesthetic labels that spiral off from the idea of steampunk.

Literary punk subgenres

Cyberpunk novels tend to feature a specific type of technology. They’re heavy on surveillance, simulations and virtual reality, along with augmented reality and the intrusion of technology on the physical world through the use of gadgets. Typically, this technology is external—they're tools that people use, not modifications of the human form itself. 

But of course, this isn't the only kind of technology that exists. Writers who played with other types of tech but in a similarly dark, dystopian world coined some new terms to describe their work, like biopunk (stories that use biotechnology, genetic engineering, virology, etc. to explore similar themes as cyberpunk) or nanopunk (same deal but with nanotechnology). Already with nanopunk, the subgenre is starting to get a “copy of a copy” feel. They don't necessarily take place in a dystopian world, for one thing, and also differ from cyberpunk in that the implications of the technology itself tends to be a primary focal point.

Then, in 2008, this evolved a step further with the dawn of solarpunk. In some ways, solarpunk is the polar opposite of cyberpunk. Instead of cyberpunk's dark dystopias, solarpunk offers optimistic utopias. In cyberpunk, technology and society are at odds; in solarpunk, technology and nature work in harmony. What solarpunk still retains is the feel of resistance and rebellion. It's a different flavor of counter-culture, one much more focused on collectivism—as James Machell says in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, “It is a rebellion against a rebellion, born out of dystopia fatigue.”

The newer hopepunk was born out of a similar sentiment, and is a subgenre that heavily overlaps with solarpunk. It's been described as “weaponized optimism”, and can be generally applied to any sci-fi or fantasy story that involves characters fighting for positive change. And solarpunk has already spawned a direct subgenre: lunarpunk, which are stories set in a generally solarpunk kind of landscape but focusing on the nightlife or underbelly (because writers are, as a rule, very bad at embracing optimism entirely). 

There are a few other ___-punk subgenres that have spawned outside of this direct lineage. One that's nearly as old as cybeberpunk is splatterpunk. Unlike other early variants, this one isn't defined by technology—it can be as low-tech or high-tech as the writer wants. The defining trait of splatterpunk is gore, and lots of it. The term was coined by David J. Schow in 1986 to describe horror using extreme, graphic violence. It also tends to make use of counterculture themes, embracing the rebellion inherent in punk along with the aggressive in-your-face shock value of it. 

One trend you'll see across literary punk subgenre creation: the terms tend to be first used by writers to describe their own work and other work like theirs. This is different from many genre terms, which are often defined by critics (and is another thing that does feel more inherently “punk”). Modern examples of this happening include mythpunk, which describes stories that use folklore tropes to challenge storytelling norms (a term coined y Catherynne M. Valentine about her own work in 2006), or silkpunk, which are stories that use organic technology alongside magic (term created by Ken Liu to describe his own work).

Aesthetic punk subgenres

The punk subgenres that spawned from cyberpunk all retain some kind of “fight the man” energy. In fact, you could say this is the primary unifying thread between them (and really the only thing that could be said to connect, say, splatterpunk to hopepunk). 

This resistance aspect is less integral to the aesthetic “punk” subgenres, and that's the main reason I see them in a separate category. The subgenres in this group can all roughly be described as “anachronistic technology imitating a time period”—in other word, they're riffs on the underlying concept behind steampunk.

To give you some examples, these include: 

...you may also hear people using terms based on biomes, like oceanpunk or desertpunk, which are a predictable variation now that you know the theme. 

With all of these, they tend to be more common in visual creative mediums like movies, TV, fashion, and art than they are in books. This makes sense given that these genres are more about embodying the look and feel of the era they’re set in, but with modern technology interjected into it. I also feel like these subgenres are the least inherently “punk”, by and large. The suffix really is just a riff on the steampunk format and doesn't necessarily mean anything beyond that.

I'm sure I missed a whole slew of new ___-punk designations, because they pop up like mushrooms. But this at least gives a broad overview of how the term punk has evolved over time and what it means in a literary context. 

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