28 | The Writer • October 2019
the legitimacy of any particular punk sub-genre,
so some eyebrow-raising gems like sandalpunk
(punk starring Iron Age characters), gothpunk
(punk starring goths), and stitchpunk (punk
starring rag dolls) I’ve left for others to canonize.
Some are absurd, some irreverent, but doesn’t
that embody the spirit of punk?
In fact, when I considered my own space opera
series, I realized elements of these novels belong
to no less than five punks: spacepunk, cyberpunk,
biopunk, nanopunk, and...wait for it...bugpunk.
Why so many punks? Probably because it’s sim-
ply easy to put the word at the end of anything and,
voila, another new sub-sub-genre. In most cases, it
really comes down to cyberpunk and steampunk –
the sci-fi punks leaning more toward the former
and those with more fantasy elements grouping
within the latter. And, of course, there are retrofu-
tures, alternate realities, and slipstreaming between
genres to consider. All of this makes exact classifi-
cation a bit challenging, therefore it may feel more
natural to readers, critics, and authors to create a
new category for those novels. But what happens
when that classification isn’t quite exact enough?
You guessed it – we can have punks ad infinitum.
(Infinitypunk: You heard it here first!)
Just like the definition of each punk isn’t exact,
finding works that most represent a particular
punk is also at times a point of contention, even
among the authors themselves. So, to give you the
quick and quirky low-down for the punks on my
list, I went with a one-sentence explanation for
each, supposing that they were taking place
within the Potterverse.
Now...
Pick your punk.“What’s to stop an author from dressing her
characters in clothes that the author can then
make – and wear to conventions and book sign-
ings?” says Shelley Adina, bestselling author of
the Magnificent Devices series (Moonshell
Books, Inc.). “If the point is to draw a reader into
the world you’ve created, why not extend that
world beyond the page? But even more than that,
what I love about steampunk is the punk part of
it. Yes, I write about Victorian heroines in bustles,
lacy blouses, and corsets (and wear all of them,
too) – but the punk aspect allows me to subvert
tradition and give these fictional women a voice,
allowing them to act in pursuit of their own
agency and happiness.”
Most readers have heard of steampunk, thanks
mainly to K.W. Jeter coining the term in the April
1987 issue of Locus magazine, but cyberpunk, this
progenitor of all literary punks, has also spawned
other sub-genres from the logical and inevitable
analogpunk to up-and-coming socially-oriented
greenpunk to the bizarre (and probably doomed
to live in obscurity) cattlepunk.
How does a punk get its name?
Mostly, it has to do with the technology level. I
liked what Daniel Hope, managing editor of Fic-
tion Vortex, had to say in a 2014 article for LitRe-
actor: “...many of these subgenres are based
primarily on the technology and tropes of a past
era, but with a futuristic twist.”
When I researched “the punks” to teach my
class in Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular
Fiction MFA program, I scoured dozens of
sources to come up with this list of 10 most-
mentioned punks. There is much debate about
“Yes, I write about Victorian heroines in bustles, lacy
blouses, and corsets (and wear all of them, too) – but the
punk aspect allows me to subvert tradition and give these
fictional women a voice, allowing them to act in pursuit of
their own agency and happiness.”