Punkpunk

[sartorias]

"Punk" used to evoke a specific set of images for me. The spouse (then a sweetie) and I used to attend punk concerts in L.A. around 1980; our favorite band was X, and the song that seemed to exemplify them was "Johnny Hit and Run Pauline," a fast, tightly harmonized, curiously elegiac piece

Comments

[newsboyhat]

I still really, really, really need to read the Dunnett books! I know you've rec'ed them to me but I just haven't gotten around to it. This post makes me want to read them even more.

[sartorias]

Maybe this summer, when you get reading time? They are not short!

Lymond makes emo look pretty darn happy.

[magicsandwiches]

If you're serious about reading Lymond, just try to get past the first hundred pages and you will be hooked to the very last page of the sixth and final book. But that first hundred is very trying; not many people make it that far.

Re: Lymond makes emo look pretty darn happy.

[newsboyhat]

Thanks. I'll keep this in mind--is there a Rivendell point like in Lord of the Rings? A plot point I can reference?

[fajrdrako]

"Historypunk" - what a great name for the Dunnett style. Do I think it fits? I have to skew my brain a little, but it's nicely evocative.

These "punk" words evoke use of imagination to me, a fusion of contrasting style. The contronyms of setting, where future, present and past are mixed. I don't see it as escapist so much as a kind of collage.

[sartorias]

Exactly!

[fajrdrako]

And I have to admit I love it.

-punk

[marycatelli]

Originally steampunk had the same gritty affect as cyberpunk -- The Difference Engine anyone?

But there was the whole gears and steam aesthetic, and the term got attached to that, and so there is nothing necessary "punk" about it.

Bright, cheerful, hopeful punk. There's a reason why the Foglios opted for "gaslight romance" instead, but I don't think there's any hope that we will get a more logical term.

The aesthetic is probably its staying power. Steampunk has a much more expansive repertoire and emotional palette than cyberpunk.

Re: -punk

[sartorias]

Steampunk has a much more expansive repertoire and emotional palette than cyberpunk.

Yes, so I'm finding as well. (But then I burned out fast on cyberpunk, and so maybe have missed some that engaged in different ways.)

[calenorn]

Can we nominate the next wave? How about "Trunkpunk?"

"For years the herd has watched with dismay as the humans have hunted them down and ruined their habitat. But now a gang of rogues is fighting back!!!"

[sartorias]

Heh!

My vote is for skunkpunk. "Rejected among the animals, they made their scent a new style . . ."

[calenorn]

Like Watership Down, only smellier. Don't know if that novel counts as "punk," but it had its darker moments.

The whole talking animal thing has potential. How about "Poohpunk?"

"Cruelly abandoned by Christopher Robin, the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood discover a darker destiny...."

[sartorias]

Poohpunk! Okay, that one takes the cupcake.

[anderyn]

I loved the Dunnett books, but can't reread the fourth one (the one with the chess game as the finale) -- I read it when I was in the hospital having my first (the daughter -- who'll be 29 in a bit over a month! Eeep!) and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I still feel totally shattered by that scene and Lymond's choices. But the world is so dense and so wonderful that I don't regret reading them. I just don't know if I can ever reread more than the last one ever again.

[sartorias]

I avoided rereading that scene for years and years and years. (Yeah, my daughter will be 29 in October. Yikes!)

[pameladean]

I skip it too, and I don't even have kids.

Dunnett had several, and she clearly, just from the Lymond books, had a fairly sensitive regard for how small children and teenagers operate, too. Writers are weird.

P.