Dieselpunk Manifesto: Why Write Dieselpunk?

Branding yourself a Dieselpunk writer is an odd thing to do, and to be honest it’s more for my benefit than any potential reader. I actually write pulpy action-adventure stories that involve biplanes, gangsters, Caribbean safaris and old-school mad scientists. But I do put a lot of effort into theming my stories in order to experiment with ideas and genres and for some reason I just clicked with the Dieselpunk vibe. I enjoy the stories that happen when I think Dieselpunk so that’s why I write them.

Working out why I enjoy them is a completely different issue.

I started writing Tommy Thunder set in the 1920s because that’s the golden age of adventure, a time in which the world still hadn’t been completely mapped, but the technology existed to take you to those places anyway. The chance to explore those blank spaces of possibility is what gives the era so many possibilities. It was this excitable attitude that characterises many of the writers of the era, a certain amount of idealistic positivity that, while in some cases poorly guided, it provided a world of imagination and possibility that looked to the stars and beyond with an energy that’s hard to match these days. Their imagination ran wild with stories of what was out there in the world, out there in the galaxy and out there in the future. It made for some fantastic imaginating.

The Future!!! We just don't think like this any more.

 But because of this pulpy optimism, Tommy Thunder is decidedly Dieselpunk-averse. While I can touch on Dieselpunk ideas, the pure naive optimism of Tommy under the clear blue skies of the Caribbean prevents me exploring the gritty cool of Chicago and New York, and with it the reasons why so many people love the symbols of the age, the clothing, the music and the design. I’m fascinated with the idea that people would rather live there than here and I want to know why. And I want to know why I enjoy all these things as well.

Not really a Caribbean kinda gal...

 So Tommy wasn’t enough. As fun as he is, Tommy is not able to explore the Dieselpunk side of life, a set of ideas that fascinate me no end and exists within the same era as Tommy, if not in the same spirit.  In order to explore Dieselpunk I need gangsters and fast cars and mad scientists and speakeasies, and while all those things will show up in a Tommy Thunder story, they won’t be distilled the way they will be in Tales of the Aether Age, my Dieselpunk ‘label’. In Tales I can go nuts and explore the arguments of Dieselpunk, get my noir on and explore the Jazz Age’s seedier political corners without compromising Tommy’s story. I get to explore ‘casual-isation’, ‘mainstream criminality’ and the everyday politics of art deco design while Tommy gets to shoot biplanes out of the sky. Everyone wins :)

Holodeck Dieselpunks/Tales of the Aether Age readers.

To that end I’d also like to announce something very exciting. This is where I reveal that my first piece of published writing will soon be released, a Dieselpunk story published as the first Tale of the Aether Age. I’m quite chuffed with how it turned out and it will be released as part of an anthology released in conjunction with Dieselpunks.org, the internet’s best source for all things Dieselpunk. More info to be posted during the week but for now I’ll leave you with the title of my first story and a working cover: 

That Sort of World: A Tale of the Aether Age.

Whatcha think? Release date is the 18th February so I'll have more details soon.

Pulp Manifesto: What is Pulp?

That’s the question people always ask me: “What is pulp?” So for my first Pulp: Manifesto article I’m going to answer that very important question. Or at the very least tell you what ‘pulp’ means to me.

First up... it has nothing to do with that film by Tarantino. Nothing. Nothing at all.

This has nothing to do with pulp fiction writing. Sorry to disappoint.

 Now that we’ve got that out of the way...

The not-so-sexy answer to the question “What is pulp?” is that ‘pulp fiction’ is a production method for prose fiction that has sort of fallen out of favour over the last five to six decades. It’s actually the forerunner to many of the Western world’s most popular genres and storytelling mediums from the Hollywood blockbusters we watch at the cinema through to the comic books we read, or any form of sci-fi or action/adventure television that has somehow escaped cancellation. Even your Mills and Boon collection can trace its lineage straight back to this noble, yet forgotten genre. Pulp was there at the start but most people have never really been exposed to the source.

Yep, this be pulp. In all its 'horror'.

 The golden age of the pulp magazines was back in the 20s, 30s and 40s ie before television took over the family home. Back then, as literacy rates went through the roof, for the first time everyday people wanted to read stories and read them en masse. The more the better. But they didn’t enjoy, or couldn’t afford, those dusty hard-backed novels that the lar-dee-dah rich people read. For the first time the working-class were flexing their popular culture muscles and some entrepreneurs clicked to the fact that something new was needed to fill the need.

A dime novel cover, the pulp magazine's forerunner.

 So what did they do? The early magazine entrepreneurs took the older-style dime magazines, the sort that published serialised excerpts of stories by Charles Dickens et al, and jazzed them up for the new Jazz Age. They slapped a bright and thrilling cover on the front, started publishing multiple magazines that collected popular genre stories together, printed these magazines on the cheapest paper possible to keep the price reasonable (wood-pulp paper, hence ‘pulp’ magazines), then they sold these magazines at your local corner newspaper stand where everyone could find them. Voila! Affordable entertainment for the masses on a monthly basis.

"Just readin' me magazines..."

 The writers of these magazines didn’t worry about literary worth. They didn’t worry about innovations in the art of storytelling. Or trying to add to the Western canon. Pulp writers just sat down at a typewriter and belted out stories that normal people would want to read. And the field took off. Month by month new magazines helped people escape their factory or secretarial work by taking them to new planets, showing how extraordinary citizens vanquished extraordinary bad guys, or revealed how the quiet girl finally got the cute beau from across the road she always pined for. It was all about entertainment and not much else.

People loved it.

Over time some characters became huge. They were so big they got their own magazines all to themselves. Names like Doc Savage, The Shadow and John Carter of Mars became household names. New-fangled genres started up – like those bizarre ‘scientific fiction’ stories – and soon had multiple magazines and devotees. The characters became so popular they were co-opted by Hollywood in movie serials or even a few of the A-features. They even spawned new storytelling mediums like graphic pulps, what we now call ‘comic books’. All these things and more began during that intense period spanning the first half of the 20^th century and most of the genres and characters we still read and watch today trace their DNA straight back to the characters and stories of this fertile period of writing and reading.

You may not know this bloke, but many of your heroes are cheap knock-offs of him.

 The pulp magazines eventually died-out post-World War 2. Paper rationing during the War took its toll on profits and then television became the new preferred method of consuming serialised stories. There was no longer a need for magazines that provided cheap entertainment for the masses. Not when you could afford a television or buy those cheap paper-back novels that were now being made. The time of the pulp magazine was past and most of the energy and creativity of the industry migrated over to television to make Cold War Spy-Fi shows or Westerns.

Dime Novel > Pulp Magazine > Spy-fi  TV > Bond, James Bond.

 But the spirit of pulp has never died as it lives on in pretty much every genre-related field of entertainment known to pop culture. And, with the rise of the internet age and, more importantly, the e-reader, a new renaissance has occurred in the field and pulp fiction has become the inspiration for new stories and new characters in the new digital age. Downloadable kilobytes have replaced wood pulp paper and Amazon has replaced the newspaper stand but there’s a growing number of people who want to tell stories in the style of the old pulp magazines. Cheap, fast-paced, genre-focused stories that unapologetically exist to entertain, released on a regular basis so readers can get more and more of what they want. All of this has been made possible by the e-publishing revolution and it has meant that pulp is yet again alive and kicking.

And for some bizarre reason I’ve been caught up in it all...

"How did I get here?!?"

 So that’s a brief overview of pulp, with an even briefer flyover regarding the new satus quo of the field. A very short overview. But stay tuned next week. Next week I’ll go a little deeper and try to explain why I have chosen to write the Aether Age stories in the style of the pulps as well as the rewards, challenges and quirks of the genre and how they relate to Tommy Thunder. 

For all that and more, stay tuned...

Dieselpunk Manifesto: What is 'Dieselpunk'?

Tommy Thunder and the Aether Age stories – especially the Aether Age stories – are Dieselpunk stories. So what is Dieselpunk..?

Dieselpunk is one of a few similar subcultures that use a particular historical era as inspiration for the way they dress, the way they listen to music and the way they do any number of things we all do in our day-to-day lives. The best way to explain it is to use an example (or two). At its simplest, Dieselpunk is about people who prefer to wear fedoras (old-school gangster hats) over baseball caps, or three piece suits over t-shirt and jeans. There are plenty of people out there who long for the good old days of gangsters, speakeasies and ‘proper music’ played by a real band who can sing without autotune. Those people are Dieselpunks.

A dapper Dieselpunk gent out and about.

 

But a lot of people like to take it to a much deeper level. These people use the style and culture of a previous generation as the outward signs of a much deeper philosophical belief system, a belief system they can be quite passionate about. In this much deeper philosophical aspect most of the ‘punk movements are fairly similar, from the Steampunks who enjoy dressing like Victorian era gentlemen, the Atompunks who like to dress like kick-arse 1950s-style roller derby girls and listen to rockabilly music, or the Cyberpunks who prefer to look forward to a future in which cybernetic implants are the norm. All these people are tapping the same basic desire – the desire to critique the present by asserting the past or future in a way that is ‘out of time’.

For the best illustration of this much more involved ‘punking I always look to the group that never gets any credit as ‘punks. The original ‘punking movement: the Chain-Mail ‘punks. 

You and I know them as Medieval Recreationists.

Going Medieval.

Why are they the best illustration of the ‘punking movement? Because what they do is by far the most involving, as well as most successful, critique of contemporary culture. Why? Because these people completely reject Modernity in one fell swoop. Longing for a life of simplicity where every human is still a craftsman and an artisan they recreate the pre-Modern world at Medieval recreation events. They camp out in huts, dress in completely different clothing and just go Medieval for the weekend. In doing so they assert the values of that lifestyle and point out that we’ve lost a lot along the way to our present Modern world with its temporary communities and mass manufactured goods. 

Like all of the most involved people in the various ‘punk movements these people make a statement about the world by just being. By adopting a whole lifestyle associated with a different era. Across all ‘punk subcultures, the adoption of a complete lifestyle you take with you into your everyday world is called being a ‘lifestyler’. It’s the most involved and most outwardly obvious form of being a ‘punk.

At the bar, 'punking.

But not everyone is a lifestyler. Some people are more interested in the less obvious ways of getting their ‘punk on, ways that aren’t necessarily visible but hold just as much meaning to the individual. Whether it’s listening to Neoswing music, decorating your walls at home with 30s era Hollywood pin ups, or spending your weekends watching old black and white movies and then arguing that ‘they don’t make ‘em like that anymore’ many people are just a little bit ‘punk. And if your ‘punking is exclusive to the cultural practises of the era stretching from the turn of the 20^th Century to the end of World War 2 then you’re probably more than a little bit Dieselpunk.

They don't make 'em like that anymore. Sigh...

So how are the Aether Age stories Dieselpunk? Well for that you’ll have to come back next week...