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Concept
Dieselpunk
Summary
Dieselpunk is a retrofuturistic subgenre of science fiction similar to steampunk or cyberpunk that combines the aesthetics of the diesel-based technology of the interwar period through to the 1950s with retro-futuristic technology and postmodern sensibilities. Coined in 2001 by game designer Lewis Pollak to describe his tabletop role-playing game Children of the Sun, the term has since been applied to a variety of visual art, music, motion pictures, fiction, and engineering.
Cyberpunk derivatives
The name "dieselpunk" is a derivative of the science fiction subgenre cyberpunk, and represents the time period from World War I until the 1950s, when diesel-based locomotion was the main technological focus of Western culture. The "-punk" suffix attached to the name is representative of the counterculture nature of the genre with regard to its opposition to contemporary aesthetics. The term also refers to the tongue-in-cheek name given to a similar cyberpunk derivative, "steampunk", which focuses on science fiction based on industrial steam power and which is often set within the Victorian era.
Author Scott Westerfeld addresses the question of where to draw the line between steampunk and dieselpunk, arguing that his novel Leviathan (2009) qualifies as steampunk despite the fact that the technology it depicts includes diesel engines:
I like the word "dieselpunk" if you are doing something like 'Weird World War II'. I think that makes perfect sense. But to me, World War I is the dividing point where modernity goes from being optimistic to being pessimistic. Because when you put the words "machine" and "gun" together, they both change. At that point, war is no longer about a sense of adventure and chivalry and a way of testing your nation's level of manhood; it's become industrial, and horrible. So playing around with that border between optimistic steampunk and a much more pessimistic dieselpunk, which is more about Nazis, was kind of interesting to me because early in the war we were definitely kind of on the steampunk side of that.
Official source
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