VSF-to-WWWI (Birth of Diesel-punk)

[Patron Zero]

Just curious if there's been any discussion about VSF 'evolving' into a Weird WWI setting-background, if so any thoughts about such.

My own take would be internal combustion applications edging out steam power, that or such being 'upgraded' from traditional wood-coal fired boilers to liquid petroleum based fuels (gasoline, kerosene-paraffin etc).

Would that then make a WWWI setting diesel-punk ?

[wolfgangbrooks]

VSF takes a lot of cues from WWI, I guess where you draw the line depends on your own opinions.

As far as engines go, it could be argued that steam technology as advanced as in the typical VSF story is the equal of an internal combustion engine. And could be a viable alternative for quite awhile, especially since you can find tinder easier than gasoline in most places. If you're using Super-Science, electricity could also be used as an alternate power source.

I tend to think of diesel-punk as 30's, 40's, and early 50's. Sky Captain, Crimson Skies, Modern Mechanix Covers, Talespin, and the Max Fleicher Superman cartoons are the most prominent examples I can think of. At least as far as divergent history is concerned, there's probably some interesting alternate universe things I'm forgetting.

Japanese anime that try for VSF style usually get it wrong and hit square in diesel punk.

[Doc Twilight]

Wouldn't it be easier just to call "Diesel Punk"  "Pulp", which is the appropriate period term for it? Instead of calling everything that is "gritty or low budget adventure/sci fi" Pulp, as is now the current case with most miniature companies?

Seriously. The definition of "Pulp" from the collector's perspective begins in 1914 and ends around 1945 (some advance it to 1950-1953, when the last true "Pulps" were published). That covers that period fairly well, I reckon. Anything before would theoretically be "Edwardian Science Fiction", and before that, "Victorian Science Fiction," at least from a literary perspective. The term "Steam Punk" is really sort of a modern misnomer, as it covers not only Victorian/Edwardian stuff, but pretty  much anything including steam technology (from D&D with steam engines to some of the Pulp stories).

Granted, this is just one perspective. I've honestly never heard the term "diesel punk" applied prior to the last couple years. It seems to have cropped up with the current trend toward "WW2 Mechs" and the like.

-Doc

[Westfalia Chris]

Wouldn't it be easier just to call "Diesel Punk"  "Pulp", which is the appropriate period term for it? Instead of calling everything that is "gritty or low budget adventure/sci fi" Pulp, as is now the current case with most miniature companies?

Seriously. The definition of "Pulp" from the collector's perspective begins in 1914 and ends around 1945 (some advance it to 1950-1953, when the last true "Pulps" were published). That covers that period fairly well, I reckon.

-Doc

I think the general desire of the fanboy crowd to categorize stuff to death would consider "Diesel Punk" a more accurate description for a narrow subset than the more general "Pulp". We should also consider that outside of America, the "Pulp" genre is usually treated as distinct from Science Fiction (at least it was back when I took a seminar on Pulp Literature in University), and only encompasses detective and other adventure stories as pointed out.

I personally wouldn't mind that much, since I am, for example, happy with composite terms like "pulp fantasy", "pulp scifi", or "pulp noir", "pulp ww2" etc. Furthermore, viable "dieselpunk" stuff is actually few and far between, IMHO. Off the top of my head, I would classify "Metropolis" and the animé series "Kishin Heidan" as such (although the former might be better classed as "déco punk", if you want to get obsessive... ). "Crimson Skies", possibly, due to the heavy tech factor involved.

I guess it boils down to the focus of the specific setting. I would not class a scifi-heavy "pulpish" setting such as "Sky Captain" in the same vein as a Mickey Spillane story. Furthermore, I would also be careful to differentiate between "bona fide pulp", i.e. the stuff written back in the day, and the epigonal stuff that is created nowadays, which is more often than not a mere pastiche (not that this has to be a bad thing.

[Red Orc]

Some of us were discussing precisely this a couple of weeks ago on the boards, as a way of tying in VSF, Pulp, Back of Beyond and Very British Civil War gaming, using Ruritania and an alternative timeline for WWI. The threads about Ruritania are here and here.

Apart from one argument about whether or not it's permissable to call the period 1910-1952 'Georgian' which got quite heated (and that I won't link to as the thread was locked in the end), there were some good discussions. Personally I'm 'out' over what things should be called. I don't really mind, and don't think we need to call it all the same thing.

[former user]

Personally, I don't think there can be atransition from Steampunk to Dieselpunk. It is either or.
The very essence of steampunk relies on the fact that Steam energy evolved differently (as can be seen in some of today's innovations in Steam turbines). As such, there can be no replacement by oil combustion energy. Historically, petrol generated propulsion replaced steam by a combination of several reasons.
Firstly, coal generated steam began to get a serious health nuisance in the cities. Although oil firing was experimented with already by 1870, the idea was not pursued properly for reasons of national energy independence.
Secondly, when the first electrical networks were established, the petrol industry that had exploded earlier at the end of the 19th C suddenly had a problem because noone needed the oil any more and the prices dropped. Keep in mind that before Henry Ford Petrol was mainly used for lighting in kerosine lamps.
Thirdly - At the time Henry Ford made cars available for everybody (by adopting a production schedule already introduced by Oldsmobile before), there were many propulsion sytems- steam, electricity, gasoline, etc. The reason why Ford chose the gasoline engine was it's reliability, economy of maintenance and availability of cheap fuel.
Had the oil firing and steam turbines been more perfected at that time, we all would be driving steam cars today, ( steam trucks were used up to the 50ies, the US Army used steam cars in the 30ies and experimented with steamtanks in WWI - these are only examples. Most of our electricity is steam generated today and modern steam engines are reintroduced for transport, so the steam age is not over yet).

So either we don't care about such considerations (after all it's SF and eveything), or in a timeline that starts with steampunk the logical consequence is Steam-Dieselpunk, and this can look very different from Combustion-Dieselpunk.

It's everyone's personal taste, right?

Diesel is for unbelievers....
Electricity is wrong!
Steam has got the power that will pull us along.... 

[Red Orc]

I like 'Electricity is wrong'. I might have to put that on a t-shirt.

Apparently the previously-locked thread I referred to in my post above has now been unlocked: it's here and there is another thread about Steam- and/or Diesel-punk, Weird World War One and such like here and another here; finally, a further discussion involving the idea of taking Weird World War One into the 1920s and a Back of Beyond type setting is here.

[former user]

 

[ushistoryprof]

Check out the closing credits from "SteamBoy," it shows a natural transitions from Steam to other forms of transport.  It gives a tantalizing look into what might come next for those interested in this type of story line.

[elThyge]

@former user:
Did not know they had made a musical out of Rollerball. But why did they turn Jonathan E. into a train-fetishist? 

[Doc Twilight]

All valid thoughts. I meant no offense.

My personal view on the matter is that the term "Pulp" which refers to my favorite era in fiction, has been very badly abused in recent years. (For the record, there were all kinds of Pulps. Western, Science Fiction, Adventure, Detective, Mystery, Horror, Erotic, etc.) And while there may be "other uses of the term" outside the US, since the US invented the Pulp novel, and before that, the Dimestore novel (which was itself based upon the English 'Penny Dreadful'), I think there is some legitimacy to using the US terminology. Also, given that the actual period terminology was used that way... *shrug*.

Anyway, I think it's been badly abused. For a while, the administrator of the Tabletop Gaming News was on a personal crusade to "change the term" to something that was more "general"," because he felt that the term had lost its meaning. I didn't agree with his conclusion, but I did understand the meaning. For a long period of time (it seems to have calmed, somewhat, now), every tom, dick, and harry in the miniatures industry was releasing a new range of figures and calling them "pulp", from what were obviously 1980s style zombies to far future starships that happened to have an art deco design.

The one that seemed to elicit the most commentary on TTGN was the game "Pulp City", which has a 1980s feel. As a result, a lot of gamers thought they'd be seeing heroes in a Noir type atmosphere, even if it wasn't a true period setting. What we got was a game which (though fun) has a lot of fantastic superpowers, comic book style action, and 1980s action move charm. Nothing at all to do with Pulp, but the company insists that the game is "pulpy" to the present. It's caused a lot of silly debate, but one which, at least, I think I can basically understand. You might as well call anything campy "Pulp" the way the term has been bandied about lately.

The point, I guess, is that everybody has his own definition of the terminology we use to describe our passions and interests. If I didn't collect pulps, I probably wouldn't care as much. So, I hope I haven't come off like a pedantic jerk. Just sharing my feelings, for what they are worth:)

-Doc

[former user]

No offence taken, wouldn't know why

personally I think "Pulp" is unrelated to any kind of technology, but simply a view on the world in Black and white

Star Wars would then be SF- Pulp, LotR Fantasy Pulp, Spiderman superhero Pulp etc.
and it has a kind of a chronological house Nr, for when it was introduced and more widespread
that's all