Year: 2022

Sci fi Subgenres: Splice & Dice, the Biopunk Code

Of all the sci fi subgenres, biopunk probably hits the closest to home. Modern medicine and biotech has reached new heights, but a lot of the seeds of the fields were planted 40 years ago in some of the seminal biopunk novels.

Biopunk is closely related to cyberpunk and its derivatives, but it certainly presents a more realistic, while grim, outlook for our future.

What is Biopunk?

Where cyberpunk focuses on modifying the human body mechanically (think implants, advanced prosthetics, and computerized neuro functions), biopunk focuses on biology. Specifically, synthetic biology, including genetic engineering, extreme natural selection philosophies, and biochemical enhancement.

While some sci fi genres like solarpunk take a more optimistic outlook on the human experience, biopunk is closely related to cyberpunk in its adherence to a pessimistic, even grim, philosophy. As such, most biopunk books, novels, and games have dystopian societies, shadow governments, and totalitarian overtones.

Biopunk often features illegal black-market biohackers, people who operate outside the sanctioned scientific community to provide experimental—and dangerous—solutions to people’s troubles. While William Gibson’s Neuromancer was instrumental in the creation of cyberpunk, it also hinted at a biopunk world functioning in tandem with the flashy neon and advanced hardware of cyberpunk.  

Case, the main character, sustained significant damage to his nervous system, which prevented him from hacking into cyberspace. In exchange for his services as a hacker, Armitage repairs his nervous system while implanting a failsafe—poison—in Case’s bloodstream. Biopunk, right?

It’s clear that biopunk doesn’t operate in a vacuum, but just how connected is it to real science? Well, this sci fi subgenre is simply a culmination of fear, anxiety, and contempt for the illicit activities of real-life scientists. The history of the biotechnology revolution laid the groundwork for the core tenets of the biopunk genre.

The Biotechnology Revolution

Biotechnology isn’t a new field. It’s predecessor, zymurgy, was incredibly prevalent in the late 1800s. The bustle and boom of the industrial revolution brought with it the need to increase food production and raise valuable capital for impending wartime projects.

German scientists began developing specific yeast strains that would increase beer production and boost the industry’s revenue. And during WWI, German and Russian scientists raced to use their new fermentation tech to support the war efforts, through the creation of hydraulic fluid alternatives and acetone.

Eventually, the focus moved away from fermentation and the field was more broadly defined as biotechnology, coined by Karoly Ereky, a Hungarian pork mogul. With the discovery of penicillin, the field became obsessed with curing human ailments and making a stronger workforce.

sci fi subgenres biopunk and penicillin

After a few decades of tinkering with biofuel and single-cell protein projects, biotechnology experienced its next boom with the creation of genetic engineering. DNA structure and recombinant DNA took biotech by storm, and would remain the core focus of the field for the next fifty years.

Realizing the vast potential of biotechnology, politicians went to war with human rights activists over the ethics of biotech, and for a while the science community placed a moratorium on biotech until the industry was regulated and assuaged public fears.

The biotechnology as we know it today was born out of the desire to improve the human condition, with IVF, gene-editing therapy, and microbiological advancement like synthetic insulin.

But the biotechnology prominently featured in the biopunk genre is the biotech of the 1960s, which placed a heavy focus on eugenics and biological warfare.

Biopunk Novels, Films, and Games

One of the early proponents of the biopunk genre was Paul Di Filippo, with his collection of short stories, Ribofunk. Di Filippo emphasizes that cyberpunk as a genre lacks any real substance to maintain a status in the public eye for more than a fleeting moment. Instead, in Ribofunk, he proposes that biopunk, or slipstream works with a focus on biotech, is the study of living, not the depressing, close-to-extinction fiction of cyberpunk.

biopunk ribofunk

Despite his efforts to elevate the genre, much of biopunk still riffs off the dark nature of human experimentation and exploitation, albeit with some positive undertones.

Some prominent novels in the genre include:

  • Blood Music by Greg Bear (often seen as an overlap of biopunk and nanopunk)
  • The Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia E. Butler
  • Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling
  • The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

But, the biopunk genre extends farther than the written word, encompassing visual mediums like film and video games.

  • The BioShock game series
  • The 2009 film Splice
  • The Resident Evil game series
  • The TV show Orphan Black

Blade Runner, the 1982 film based on Philip K. Dick’s book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is often categorized as a cyberpunk work, which in many ways, it is. However, it does feature biopunk themes. The Replicants, sometimes thought to be androids, are actually biologically-engineered, clone-like entities. This becomes clear in Blade Runner: 2049 with the scene Replicant-birth scene.

A Sci Fi Subgenre With Substance

Biopunk started out as an offshoot of cyberpunk, but in many ways, it has overshadowed its predecessor. The dedication to the ideological expansion of biotechnology and its implications to the everyday person makes biopunk a much more digestible genre than cyberpunk.

While we’re closely catching up to the cyberware featured in the cyberpunk arsenal, biopunk hits closer to home. Everyday we see incredible advancements in genetic engineering and biochemical panaceas that make biopunk’s darker ideations much more realistic and haunting.

What do you think? Will biopunk outlive its predecessor? Or will our biotech surpass the bounds of imagination?

Let us know in the comments below!

Classic Sci Fi Book Covers That Made The Genre

The Speculative Fiction Poetry of Progressive Rock

A few years ago, I attended Confluence, a sci-fi convention in downtown Pittsburgh. I attended a few panels about science topics, and even ran a mini-writing workshop with two of my Alpha graduate colleagues.

But one of the most interesting things I encountered while at Confluence was the filk community. For those who don’t know, filk is a culture, genre, and community based around music and speculative fiction. Filking is a wild experience. The music, which is heavily inspired by Tolkein-esque ballads and high-concept sci fi worlds, is accompanied by elaborate costumes and role playing, almost like LARPing.

After leaving Confluence, I started to consider how music and science fiction were tied together, and began noticing certain similarities between speculative fiction poetry and progressive rock, a genre I’d been listening to for a while before attending Confluence.

In this article, I want to lay out some thoughts about how prog rock takes spec fic themes and runs with them.

What is Progressive Rock?

You have probably heard prog rock before and not even known it! The movement began in the 1960s with the growing popularity of concept albums, introduced by The Beatles and other pop bands of the time.

A few of the core tenets of prog rock include:

Instrumental Experimentation– adding instruments and methods not widely used, like bringing in orchestral instruments and synthesizers. While the latter has become more mainstream as technology has improved, prog is still one of the pioneering genres seeking to use weird, unique sounds and instruments.

Pairing Literature and Lyricism – the idea of the concept album brought about philosophical ideas to mainstream music, as well as literature into lyrics. Prog rock artists often incorporate literary references when crafting their vast—frequently science fiction—masterpieces.

Advanced Musical Theory – Prog rock excels in breaking the bounds of musical theory. Most prog rock bands will tinker with time signatures, harmonies, and length to produce unique, compelling pieces of music.

How Do Prog Rock and Speculative Fiction Overlap?

It’s very easy to compare prog rock and speculative fiction because the two share a lot of the same fundamental values. Speculative fiction, be it sci fi, fantasy, horror, slipstream, or any of the hundreds of sci fi subgenres out there, all work to break the bounds of conventional thought. This could be through a complex story structure that mirrors how we think, or by incorporating fantastical ideas about unexplained phenomena in our world.

Prog rock follows a similar style, albeit more abstract. It pairs unique sounds with complicated, sometimes cryptic, verses all written in a poetic style. I’ve listened to some prog rock albums more than a dozen times, and they always take on a new life and meaning when reading the lyrics.

To show just how closely the two entities are connected, I’ve picked out an example:

Chromaparagon by Moon Tooth

I doubt a lot of people of heard this one, but it stands as one of the most interesting examples of prog rock that I could find.

Moon Tooth is a four-person band originating from Long Island, New York. Chromaparagon is their first full-length album, and is succeeded by Crux, and another album that’s upcoming sometime this year.

What I found particularly compelling about Chromaparagon, and super-relevant to our conversation of science fiction and prog rock, is their focus on the arcane, the weird, and the bizarre.

Take, for example, the first song on the album, Queen Wolf.

If you read the lyrics, you’ll recognize the linear motion of the story, which follows a mysterious, seemingly exiled character only referenced as “I” as they discover and confront the Queen Wolf.

My interpretation of the story is that the “I” character comes to realize the cruel nature of solitude and ostracization, and throws aside their old beliefs (evident by the line “I gathered up my holy books, O, my holy ink and paper and I burned them all). Afterwards, they set out to find the Queen Wolf, who has also been ostracized, and when the character finds her, “there was no denying that we belonged to each other.”

It’s a story of breaking from solitude and old beliefs to be with someone who is equally as shunned for their beliefs, even if they are perceived as a monster.

Keeping with the literary theme of prog rock, the song features a section from C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian book, “I am hunger, I am thirst. Where I bite, I hold till I die. I could fast a hundred years, I could lie a hundred nights on the ice and not freeze, I could drink a river of blood and not burst. Now tell me, who comes to disturb me?”

That monologue from Prince Caspian is spoken by a werewolf who had once been a servant of the White Witch and was brought out of exile by Nikabrik, a grumpy dwarf. Pretty fitting, right?

Throughout the rest of the album, the themes portrayed in the first song are built upon. In “Little Witch” the mysterious “I” talks about creating a personal Hell, but not a Biblical Hell. More like a Paradise Lost Hell, a hell of one’s own making.

Vesuvius I and II take us away from the previous themes, replacing them instead with iconography of Aries and the mountain of fire, instilling in listeners a sense of urgency as the ash darkens the sky.

Eventually, we reach “White Stag”, where we finally get a bit of hope. “Clouds dance and weave in infinite potential…He wills in your name on forever in beautiful ways.”

The Poetry of Prog

While this is only one example of how the genre-bending nature of prog rock music ties in with spec fiction, it’s a perfect case study for the abstract and the experimental.

A lot of people don’t listen to prog rock because it is weird and experimental, but us sci fi fans are quite familiar with those things. The music market is a highly competitive place, but progressive rock bands have made it their mission to break the barriers of genre, just like modern sci fi writers.

Moon Tooth, while our primary example, was a band I only discovered in the past two years. Before them, I was introduced to the genre by Caligula’s Horse, whose Bloom album stands as another intersection of spec fic poetry and rock music.

At the end of the day, the writers and musicians who make waves with their work are the ones who will be remembered. And Chromaparagon certainly stands as an album worth remembering.

A Cyberpunk Story About Tequila, Candy, and Barfights