At the outset, I feel it only fair to warn you that this is and will remain a ramble. I recommend fetching a cup of tea or some other beverage. Over on my friend M.K. Hobson’s site, she coined the term Bustlepunk. I found this to be singularly cool at the time, and I still do. Somewhere in the back of my head I can hear a teacher/panelist/writer/editor (I’ve heard it over and over and probably so have you. In fact, say it with me…) “Science fiction is fiction about science.” Whiiiiiiich isn’t really correct. I may have to break out a fire extinguisher around here, but bear along for a few more sentences. In fact, go and have a look at the bookstore shelves. Even the virtual ones. Are all the novels that come up when you go looking for science fiction about science? NO? I’m shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you. No. I’m not shocked and neither are you. Science fiction may be about science, but mostly it is about the effect of science, or a device, or a future and about people who live in that situation. If it thinks like a people, it’s a people. Don’t even go there. I intend to ramble quite enough without that particular devolution of the conversation.
Now… I like derivatives if they’re polite and play nicely. Prosecco is high up on my list of preferred grape derivatives, for instance. Bustlepunk is all about the polite. Or the lack thereof. It takes place in a technological derivation from the norm. Cyberpunk takes place in a futuristic technological derivation from the norm that deals in the interface between wires and nerves, between flesh and computers. Steampunk has as its effecting setting a deviation from the technological norm a bit earlier. Victorian era. People never really stopped writing it, though they may have skipped a bit in the middle between Vern, Burroughs, et al and the last 20 years. This isn’t about a timeline of Steampunk, but I’d very much like to see one! Where was I… ah yes, Bustlepunk.
Bustlepunk is such a lovely, evocative word. The era of the bustle (and the hoopskirt, and right up through the Edwardians… but the bustle is a good middle point) evokes Merchant Ivory dramas. Masterpiece Theater productions. Weird thoughts of dear Miss Marple who never WORE a bustle, but who certainly evoked the high ideal of good manners and who certainly should have possessed a lovely broach with clockwork that spun backward for no reason whatever that she would reveal. Don’t believe me about the manners? Check out the Gibson Girl hairdos on the covers of Miss Manners some time. The bustle and its era are symbolic. Much as steam and cyberwear are symbolic.
Bustlepunk, of course, being a speculative fiction genre, is neither a regency romance nor an Edith Wharton novel. It has more to it than only manners. It has aspects of Steampunk, certainly. Zepplins may be present. It has aspects of Victorian Gothic aesthetic. Vampires or werewolves or zombies might haunt the gas-lit streets. However, it seems to me that Bustlepunk, while it sets a gracious tea table at which one or both of those distinctions may have a pleasant repast, sets itself apart with the importance in the turnings of the plot and within the gears of any society… of manners. It serves this somewhat dainty and sometimes bland repast along with the greatly appealing aperitif observation that social norms may be broken provided one does so with sufficient aplomb and grace.
Bustlepunk need not lack in action, nor indeed in bloodshed and violence. Good gracious, people, there is such a thing as a duel and also such a thing as a serial killer and even such a thing as that ghastly boor Lord Whateverhismutziz who’s treading down one’s botanical reseach without the slightest notion that it possesses the keys to a lost kingdom, eternal youth, and you will certainly need a zepplin at this point to go off and conduct your field research. Or else you’ll need a gold mine in Arizona from which you may transfer yourself to Mars. Did I not mention that this was a civilized tea table, and as such it necessarily hosts the most interesting of guest devices? Of course I did. The Low-Techs are such dear, accommodating people once you get past their xenophobia. And the drooling.
Waaaait a minute, I hear you say. That’s Cyberpunk pure and classic there! Trot off and find your copy of the SHORT STORY ‘Johnny Mnemonic’. It’s a brilliant piece in its folding together of elements. The science creates the situation. It is certainly science fiction. It deals with direct computer interface in human beings and with advanced body alteration unknown to then-medical-science and in direct rebellion. Certainly Cyberpunk. All good and fair. Cyberpunk is a subset of Science Fiction. Madam has clearly lost her tiny little mind here, eh? The climactic resolution deals, in part, with the intersection of two social situations, and the hero’s ability to span both worlds.
You see? And you didn’t think he even owned a waistcoat. Oh dear. How extraordinary of me. Here I asked you to bring tea and completely forgot about to ask – do you take lemon, or milk with your bustlepunk?
Tags: books, bustlepunk, ramble, steampunk, writing
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