A thread for exploring other ways things might have turned out, if the past had taken a different turn. Steampunk is one subgenre.
(Counterfactual: contrary to fact, not the way things actually are; retro: backward; future: future.)
We could be wrong, but we don’t think the requesters intended this to be an RPG.
Certainly not an RPG- there could be an offspring RPG or RRR, but not this thread.
*GAPA hug*
I love making steampunk’d versions of normal pictures… if anybody would like somepointers, I have many.
Sure, go ahead!
Great-
The most important thing I can think of is to find stock images of clockwork, tanks, steam, and gears.
Another important thing is to know what type of steampunk/ clockpunk/ dieselpunk/ atompunk/ ? you want. Do you want what could actually work? Do you want fantastical? Do you want just fashion? It’s important for many reasons.
1) It determines your color palette. Actually working things would probably be covered in grease or dirt, or be covered up. Non working things would be sparkling new and like they were part of an advertisement.
2) It determines what your piece will look like. The difference between this (mind if I post a link, GAPAs?):
And this:
3) It determines if your piece will have a backstory. Unrealistic things probably wouldn’t have much of a story of the invention, or where you can buy it. Realistic things, on the other hand, are much easier to make a believable story and place for.
One other important thing I just want to say- To make something look used you want to increase the contrast on the image and have lots of yellow, red, and black. (Too much and your picture will look like anarchist propagada) To make something look sparkling new, use gold and chrome. (Too much and your picture will look like a new Apple product.) For steampunk fashion, brown is a pretty common color, along with black.
Whew, that was fun, but a bit tedious.
Oh, and GAPAs? I think a spambot ate Bismark12.
…and Enceladus lost his sense of humor. Seriously, what does one post on a thread called Counterfactual Retrofutures other than butterflies causing mayhem?
TIME TRAVELERS WILL PERISH IN A RING OF FIRE!!!!!!
H.G. WELLS WAS A WOMAN!!!!!
SAVE THE CHEERLEADER, SAVE THE WORLD!!!!
Don’t worry I will post more every week.
One posts stuff about how you could possibly make steampowered things (such as iPods).
But I also thought a spambot might have eaten you because you were in all caps and used multiple exclamation points. (Which are a sure sign of a diseased mind!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Nope, just for emphasis.
BUTTERFLY CAUSES HURRICANE!!!!
Didn’t we already have an Alternate History thread?
We still do. It was active as recently as July. This thread seems to be less about historical scenarios and more about technology, style, fashion, and design. We’ll see where it goes.
The funny thing about emphasis is that, in quantity, it becomes the norm, so the emphasis disappears. This is a principle in visual arts as well. For example, too many bold colors compete with each other and cancel each other out. They need the neutrals to give them definition. The neutral elements give your eyes a place to rest. </obsessed_GAPA_digression>
Anybody have their own ideas for “-punk” inspirations/themes/eras? For example, I thought of the idea for a 2001-style MA Yuri’s Night party that I posted a while back on the Suggestion Box thread as Apollopunk, because the dominant feature of the world would be that the Apollo program didn’t end.
That would be great, especially since how technology looks now is changing, it’s turning into the Appleverse.
Do you mean that Apollopunk sounds cool because it would be different from the Apple look?
Yeah, and that it would be similar to how atompunk would have been in the 70’s- Nostalgia about what everyone thought the world would look like.
I have ideas for Shutttlepunk, too, which is basically based on all of the kick-awesome predictions made about the space shuttle before the loss of Challenger. (That’s pretty much the setting of one of my fan-fics at the moment, with some Star Wars thrown in.)
Have you read my Yuri’s Night party proposal in the Suggestion Box?
Yah, sounds awesome.
So our timeline is an Applepunk world?
Applepunk would be a bit farther gone, I think. Every piece or furniture and all architecture would feature black and white and grey, with rounded edges. The entire world would be ridiculously user-friendly, streamlined, and incredibly expensive. We would all have the computers from the Iron Man movies. (Grr, I want Tony Stark’s computer.) There would be more bullet trains… actually, everything would be really fast. Also, electric. Everything would be powered by electricity, and make little happy noises when it was done doing something, like Wall-E when he’s done charging. Everything would be really slim.
Ruled over by a thinly-disguised cyborg version of Steve Jobs… but in keeping with the aesthetic, an elegant cyborg, nicely symmetrical and sleekly white, none of this silicon-chips-poking-out-of-distended-gray-flesh business.
I feel inspired to make that.
Something like this picture
except with gleaming white robot hands, dark eyes, and a scroll wheel on the back of his left hand.
And glasses with holographic lenses?
I was thinking more along the lines of this:
A head completely encased in metal, only vaguely human, divided along the center line, A brain rests inside, hidden, advanced. A completely flexible opaque white membrane surrounding the rest of the body, which in sleep mode is a sphere, resring under the head. As things need to be done, bits pop off and open up. In full “battle” mode, it would be a bit like a spider. Also regenerative.
I may draw a picture.
Agh, I wish I had Illustrator… I as thinking more along the lines of an “I, Robot” type face, but a very clean white, not the grayish color that it is in the movie. The body would be made out of the same material as the face. I’m thinking that it’s flexible when it needs to be, but all other times it’s hard to the touch, and plasticky. And, of course, he would have the glasses and the typical black shirt. He wouldn’t have any hair, but if he did, it would be a uniform grey, and he wouldn’t be balding. See, we wouldn’t want a leader looking straggly. It would make him look weak. And I just got way too into that. This is fun.
I personally think that a new cyberman face made of white plastic/ metal would be more similar to what I pictured. I, Robot (The 2005 movie, the book is better) is a bit too much like the robot that would be made by PC- trying to be sleek and slim and perfect, but it’s obvious there’s stuff going on inside.
No, no, it wouldn’t be as poorly made as a PC. I forgot to say, none of the wires or internal stuff would be showing. I knew I forgot something in that post. I suppose they could look like different to all of us; it doesn’t really matter.
I really like your walled garden post. Would PC’s live outside too? Or would they have another city?
I suppose there might be some Microsoft diehards- the “Blue Screen Front” or something like that- dedicated to toppling the iHegemony.
PC and Microsoft rebel terrorists, trying to hide from the all-reaching, all-seeing iHegemony!
“Hi, I’m a Mac.”
“And I’m a PC.”
“I help the benevolent will of Steve Jobs govern our daily lives.”
“And I want nothing more than to bring this nation’s founding principles crashing down.”
“Also, I run about thirty times faster.”
“I’m a dangerous terrorist!”
“iLikeIke.”
Yeah, I think that our world is always an intermediate stage between two possible “punks” with one never taking over completely, because scientists will always keep trying to discover more and more sources of energy.
But in the Applepunk universe, you’d live in a nice little walled garden where you can program what you want to Steve Job’s content. However, outside live the opensource programmers.They have no boundaries, and are constantly being hunted down by Applicators, which commercialize them for the walled gardens.
Except, of course, our personal droids would look like EVE, not Wall-E.
I feel like we wouldn’t have droids (too big and clunky), but things like… like floating white spheres about the size of your fist that hover by your shoulder. They would work kind of like an iPhone in the whole app and touchscreen setup, but they might also be able to project their screens into thin air. In a really, really cool Applepunk world, the floating white sphere would be able to change its own shape into anything you wanted, so it could be sphere-shaped, iPad-shaped, or anything else. Also change its own size.
Ooh, I want one now.
Or wung-shaped?
Since when do wungs have shapes?
Except it would be filled with monitoring technology for THE STEVE.
Applepunk! *squee*
Now I want my NaNo to be an Applepunk story…. *scraps old plot*
I also want a wung-shaped … thing.
I’d read that.
Applepunk spaceships would look like Virgin Galactic’s, only with a proper switching of logos…
Urgh, you’re tempting me to write about that as well.
But I won’t. Probably.
I would TOTALLY read that.
It should have zeppelins. Just saying. Except silvery, steamlined zeppelins with the Apple logo on them.
Mmm, zeppelins.
I was thinking SSTs, since everything is supposed to be fast. Concordes already would fit in pretty well aesthetically in an Applepunk world, except their sonic booms would be muffled.
I would buy a book about that.
Zeppelins.
I’m probably going to attempt my NaNoWriMo as a science fiction, jumping from world to world.
But that’s what my NaNo was going to be about! (And I decided that in June, so you can’t say that I stole it from you. :P)
Ok…
I think I might try the original Cyberpunk genre, because I actually know most about that.
Or we could both do the same thing. I don’t mind.
It might be amusing.
Floating spheres? Something like 343 Guilty Spark from Halo? But so much more cleaner and streamlined.
In the apple-punk universe, things could be wung-shaped in that they are constantly changing shape, or even appear differently to different people, like actual wungs.
I like the idea of a bio-punk universe, where technology consists of organisms bio-engineered for a specific purpose. (Example: a television which is actually a cube-shaped animal with cuttlefish skin, and a nervous system wired to form the colors on its skin into pictures.) It’s hard to think of any way that this would be practical, though.
The -punk themes are all about impracticallity. I think that the Cuttlefish TV would be more practical than a steampunk electric guitar.
Kind of like the tech of the Yuuzhan Vong civilization from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, except not as grotesque or warlike. (Okay, pretty much their defining feature is being grotesque and warlike, but I know what you mean.)
Hmm… Applepunk. I’d think all the cars would be tiny silver hybrids with a touchscreen built into the dash for radio and GPS. Apps are the main platform for programs and video games. Apple has also introduced the iScreen (or something), an even BIGGER version of the iPod Touch which is wall-mountable. As for fashion… *stares at old iPod for inspiration* Much shininess/silveriness and practicality. Subtle use of the Apple logo.
Or how about Frankenpunk? If Dr. Frankenstein’s ideas were real and didn’t end in failure.
Revivification clinics are common; if the body is too badly damaged to resurrect whole, the brain is implanted in a body assembled from spare parts. If the brain’s gone, the usable body parts are inherited by the family. In some countries, “stitches” are second-class citizens.
Most technology is electric, but clunky, large-scale, and dangerous; lots of thrumming dynamos, crackling spark plugs, Jacob’s ladders and Leyden jars.
Like the culture of the Igors from Discworld.
Strange minds think alike… that’s why I suggested it should be called Igorpunk
I think that would probably be better named as Igorpunk.
The poor of the universe would be harvested for organs by unscrupulous surgeons. Storms, of course, would be common.
Dramatic chords would be frequent and incessant, as would cracks of thunder. It would be considered strange not to SCREAM every mildly interesting piece of news as if it were heralding the apocalypse. (Example: “They got the mustard out! THEY GOT THE MUSTARD OUT! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!) There would be large clanking noises and zapping noises everywhere.
Science classes will have to wear earmuffs/ earplugs because of all the dramatic chords and music.
And, of course, lab coats, long gloves, and goggles are THE fashion trend.
Since somebody else has already decided to write an Applepunk story, I might write this. Let me go check if Frankenstein is in the public domain…
It appears to be so. In that case, the first thing to do is establish a history. Perhaps Margaret Saville (the sister of the captain to whom Frankenstein related his story) became obsessed with achieving the same thing, and published her successful results in various medical and scientific journals. Her creation, “Secunda,” received a reaction of mingled horror and fascination. Some condemned the practice as a perversion of Science and an offense against God; others hailed it as the final conquest of Death. (all capital letters are fully intentional)
(Possible story notes: If I assume this takes place in the 1790s, it might land smack dab during the Reign of Terror. Plenty of dead bodies and fresh brains for the French to experiment with, and they’re already pulling out all the stops on excising tradition. They might be the first to implement a full Revivification Institute. And of course, we all know where this will lead: Napoleon leading armies of the undead. The term “Crazy Awesome” was invented for situations like this.
I’ll also have to decide if revived brains retain any memory of their past lives. The original monster didn’t, so I’ll say no. This will also make it easier to cast the monsters as second-class citizens and create the societal conflict and disaffected antiheroes that define a Punk subgenre.)
Liberté!
Egalité!
Revivifé!
Vive la Revivification!
Your situation would be beyond crazy awesome, passing into the realm of Godlike. *POSOC worship ensues*
Our mother was the Guillotine,
Our father was the Storm,
We’ll fight for freedom till we die
And then we’ll be reborn!
The Coalition turned and ran
When we came down the stairs.
“God must be on our side,” they said,
“‘Cos the French have the Devil on theirs!”
-English translation of a march sung by the Cousuturés, or “Stitchneck Brigade,” after the Battle of Austerlitz
WIN.
Can I hug you?
Absolutely.
*never ending hug*
POSOC!!! WILL YOU MARRY ME???
No! We have a…secret engagement. Yes. You can’t have him.
If you marry him, then you’ll have to put up with me as well, because I’ll be glomped onto him for eternity.
MuseBlog: Where penning a counterfactual marching song about revivified French soldiers makes one Most Eligible Bachelor of the week.
Dear Lord. 8o
XD
That is so true.
May I try writing the “original” french?
(Oh, and I’d suggest switching “father” and “mother” in it because the inventor of the guillotine was male, and storm/ lightning in french is feminine.)
That would be awesome.
Ok, this is my dad’s translation (I haven’t learned enough, and he could do it in period French .) The rhyme scheme isn’t the same, and the part about the stairs is simplified.
La guillotine fut notre mère
L’orage fut notre père
Jusuqu’Ã ce que nous mourions
Nous allons nous battre pour la liberté
Et puis nous serons rené
La Coalition se fut enfui
Quand nous enûmes venu
Ils dirent << Dieu chez nous
Parce que la France a le Diable chez eux! >>
A non rhyming direct translation (to give you an idea of what they’re saying, not meaning) is here:
The guillotine was our mother
The storm was our father
Until we die, we’ll fight for liberty
And then we’ll be reborn
The Coaliton had fled
When we came along
They said “God is among us
Because the French have the devil among them!”
“Stairs” was the most awkward rhyme in there, so I’m glad your dad cut it out. Tell him that a random person on the Internet said he is amazing.
He said thank you. I think he’s beginning to get used to me.
The rhyme it’s part of is still a bit meh, but this song would be chanted by not exactly brilliant undead French soldiers after a battle. I told him it didn’t matter.
Dude. YOU. ARE. AWESOME!!
What exactly is steampunk?
*apologizes for neophyteness*
A setting in which steam-powered technology has become extremely advanced, possibly to unrealistic levels (analog computers, steam-powered robots). It often involves pseudo-Victorian or Edwardian fashion and social norms. Giant airships are very common.
As far as new subgenres go, we’ve already developed Applepunk and Igorpunk, both of which have fun potential.
Kai’s suggestion of Apollopunk hasn’t really been developed much, though. I think it needs some more attention, but I don’t know much about the subject. Research time!
For looks, see this:
[Snip. But with a quick search you can find what KaiYves is pointing us to at David Zondy’s “Tales of Futures Past” website – Rosanne]
And for concept, quoted from another part of the site:
“The Moon landings don’t end with Apollo 17 in 1972, but continue with increasing aggressiveness until some fifty people walk on the lunar soil by 1975 when permanent settlements are already being established.”
“Soon the Russian and American settlements begin to boom like a dot-com bubble and by the year 2000 the lunar population is 1,500 and by 2045 hundreds of thousands are living on the Moon.”
I want that universe. NOWS.
The “inspired by science fiction” feeling probably won’t have ended, leading to a much more intellectual society, or at least one where science fiction is the most popular genre.
But a lot of what we consider “science fiction” would be realistic fiction to them, if you think about it…
True… it would probably get stranger.
Just because you live on the moon and Mars, doesn’t mean you’re really much closer to the casual interstellar trips of Star Trek or Star Wars.
But Star Wars… Was A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY…..
More Apollopunk background, from the description of the “World of 2001” mod for the simulator game Orbiter:
“A key part of the technological optimism of 2001 is routine, cheap access to space.
“Here, the success of Apollo in the 1960’s was followed by lunar bases and 50-man space stations, both American and Soviet, in the 1970’s. These culminated in Mars missions in the early 1980’s. All were launched by large expendable launch vehicles; Saturn V, Neptune, and N-1.
“Development of a reusable shuttle proceeded, but later, by which time we were all a bit smarter and better-looking. Full employment of the Apollo team was not a goal of the shuttle program; they were busy doing other things like going to Mars.
“The market for shipments to orbit well-established, it was time to bring costs down another increment. The Orion IV and Titov B boosters were developed, and passenger service became cheap enough to be afforded by thousands, then millions. An orbiting hotel was built.
“The USSR passed into the hands of pragmatic leaders, communist by name but with capitalist reforms. Ideological competition between the superpowers lessened, though did not end entirely. The two superpowers did cooperate to try to lessen other powers’ access to space; this was almost completely unsuccessful. The Chinese built space stations and moon expeditions; the British built a moon base.”
Shortly after Apollo 11 in the real timeline, vice president Spiro Agnew suggested that NASA’s next goal be landing on Mars by 2000. A good basic point-of-divergence for an Apollopunk world would be that this suggestion was taken seriously and full resources were devoted to it.
For a plot, I’m seeing a lot of racing around space stations and habitats one step ahead of agents of a profiteering corporate conspiracy or anti-expansion terrorist group plotting to wreak havoc on offworld settlements.
We have become the Schrodinger’s Cat of 3,000 years ago.
Which makes no sense.
Apollopunk sounds very cool, but I just can’t wrap my mind around the concepts.
As for other ideas, what about some sort of Clockpunk? With everything made out of clockwork, and clock faces as a major decorating motif. Made out of wood and brass, and suchlike?
With a theme that life is going around and around in circles and nobody’s accomplishing anything…
Heh, sounds awesome.
If I ever write a Clockpunk story, I’ll be sure to make it essentially a cycle, with the hero becoming what he set out to destroy.
Or I could make it somewhat creepier, where the hero finds out he’s been on this mission hundreds of times. And that each time he chose to forget.
The concepts are that offworld colonization is accelerated, and most of the tech we have today exists, but with some things being larger and clunkier, and styled with a 60s aesthetic.
Today in Modern World History I was discussing my undying love for the late 19th century, and then started waxing eloquent about “gaslamps and lower-class London and living right next to Sherlock Holmes and people with British accents and steam-powered things everywhere and horses and carriages and zeppelins, oh my god, I love zeppelins”, when my teacher looked up from grading papers and said, “Hey, have you ever heard of… um… s… um… st… punk… punky… steampunk?”
I grinned brightly at her and said, “Well, steampunk is cool, but I have this fascination with clockpunk. Oh, and dieselpunk is awesome too, and I read this great biopunk story by Scott Westerfeld, and atompunk is really nice. Not a big fan of cyberpunk, though, it’s a little too popular to feel fresh for me. But it’s all right, I guess.”
She kind of stared. So did my class.
Can I hug you?
Amazing (classic) cyberpunk novel: Snow Crash. IT’S AWESOME. READ IT NOW!
What if sometime after WWII, in the early fifties, technology had begun advancing at a much faster rate, but our culture had stayed back in the fifties?
Go google “fallout timeline”.
Or go discuss on the Computers and Video Games thread!
Oh, that would have been STRANGE. Like Mad Men, but with automata and bullet trains. And ZEPPELINS.
I just really like zeppelins.
I had sort of that idea in a microcosm for one of my Marvel stories, with a community living on a space station who had advanced technology, but a culture still in the 50s, while the rest of the world went on as we know it.
Yorkshire, 1818
“You’re certain of this?†I asked, wiping the stinging rain out of my eyes.
“The deliveries all point in one direction,†Secunda replied, immaculate as ever in spite of the storm. “Voltaic apparatus, surgical equipment, formaldehyde and sulfates. This gentleman hass bought up everything he needs for the Franklin Method.†She sniffed. “Messy and unpleasant way of Revival. But of course, what else can you expect from an American?â€
“Snob,†I said cheerfully. “The fact remains that we don’t have proof. If we break in there and find nothing- well, it could be the excuse the Tories have been waiting for. They’ve been bleating about taking Revived off the police force for God knows how long.â€
Secunda raised a slim finger to point at the dilapidated manor on the hill. “Some lone madman who fancies himself a Prometheus is about to bring someone to life in that house,†she said, with more steel in her tone than before. “You know what happens to those who are Revived in those circumstances, Abel. Either they become happy little slaves or go mad and rampage until someone stops them with a bullet through the chest.â€
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. There was no arguing with her in this condition- and what’s more, I knew she was right.
Lif emerged from the trees a few yards behind us. He’d been assembled mostly from Swedes, and it showed; the man was hulking even for a Revived, over eight feet tall, with lank blond hair sticking to his forehead. “We know he hasn’t got a generator, though,†he said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t need to wait for the storm.â€
I nodded, though I’d already guessed this. We’d all seen the coal furnaces and steam pipes, the humming dynamos at the Revivification Clinics in London and Edinburgh, the vast turbines churning the River Thames; this man couldn’t have a power source like that.
“It looks as though we might have a long wait,†Secunda said sourly. “Make sure to keep the warrant dry, Abel. We cannot afford to lose this arrest because of a technicality like runny ink-â€
The bolts in my neck tingled suddenly; Secunda broke off with a little gulp, and I knew she’d felt it too. I shaded my eyes just before the lightning struck, filling the world with hard-edged glare. The thunder came a moment later, a deep growling roll like the drums of God.
“Forward!†Secunda ordered, and the rest of the squad came out of the trees; Adam and Pandora, Ask and Deucalion, Seth and Paphos, lurching or slinking up the hill. Lightning-drunk, every nerve fizzing, I laughed wildly as I led the charge on the manor. We are the monsters, I thought, the monsters out of the night, and we are here to do justice.
I’m still going to marry you.
“He’d been assembled mostly from Swedes, and it showed…”
“It could be the excuse the Tories have been waiting for.”
“The bolts in my neck tingled suddenly.”
I am pleased to say that I got six out of nine of the names. Heheh, Ask.
Oh, and did I ever tell you that I had your “God must be on our side, they said, ‘coz the French have the Devil on theirs” song stuck in my head for about two days straight last week? I was giggling all during the Algebra test.
Igorpunk! It’s like 1800s Gothic novels! But with added awesome!
“We are the monsters of the night, and we are here to do justice.”
You are awesome. Just saying.
…
Have I told you I love you yet? (In a good, non-creepy way.)
This is… epic. EPIC.
I think I killed the thread. Well, there are worse ways to go out than in a fiery blaze of Gothic Igorpunk.
I almost wrote a pirate-themed Applepunk story last Sunday. Didn’t finish it in time for the end of Talk Like A Pirate Day, though.
Awesome.
More Applepunk ideas- we should have “The Blue Screen Front” as POSOC mentioned, as well as “The Start To Stop Foundation”.
We could take your first comment about “the Appleverse” sort of figuratively and have Applepunk vs. Apollopunk. The contrast between the aesthetics alone would be really cool.
Yes!
Apollopunk, I think, would be very PC- Obvious buttons, obviously disassemblable products, and lovably clunky.
EXTREMELY obvious buttons, especially in vacuum environments where the buttons have to be big enough to be pressed by people wearing spacesuit gloves. (Although they might have something like Biosuits, the idea was around in the 60s)
Not to mention, Apollopunk is hardware-based (transportation) while Applepunk is software-based (computers).
Both would, oddly enough, be mostly white, though.
People could try to escape from the walled gardens and make it to spaceports so that they could flee to the space colonies. An infinite universe vs The Steve’s contained ‘paradise’.
That sounds fun. I assume they’re open-source software smugglers?
I had no idea, which was mostly why I didn’t finish it in time for the end of the day. It just started off with these Apple employees on a hightech ship in the middle of the ocean, and then they got attacked, and then I didn’t write any more. Open-source software smugglers would be really fun, though. Heh, in an Applepunk world, Talk Like A Pirate Day would be all, “Arr! I downloaded music from Limewire, mateys! I copied a video and sold it to my friends! Aargh!”
Oh! Maybe the Applepunk punishment for pirating videos is to have your leg chopped off, like having the fingers cut off for poaching in the Middle Ages. So you have to walk around with a peg leg. The parrot… hm.
I’ll totally write that after I stop procrastinating and finish my HW.
I’m thinking about “jailbreaking,” which is, I think, the practice of unlocking an iPod or iPhone to get more apps without having to pay for them. Perhaps the “parrot” is an illegally customized iBird.
GAPAs, may I send you a picture of my steampunk necklace? (I’m rather proud of it.) The address is thegapas @ gmail dot com, right?
Here is Mikazuki’s photograph of her steampunk necklace:
Thank you very much!
Yum! Delicious!
Though I personally would have put the key at the center, and moved the grey thing to the farthest left.
I tried the key at the center, but it looked unbalanced with the clockwork. Ugh, this is such a bad picture, but the lighting as horrid so I couldn’t get a better one.
Nice!
SWEET.
I had some ideas for an Applepunk vs Apollopunk story, I’m sort of solidifying them now…
Do you guys think the Applepunk walled-garden city would have light pollution? I’m torn between saying that it would, because everything is shiny and brightly lit, and that it wouldn’t, because everything is eco-friendly.
It would have outrageous light pollution, so it would project the image of a purple nebula (the image they always show as the wallpaper on a Mac computer) onto the night sky.
This gives me an idea for an Applepunk superhero, Appleman. Whenever he is patrolling they project the Applesignal, which is the Apple logo, into the night sky.
dada dada dada dada, dada dada dada dada, Appleman!!
Definitely have lots of light pollution. If we’ve got Applepunk as the antagonists, their walled-garden paradises need to have some downsides aside from an abstract “lack of freedom.” Besides, it’s kind of fitting that Applepunk blots out the night sky with Earth’s shiny gadgetry, while Apollopunk is all about reaching for the stars.
Concerning “To A Distant Day”, the next chapter will feature the government officials who help The Source run the city. I think they should be cyborgs, but nowhere near as fully gone as The Source, still looking mostly like normal humans.
I’m thinking that when they gain their positions, they have some kind of communications device implanted in their heads so that they can receive orders from The Source directly, maybe with a visible antenna on their heads, maybe not. Their various other body parts are argumented to help them more faster, do more work, and deal with noncompliants, but those are mostly covered in synthetic skin, with the only thing visible being a white circuit-diagram pattern on their “skin” resembling a tattoo that branches out from the back of their necks. They also receive plastic surgery to make their faces “perfect”, and maybe have their hearts removed and replaced by artificial ones that The Source can suddenly cause to stop if they fail him. (So, literally, heartless politicians.)
I just finished reading Lauren Redniss’ stunning graphic novel “Radioactive”, about Marie and Pierre Curie, and I had an idea. It might fit into Steampunk, but what about a reality where radium was both non-toxic and capable of doing everything people thought it could do when first discovered? (Cure any disease, make thoughts visible, allow communication with the dead…)
I think that might be more along the lines of Atompunk…
Hmm….
1898- Marie and Pierre Curie discover radium, become some of history’s greats.
1900- Radium has become approved for any and all uses by the US, French, British and German/Prussian governments.
1907- Death rates have dropped all over the world, and quality of life has improved tremendously.
June 1914- With the help of deceased Serbian leader, Karađorđe Petrović communicating from the dead, a revolution takes place in Serbia, and the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his entire family are killed.
August 1914- Britain “radonites” German government buidlings and military installations, through the use of spies and infitrators, allowing the thoughts of military leaders to be seen. A few days later, Germany does the same in Britain, which takes it as a declaration of war.
Anybody want to continue?
Too bad “Atompunk” is already taken to refer to works inspired by 50s SF. Maybe this could be “Curiepunk” or “Radiumpunk”?
Something I thought was interesting in the book was that since early electric lights were often very bright, a lot of people found them unpleasant and thought painting walls with radium-based paint would be more soothing. There was actually a brand of paint called “Undark” that was sold for that purpose.
In this world, electric light might never catch on, and since that was one of the major impulses for electrification, you could have steam and radioactivity as the main power sources, with electricity not being widely used.
“A World Lit Only By Undark”.
2010- Radium supplies are running low in the world, and people have to mine in more and more distant places to obtain radium. Governments are looking to ban “frivolous” radium products.
I need to continue my Igorpunk timeline.
I’ve been thinking about ex-Revived soldiers fleeing to Haiti after the early days of the reactionary Bourbon Restoration — it was and is a Francophone country, and the Vodou-Roman Catholicism hybrid religion predominant at the time would probably be a lot more tolerant of Revived than the status quo in Europe.
Oh, that’d be cool. And what would happen if some enterprising leader decided to mix the Vodou poisons used in creating “zombies” with electric revivification?
That’s an interesting idea as well. I’ve also been thinking about southern plantation owners Reviving dead slaves and criminals to keep the workforce up (remember, Ben Franklin discovered electric Revivification), leading at first to distrust and suspicion, and later to a closer cultural camaraderie between black Americans and the Revived.
We’re doing Napoleon in Egypt and the beginnings of Egyptology in my Contested Past archeology class right now, which made me think of this Igorpunk question:
Could a mummy be Revived? They’re missing internal organs and kind of fragile but otherwise well-preserved. The savants of the Institut d’Egypte would salivate at the idea of having real Ancient Egyptians to explain their country’s monuments to them, and even if they can’t get them to retain their memories of pharaonic times, they could still get incredibly strong and heat-tolerant guards/assistants to carry their equipment and clear away rubble and dust.
“After forty centuries of stony silence, the mummy speaks! He speaks, I tell you!”
Hmm. Though all the “science” of revivification runs on handwavium, obviously, I think the corpses have to be freshly dead.
However, I can see opportunistic fakers taking advantage of Egyptomania: pulling some poor vagrant with the right skin tone off a mortuary slab, reviving him, and making the newborn amnesiac memorize a plausible pharaonic history. Then they’d wrap him in bandages and present him at carnivals (or scientific conferences, depending on the con-men’s ambitions) as a Real Live Mummy We Swear.
piping in here just to say I reread all the Igorpunk things again just now and I am placing myself firmly onto the PLEASE MARRY ME list oh my god I forgot how fantastic this all was
Continuing my theme of public-domain fanfiction, I’m also considering a story about the Earth counter-attack during the Feb. 1901 opposition of Mars, set several years after H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.
First, using adapted Martian mass drivers, an alliance of Great Powers launches a series of probes carrying a cocktail of harmless-to-humans viruses, which annihilate the Martian biosphere in a matter of days. Next come the great colony ships, bearing hardy crops and livestock to plough Wells’s more hospitable version of Mars, and young men and women eager to loot the relics of the eons-old Martian civilization. But the Red Planet has plenty of starving microbe-immune predators, devastating sandstorms, and deadly technology to challenge the intrepid settlers, and the lost, unknown Martian colony on Venus is slowly plotting a terrible revenge on Earth.
I think I’ll break away from the “-punk” suffix and call this particular retrofuture “Areopulp,” as it’s more HIGH ADVENTURE! than grim ‘n’ gritty.
I’ve created a faux advertisment for RadonLight, a radon based paint. I’m working on scanning it in and refining it in GIMP. Anybody want me to send it to the GAPAs?
Sure!
Just sent it!
Enc’s faux ad for RadonLight paint:
Why did I never see this before? It’s great!
Thank you!
Woah, I got an idea to post on here and suddenly it’s in the “Currently Popular” bar– what luck!
Reading about the very beginning of the space age (the Mercury and Vostok programs and the corresponding initial robotic missions), it is very obvious how much we have learned and how comparatively little they knew. Scientists had a lot of questions that have since been answered, and some of their theories at the time seem a bit wacky now.
But back then, for all they knew, THOSE POSSIBILITIES WERE AS LIKELY AS ANYTHING ELSE.
So the idea here is the Space Race in a solar system were some of those odder ideas are true– John Glenn’s fireflies were actual vacuum-dwelling creatures, Transient Lunar Phenomena are something that definitely warrants closer consideration, and the Mars Curse may be more than just bad luck…
This isn’t crazy radioactive flying saucer B-movie stuff, the weirdness is all based on scientific speculations of the time. I can’t think of a better name than Mysterious Space. (By kinda-analogy with the Mysterious Antarctica trope.)