Cyberpunk derivatives

Cyberpunk derivatives, variously also called literary punk genres, science fiction punk (sci-fi-punk), punk fiction, or punk-punk, are a collection of genres and subgenres in speculative fiction, science fiction, retrofuturism, aesthetics, and thereof, with the suffix -punk, collectively derived from the science fiction subgenre cyberpunk. In correspondence with cyberpunk, they are centered around visual worldbuilding, but, rather than necessarily sharing the digitally and mechanically focused setting of cyberpunk, these derivatives can display other qualities that are drawn from or analogous to cyberpunk. The basic idea is a focus on technology, usually a world built on one particular technology, where punk genres are really defined by taking the technology of a given time period, and stretching it to highly sophisticated, fantastical, or even anachronistic levels.

Akin to cyberpunk, transreal urbanism, or a particular approach to social stigma, have also been common, including elements of dystopia, rebellion, social alienation, societal collapse, and apocalypse, etc, with the main characters often being marginalized members of society, which ties into the original meaning of the word punk, but more recently, however, utopian themes have also become common.

Steampunk, one of the most well-known of these subgenres, has been defined as a "kind of technological fantasy;" others in this category sometimes also incorporate aspects of science fantasy and historical fantasy, leading to the gaslamp fantasy subgenre. Scholars have written of the stylistic place of these subgenres in postmodern literature, as well as their ambiguous interaction with the historical perspective of postcolonialism.

Background

American author Bruce Bethke coined the term cyberpunk in his 1983 short story of that name, using it as a label for a generation of "punk" teenagers inspired by the perceptions inherent to the Information Age. The term was quickly appropriated as a label applied to the works of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, John Shirley, Rudy Rucker, Michael Swanwick, Pat Cadigan, Lewis Shiner, Richard Kadrey, and others. Science fiction author Lawrence Person, in defining postcyberpunk, summarized the characteristics of cyberpunk:

Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body.

The cyberpunk style describes the nihilistic and underground side of the digital society that developed from the last two decades of the 20th century.