Over at BoingBoing, Cory pointed out a strange new Renaissance slipstream genre called "clockpunk." Stories in the clockpunk vein are about alternate futures or histories where Renaissance-era devices are combined with high technology to create wonderful new confections. But clockpunk isn't the only anachrono-futurist genre that's taken the world by storm.
Consider the rise of bronzepunk, of which the hit flick 300 is a perfect example. Mashing up CGI effects with bronze-era armor technology, we get a story that's like Blade Runner crossed with Homer. Possibly this genre got its start with the success of Gladiator, another CGI-gasmic flick whose obsession with shields, swords, and helmets made it classic bronzepunk. And in the world of books, nobody does bronzepunk better than Mary Renault, whose 1950s, 60s and 70s novels about Alexander the Great, the Peloponnesian War, and Theseus are more fun and action-packed than all the Star Wars tales put together.
For those of a Medieval bent, there's plaguepunk, tales set in the plague-ridden late middle ages. The best example of the genre is Connie Willis' brilliant, vivid novel Doomsday Book, about a Medievalist from a future Oxford who travels back in time to study a village where the bubonic plague is about to hit. Armed only with a souped-up immune system and a brain implant that translates Medieval English into modern, she finds herself getting way too emotionally involved with her research subjects. Other entries in the genre include the cheesy-ass flick *Timeline *(time-traveling archaeologists meet Joan of Arc and say "dude" a lot), and the beautiful, haunting The Navigator, about 14th Century visionaries digging a tunnel to 20th Century New Zealand to flee the Black Death.
Then there's stonepunk, which brings us all the way back to the stone age. Those of us who grew up watching 70s TV show Land of the Lost know exactly how cool stonepunk can be. Novels in this genre are many and various -- this is a subgenre that predates steampunk by almost 100 years. Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of The Land that Time Forgot, was a stonepunk writer before punk was punk. And then there's the Jean Auel "Earth's Children" series, starting with Clan of the Cave Bear, which is all about the development of stone-age technologies and a girl who can see a future packed with planes and cars when she takes drugs. Crucial stonepunk flicks include Cro Magnons, Neanderthals, and/or dinosaurs:* One Million Years BC* (Raquel Welsh as stone-age girl!), King Kong, Encino Man, and Godzilla are just a few of the many classics.
Want to get into any of these cool anachrono-futurist genres? Just search for the titles I've given you above, and go back to the past that never was. And don't even get me started on piratepunk, vikingpunk, or crusadepunk, OK?
