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Comment by MontyCarloHall | Hacker News Reader

The most succinct description of Cyberpunk I've heard: "the future if the 1980s never ended." This description applies more generally to other -punk genres:

Steampunk: the future if the 1890s never ended

Dieselpunk … if the 1940s never ended

Atompunk: … if the 1950s never ended

Curiously, we have not yet seen the emergence of a -punk genre set in the 90s/2000s.

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90s iteration is solarpunk or hopepunk, no? I have read no solarpunk books, but the description fits. The premise that we can captian planet / recycle our way out of the impending climate doom that corps and govs have inflicted on us.

Solarpunk! Had totally forgotten about that one.-

At this point, Solarpunk has barely - if at all - escaped the aesthetic stage to produce any meaningful narrative works. Feels relevant that its origin story is tightly associated with a Chobani advertisement.

I think that's a shallow definition of cyberpunk, and why so many recent works miss the mark.

The cyberpunk of old had an 80s aesthetic because it was mostly created at that time, but it wasn't about that aesthetic. It was "punk" in the sense of rebellion, it was about corporate greed, and the (mis)use of advanced technology, of high tech and low lives, it was about the street and people living on the edge.

I don't think its authors envisioned cyberpunk as being stuck in the 80s forever...

I think reading that genre prepared me well for today.

Not quite there yet, but stuff like Warframe 1999 was trying for a sort of green phosphor / CRT, walkmans and boy bands punk sci fi?

I think there's a little option for it. Definitely keep the use of NIN as a soundtrack.

90s could be the vaporwave aesthetic? Basically an optimistic 80s with classical inputs.

Pretty sure that's because the 90s were boring as hell (I was late teens/early 20s , can confirm). AIDS scare ruined dating for quite a few years after the 80s, Grunge was fucking dumb, the dot-com explosion was interesting, but very short-lived. Dialup. I think Atompunk and Dieselpunk would be reaching as well.

One of Gibsons trilogies is roughly Hotmail-punk.

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