I like a lot of your scenarios (especially the Middle Eastern ones), but I'm not sure how the American ones (that I like, too, just for the record) fit in with the scenario already developed by Bulaba et al. I'll let them and you figure out that one.
Meanwhile, I have been thinking about the problem that Lexington stated a while back: I have the noir atmosphere, but what makes it Dieselpunk?
Some things to consider:
The technologySo, how is Dieselpunk not just another alternate history universe? One component is
retrofuturism/futuristic retro. The first is directly inspired by the imagined future which existed in the minds of writers and artists of that time, who attempted to predict the future, either in serious projections of existing technology (e.g. in magazines like Science and Invention) or in science fiction novels and stories. Such futuristic visions are refurbished and updated for the present, and offer a nostalgic, counterfactual image of what the future might have been, but is not.
Futuristic retro comes to almost the same result, but from the opposite direction: It starts with the retro appeal of old styles of art, clothing, mores, and then grafts it onto modern or futuristic technologies, creating a mélange of past, present, and future elements.
When a time period is supplied for a story, it might be a counterfactual present with unique technology; a fantastic version of the future; or an alternate past in which the imagined (fictitious or projected) inventions of the past were indeed real.
So, we could basically have all our modern tech, including computers and the internet, or even tech-that-never-was, as imagined from that era, in our game, as long as it has the
aesthetic of the interwar period. Now, for visual artists, the main inspiration is art deco, streamline moderne, the cinematography of the noir film, and the gigantomania of the propaganda posters (both fascist and communist). For writers, it’s difficult to transport those aesthetics, so let’s focus on the
atmosphere instead:
Well, we’ve talked about the noir, the disillusionment, devastation and depression after the war. But I think there is yet another angle to consider: This is the age of mass-movements, mass-production, of megalomaniac architecture, of ever increasing speed of the machines becoming the measure of all things, all leading to making the individual tiny, helpless and subordained to the machine, but also a part of a gigantic rising tide - swept away by forces beyond individual control, whose power felt both frightening and exhilarating. This feeling of profound meaning and momentum, which could evoke dread in one individual, and anticipation in another, should also shine through in our game.
Wikipedia claims that the third component of Dieselpunk is „postmodern sensibilities“, but I’d rather call it
social anachronism. It probably started out as the pragmatic acknowledgment of the unconscious and inevitable projection of our contemporary values and mores on the past (in a „heck, if we can’t avoid it anyway, let’s turn it into our trademark!- way), but it can also work the other way around: social structures and attitudes of bygone times projected onto a future society.
So, what is it with this punk thing, anyway?
Punk ideology is anti-establishment, in opposition to the conventional social, political, and economic principles of their society.
That’s a decision the author has to make beforehand: do
you want to be punk? Then you mix genres, apply retrofuturism and social anachronism across your whole universe. Or do you want your
characters to be punk? Then you can still have your retrofuturism, but the
society has to be mainstream, with all its historical values, taboos and attitudes, so that your characters can be the social anachronists, rebelling against or subverting their society.
There is also the DIY ethos, which ties in with the characters living on the margins of society - if they want to have any plot worth its name, without the financial and social benefits of the upper classes, they have to be ingenious enough to build their own devices, be they cyber, steam, or diesel. That’s why these genres are full of mad scientists, genius innovators, daredevil engineers and other adventurers.
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Oh, and if you have $3 to spare, read
Broken Time Blues, a dieselpunk anthology.
Checking my privilege - yep, still goodWhat would happen if the Sahara became socialist? - For ten years, nothing, then we'd run out of sand.