Greenpunk vs Steampunk or Genocide of an Ancestral Kind

Matt Staggs over at Enter the Octopus recently published “yet another literary manifesto”, which subject I will discuss momentarily.

Has it ever struck anyone else that a ‘manifesto’ is something that you ought to be finding on the menu of an Italian Ristorante?

“May I take your order Sir?”

“No dammit!  There are women at this table and you will fucking well take their orders first!  Do I look like I share your cultural sensitivities? Hmmm?  No.  I do NOT. What the hell are they teaching you idiots in waiter school anyways?  I’m a few months shy of ordering from your damned seniors menu and you’re going to treat my guests and I like we share your bullshit everyone-is-equal-no-one-is-special new wave bleeding organ crap?  Here, let me show you equal.  Sit down in my fucking chair.  Sit down! Give me that pad!  What can I get for you, Sir?  No, sorry, that has too much sodium in it.  Nope, don’t think so, too much cholesterol.  Yes, that might be nice, but that has animal matter in it, so no-can-do.  Salad?  Are you fucking crazed?  Plants are living things too!  How would you like it if we ripped little pieces of you off for dinner or they served up your seed for an appetizer?  Come to think of it, you might just get off on that…get the hell out of my chair.  Send me the Manager!”

“Yes, we’ll have the antipasto and Manifesto all around.  Bring some extra cheese too, please. And some merlot.”

What would manifesto, the dish, look like?  What would it be made out of?

Certainly something like lasagna – you really need to start off with a solid base, something that gives it form, helps it to hold together, let’s you present the dish as a complete whole.

Layered, absolutely. Pasta with something dribbled over it just isn’t weighty enough to really make an impresson.  You’ve got to give that thing some mass, some depth.  Something that can hold a fork up all by itself.   Something you can take a knife to.

Spicy – indeed. And garlicky.  We want this thing to have an aftertaste.  We want it to be something that will stay with us for a while.  Something that we can share with others.

Manifesto the dish would absolutely have to be something very similar to one of those thick, meaty, multi-layered lasganas.  Something you chew. Not something that get’s all squishy and spits its innards out the moment any pressure is applied like a manicotti.

So now comes the GreenPunk Manifesto, all layered and solid, weighty, meaty and spicy.

What the hell is this?  Is that something actually crawling around in my manifesto?  Look – look right there

A GreenPunk Manifesto, vers. 1.1:
GreenPunk: a technophilic spec-fic movement centered on characters using and being affected by the use of DIY renewable resources, recycling and repurposing. GreenPunk would emphasize the ability of the individual – and his or her responsibility – for positive ecological and social change.

Rejecting steampunk’s romanticism while embracing its focus on approachable, “knowable” technology (as opposed to the “black box” nature of digital tech), GreenPunk envisions a world in which the detritus of consumer culture as propogated by the Elite is appropriated and repurposed by the masses toward the reconstruction of a devastated ecology and the address of social ills.  (Emphasis mine)

First. Cool idea.  Cool situation too.  I’m kinda in on the birth of a new literary genre (at least I know some of the folks putting it together).

Second. Why must every literary movement manifesto include the denigration of some other, preexisting literary movement.  Why is it necessary to beat someone or something else up in order to establish yourself at the top of the heap?

Look.  Right over there is another molehill.  It doesn’t have anyone on it.  You can run right over there, climb to the top and with hardly any effort proclaim yourself King of the Mountain.

But no. You’ve got to kick that guy off of his molehill instead.Watch him tumble down into the heap of writhing bodies at the base and laugh at his misfortune.

Which, given the identify of that particular molehill king is going to be just about next to impossible.  Schteampunk is just too popular and I fear that the backlash is going to roll over Greenpunk like a (wait for it)

Steamroller.

In the meantime.  Cool idea.  So cool in fact that I’ve even started writing the first ever steampunk-greenpunk crossover fiction. Take a look:

Revolt of the Plant People

“They burn our ancestors!” the rabble rouser cried as the vanguard of the Botanista army charged into the hail of high velocity bullets issuing from the steam powered gattlings mounted on the phalanx of iron war wagons arrayed against them.

“Bloody good show, that” remarked Colonel Curlyburns to no one in particular. “Always did admire fearlessness in the face of death. Didn’t credit plant lovers with much, but proof in the pudding, don’t you know. Ha! Plant Pudding! Ha!”

The Colonel surveyed the open field in front of him through his periscope, casting a practiced eye across the scrum. Grabbing the mouthpiece of the blower, he whistled into it. “Sergeant! Better get the cycles going. Don’t want the bloody wogs sneaking around the left flank. Bad show that.”

“Aye aye, Sir” came the tinny reply.

~~~

GreenPunk.net here and the Manifesto, served cold, here