Solderpunk as a Genre

To understand what Solderpunk is all about, it's helpful to have some context first. In fact, the genre is best understood in relation to genres that bear some similarities. The following text is taken from the Core Rulebook of the Brazing Nether RPG.

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk emerged from science fiction. The American author William Gibson, who published his novel Neuromancer in 1984 (if that wasn't the perfect year for it!), is considered its founder. It is a genre in which advanced technology clashes with advanced societal decay. Questionable trends in our world are pushed to the extreme and, if they otherwise occur in the shadows, are dragged into the glaring neon light.

Often, in this dystopian world, governments still exist, but have fallen behind so-called megacorporations in terms of real power, which can essentially do as they please. The merging of man and machine is frequently a theme, as the population has begun to replace meat body parts with cybernetic ones or massively increase the performance of their bodies beyond natural limits with such implants. Virtual reality and artificial intelligence play a major role. Good and evil in their purest forms rarely exist; a cyberpunk world is an environment of various shades of gray.

The action usually takes place in huge cities, where the extreme gap between rich and poor is striking: luxury and extravagance on one side, extreme poverty and the most desperate struggle for bare survival on the other. Violence is found in all shapes and forms, and the world is simply indescribably dirty. The grime can be literally palpable, when the protagonists roam through littered neighborhoods, catching the acrid stench of urine and almost stepping into a puddle of vomit.

But there's another kind of filth: at one of the numerous parties thrown by the upper class, letting loose becomes the norm, and designer drugs are considered fashionable. In a backroom, a top executive is just zipping up his pants after disposing of a young daughter of joy he has brutally taken advantage of, now calling to arrange for her removal...

The *punk Family

The defining "Punk" in the name stands for the rebellion of the protagonists - who are rarely fairytale heroes - against the system, while "Cyber" originally comes from the control of machines. Over the years, cyberpunk has become more differentiated and has inspired a number of subgenres. These can be broadly divided into two groups:

The subgenres of the second category are also attributed to the genre of *Retro-Futurism*; that is, they depict a vision of the future as it might have existed in the respective epoch to which reference is made. Humanity has remained at a certain level of technology, but has mastered it further.

Despite their diverse aesthetics, they all have in common the use of the interaction between man and machine to ask about the effects on society and to explore the _Conditio Humana_ (the human condition). They therefore often offer a considerable philosophical depth - even if some readers prefer to only scratch the surface and simply enjoy the fascination of these worlds.

The first of the aforementioned categories includes, for example:

The others can be easily sorted by the epoch they deal with:

Solderpunk

The transition between Steampunk and Dieselpunk is fluent and while Atompunk follows the the latter immediately, there's a significant gap before classic Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is defined by the presence of highly polished, advanced technology, and in modern interpretations, a hyper-connected world is taken for granted. This is a far cry from the isolated early mainframe computers of Atompunk and the absence of the Internet.

The emerging subgenre of Solderpunk (1980s to 2000s) forms, in a sense, the missing bridge between Atompunk on one side and classic Cyberpunk on the other. It focuses on a _time in transition_, a _society undergoing rapid change_. The analogue era is drawing to a close, and the digital age is dawning. The late phase of the Bloc Confrontation is followed by the end of the Cold War. But the enthusiasm for this quickly fades as it becomes clear that the promise of the "end of history" was an illusion (or a lie?), and within the framework of the "War on Terror," state surveillance measures of unprecedented scale are pushed forward. Globalization is rapidly advancing in a unipolar world, constantly creating new losers. States at the peak of their power are beginning to buckle under the pressure of lobbying, which erodes their foundations. The attentive observer even sees the deep, black waters of privatized armies forming. Microcomputers and a form of Internet exist, but both are miles away from what we understand today (and even further from what the Cyberpunk future makes of them)!

Solderpunk is essentially characterized by a handful of things:

For hardware hackers, the approach to technology is often: "PURR" (Procure, Understand, Repurpose, Repeat), a do-it-yourself ethos that utilizes whatever is at hand. The aesthetic of the subgenre is determined by things like:

There's a partial but significant overlap between Solderpunk and the Retro-Futurist visual language known as *Cassette Futurism* (1970s to 1990s). The former is a lot wider in scope, though, and as a literary genre goes beyond the latter in many ways, not just regarding the aesthetics.

Regarding societal decay, it can either pass as proto-Cyberpunk or differ from classic Cyberpunk only in that the state of advanced decay is relatively young. But in terms of technology, it’s, in a sense, _Cyberpunk with the handbrake on_.

With a wink, one could speak of a subgenre of _almost_ and _still_ -- which, however, has its own unique charm! Solderpunk tells of a world that has set sails for a Cyberpunk dystopia, but the outcome isn't decided yet. But don't be fooled: This is not about deliberately forging the future! It's all about the protagonists' struggle to patch up the present at least to the point of allowing for survival.

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