Brazing Nether history #5: Retro-Futurism
What's Wrong with Retro-Cyberpunk?
The retro aspect was getting more and more important in my Neon Nether setting, up to the point where it had become a defining trait. For a while I considered it "Retro-Cyberpunk". At first glance, writing something like Neuromancer today would probably qualify as that. However, trying to write '80s Cyberpunk today is necessarily _an anachronism_. Why?
Gibson could imagine interesting new machines in the 1980s and the fact that despite the advanced tech people are not running about with smartphones is not a problem - he imagined the world develop differently from what actually happened. But writing something like that _today_ means deliberately _omitting_ things. Contemporary Cyberpunk without a hyperconnected society is _wrong_ except for one very special case. It might be okay you're able create a future where for a plausible reason technology has regressed in certain fields. That can be done, but unless you've got a nifty explanation, it might look too deliberate and hurt the immersion of your world.
But there's a pretty simple solution to this problam: changing the genre. Cyberpunk is Sci-Fi and as such is about future tech. But in fiction, there's also Alternative History. There are a couple of typical takes on those "what if" scenarios: what if Germany had won WW / the Confederates had won the US civil war? If the writer has a very good grasp of what the impact of such world-altering events would have meant, it can be the backdrop for great stories in fascinating alternative realities. More often than not, it's dull, though, because all that the writer could do was apply stereotypes or make assumptions based on today's views that would not have developed in the first place if things had happened differently.
We don't have to stop at alternative versions of our time, though. It's also possible to write about a future _from a past perspective_, aka. "the future that never was". This is called Retro-Futurism. It's anchored in the tech level of a certain time and anticipates a technologically advanced future based on perfecting it without any later inventions obsoleting this technology and replacing it with another. Two popular Retro-Futurist subgenres are *Steampunk* and *Dieselpunk*. The former comes with a Victorian aesthetic and society, where people build steam-powered wonders. In the latter you'll find a world of art-deco where screaming engines power everything from planes to battle mechs.
Solderpunk!
Eventually realization dawned that my setting was no longer "Cyberpunk with a twist", but I had actually bent the genre until it broke. But what is it then? While it fits very well into the genre of Retro-Futurism, there is no established subgenre that would be applicable. The most recent (as far as the epoch is concerned to which it is technologically anchored) subgenre is known as *Atompunk*. It's generally considered to be based on the technology of the 1940s to 1960s. My vision was a more recent take on Retro-Futurism, being based on the 1980s and 1990s. So I had identified a gap in genres. And what do you do if you encounter a gap? Right, you close it.
But that's easier said than done. Compiling what were the iconic technological marvels of the time was easy - in fact I had already done that ahead of time with my retro theme and then realized what timeframe these historically belonged in. What's much harder is to find a good, evocative title. How to call it? "Milleniumpunk?" "Fluxpunk?" "Netpunk"? I've racked my brain for days, trying to find something that describes this epoch of transition from analogue to digital. At some point I remembered the handle of the creator of the Gemini protocol - Solderpunk. And even though I was initially hesitant, this turned out to be _perfect_: People whom I asked about it, immediately got the right idea. I still didn't want to "steal" it, though. But then I found out that somebody else (who didn't know about Gemini at all) had proposed this term for something similar on Reddit. Eventually I decided to embrace the title since it's just too good to pass.
If you want to know more about this subgenre, take a look here:
Brazing Nether
Going with Solderpunk means to say goodbye to typical Cyberpunk. While my setting had been more Cyberpunk-esque than actually Cyberpunk for a while, there were some changes to make, though. One of those was the title. "Neon" clearly suggests Cyberpunk, as does "Chrome" which I had in the subtitle. So once again I had to look for new ones. After lots of consideration, "Neon Nether" became *Brazing Nether* and "Chrome & Corpsepaint" turned into *Void & Voltage*.
My departure from Cyberpunk opened the door for defining a unique aesthetic complete with its own color palette, iconic items and so on. I'm not going to spoil this here, but I'm working together with an artist who will create the first ever piece of Solderpunk art (which I'll share here when it's ready!).