FROM GOTHIC FICTION TO STEAMPUNK: GENRE, HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE “PUNK” SUBGENRES OF SPECULATIVE FICTION

Abstract

This thesis examines the “punk” subgenres of speculative fiction: cyberpunk, steampunk, Teslapunk, dieselpunk, and salvagepunk. After reviewing the main lines of “punk” genre scholarship, it brings together two frameworks that have not previously been joined, E. Auger’s discursive model of popular genres and A. J. Elias’s theory of metahistorical romance and the technological sublime. Read together, they reveal a single line of development, running from cyberpunk's concern with representation to the retrofuturist genres’ concern with the failed futures of the past. Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day serves as the test case.