Why are so many -punk genre so punkless?
Steampunk, Solarpunk, Atompunk, where is the punk? There is no punk in my punk. Steampunk embraces the Victorian era, as if it was not a time of children in chimneys and the age of Imperialisms. Solarpunk has no machine to rage against, no statement beside "Wouldn't life be better like this," yes it would, now could you please deconstruct something besides "look at how good solar power is". Atompunk is so 1950s Americana that I can't call it punk in the slightest, it vehemently embraces nuclear power with a clean shaveness that resembles nothing like the 1950s which had plenty of problems I'm sure anyone on this site understands. There is just no punk, no statement on our world. I live in a punkless world.
Regarding atompunk: I think it has to do with a lack if popular atompunk stories. There's a lot of art that mirrors the aesthetics of the future as envisioned at the time but it's important to write stories that reveal the falsity of these images.
I think that should be the "punk" of atompunk.
Artwork of that period depicts happy (white) nuclear families that are about as representative of real life as the proposals to use nukes to build canals and the Ford Nucleon were representative of actual scientific possibilities. Meanwhile, people who didn't fit that, even narrower than today, category of the "proper American citizen" were kept down by a military-industrial complex. The Lavender Scare itself was partly due to the perceived "weakeness" queer people had in resisting communism. Furthermore, those who didn't fit the mold of proper citizen also saw their land used as a toxic waste site with little in the way of care after disaster strikes (Church Rock tailings spill). This was the heyday of corporate power too in that a lack of environmental regulations would let stuff like Love Canal happen even to those proper white American nuclear families.
Profits before people. State before people. Anything to keep the relentless march of "progress" going. Damn the consequences to those who get in the way. That should be the machine atompunks rage against.
