Dieselpunk + Steampunk Culture
Jet engines and nuclear power in Dieselpunk settings?
Hi all.
A while ago I made a thread about Dieselpunk novels and to plug my own novel that I'm writing (which I would be writing more of if I hadn't been contracted to write a how-to book), and when thinking over the setting I've created. Just for a ref, I'll link my other discussion.
http://www.dieselpunks.org/forum/topics/dieselpunk-novels-my-project
That being said, the timeline of the war I've been creating would span 20 years, and as you'd expect in a massive war of epic proportions, the technology would start off with your typical World War 2 weaponry and technology, but would finish off with a sort of late Vietnam era/mid 70's military technology. All with secret weapons and lots of deliciously fantastic machinery that we all know and love, of course. Society might not progress all that much since basically the entire world is so consumed by the war that most people are interested in pulling through it than making massive social experiments (though change does occur, it is generally a necessity of the war than any thing else. Also, 20 years of wartime austerity does tend to do things to people).
But the question that bogs my mind is that when the phase of the war starts to shift away from piston-powered prop aircraft and towards jets, and submarines and ships go from steam/diesel turbines to have some nuclear capacity, what does that leave my setting with? Naturally, I have seen dieselpunk artwork showing jet powered cars and the like, but I'm thinking if it would be Dieselpunk at that phase or not?
Though I did come up with some ways of keeping the themes going, for example, while missiles were developed, the countermeasure technology was so effective that aircraft would still rely primarily on their guns to fight with the missile kill only being occasional, and the use of nuclear weapons is averted by the fact that uranium is fairly rare and significant deposits of it are discovered only AFTER the war has been concluded. But thorium was much more common place, and it was the primary radioactive used. The great thing about thorium is that not only does it produce much more energy than uranium, it is also much less dangerous and its byproducts cannot be used to create nuclear weapons.
But once again I ask the question, once my setting shifts towards that level of technology, would it become more atompunk or still have a lot of dieselpunk left over? This question has been in mind for quite some time, and then I got the idea of making the whole history of the setting a string of 'punk' settings. Hey, it could be fun if I'm gonna write novels in it for the next 30 years. :p
Views: 386
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Larry on -
It's possible to have atomic tech and rockets with a Dieselpunk setting in a story. On the later point we know that the Nazis had jet powered airplanes and rockets. On the former, the prefix of "Diesel" isn't meant to tie the genre to the internal combustion engine but is used to represent the culture, history and aesthetic that dominated the period time from the 1920s - 40s. So certainly atomic power could be part of a Dieselpunk story.
-
Permalink Reply by Jonny B. Goode on -
Agreed. Verne's Nautilus was hydrogen (read: nuclear) powered, and that was in a steampunk setting. And the Nazis were way ahead of everyone else with jet and rocket tech. Although such a story would likely skirt the line rather heavily with atompunk.
-
Permalink Reply by lord_k on -
Not only the Nazis had jet-propelled aircraft, but also the British (remember the Gloster Meteor story?). Besides, various jets were test-flown in Italy (CC-2), Russia (BI-1) and the US (P-59) long before the end of war.
Larry said:It's possible to have atomic tech and rockets with a Dieselpunk setting in a story. On the later point we know that the Nazis had jet powered airplanes and rockets. On the former, the prefix of "Diesel" isn't meant to tie the genre to the internal combustion engine but is used to represent the culture, history and aesthetic that dominated the period time from the 1920s - 40s. So certainly atomic power could be part of a Dieselpunk story.
-
Permalink Reply by Salim Farhat on -
Thanks for the info guys. Though my main concern with jets wasn't mainly with the propulsion system, but the use of air-to-air missiles.
However, I remember that the Germans did, in fact, make a functional air-to-air missile towards the end of the war, but they didn't have enough of a chance to use it in combat before Germany surrendered.
-
Permalink Reply by Tome Wilson on -
Take this in the best way possible. What does it matter?
Don't let the genre/setting get in the way of a good story.
-
Permalink Reply by Salim Farhat on
-
It doesn't matter THAT much to me. In fact, I've seen a lot of things in Dieselpunk that make things like atomic power and guided missiles seem tame. Giant mech suits, robots, urban sprawls that make today's mega cities seem lackluster (or at least plain). Yet for all that, the biggest thing that seems to take me out of it are modern jets (and by that I'm referring mostly to 2nd generation jet fighters and beyond). I'm guessing that's just because I have this huge love of the Golden Age of Aviation... which ironically ended as soon as World War 2 started since it completely changed the dynamic of how aviation would be.
You know what? I think I just answered my own question.
-
Permalink Reply by Cap'n Tony on -
That you did, Salim.
FWIW I've seen plenty of jets and rockets and guided missiles in Diesel era stuff, usually as some "cutting edge super tech" alongside the jetpacks and ray guns. And the earliest jet engine experiments predate WW2. The original primitive pulsejet that powered the V1 was, IIRC, first tested in the twenties.
-
Permalink Reply by Salim Farhat on
-
Oh I just remembered something along that line. The first ever radio controlled flying bomb (cruise missile or whatever you want to call it) was actually tested immediately after World War 1 in the US. Basically what they did was have an airplane laden with explosives and controlled by radio remote or something. It wasn't particularly effective and the project was scrapped in 1919 or 1920, but think of the potential it had if the US had kept developing it? By the time the US got thrown in WW2, they could have had a fully functioning cruise missile system lightyears ahead of everyone else. The Japanese navy would never have stood a chance against them and bomber pilots could take them out miles away instead of having to undergo the extremely dangerous process of dive/torpedo bombing. Germany would have had one hell of a problem to deal with since the US wouldn't have to send all those thousands of young men off to their deaths in the skies over Germany, but instead could have used missiles to attack from the safety of England... or the US mainland if they were long range enough.
Cap'n Tony said:That you did, Salim.
FWIW I've seen plenty of jets and rockets and guided missiles in Diesel era stuff, usually as some "cutting edge super tech" alongside the jetpacks and ray guns. And the earliest jet engine experiments predate WW2. The original primitive pulsejet that powered the V1 was, IIRC, first tested in the twenties.
-
Permalink Reply by Cap'n Tony on
-
You're thinking of the Kettering Bug, which didn't fare too well all said, but showed some early promise.
Assuming the US continued to thow money down the blind alley they could have realistically gotten somewhere with their "bug" experiments, but they probably wouldn't have been able to remotely launch them accurately at distant targets ala today's Tomahawk, as those rely on modern computerized inertial navigation and/or GPS. Instead you'd be limited to line-of-sight control via a radio link in an observation plane (much like what the Nazis experimented with late in the war, which had limited success historically) or primitive gyroscopic controls ala the V2. In all you'd have two possibilities: 1) an equivalent to the Nazi V weapons or 2) a primitive remote-guided bomb requiring an observer to steer in from an observation plane. #1 would be useful only for "terror bombing" while #2 would have some possibility of sucess against slow shipping or fixed targets, but would leave a vulnerable guidance aircraft and might not prove much more effective than the old cannon-armed B-25 and A-26 attack planes used historically.
Of course in the world of fiction anything goes!
-
Permalink Reply by Komissar Hass on -
Speaking about cutting-edge technologies, I remember one soviet project that was described on Aerocosmic Technologies lectures in my Institute. It was meant to be a delivery vehicle for the first soviet nuclear bomb (so it roughly matches the timeline), and basically was a "cruise missile" that was supposed to cross the atlantic on very low altitude befor skyrocketing before american shore and than striking the target. I'll try to find the name of the project. (After all, more common ballistic missile project was implemented).
-
Permalink Reply by Komissar Hass on
-
Ah, found it. It was called "350", or "Burya" ("Storm").
http://www.laspace.ru/rus/burya.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burya
unfortunately, the project started in 1954 and relatively successful tests were carried out in the end of the 50s, and overall it fits very well in "atompunk" and "jetpunk", even the "look":
-
Permalink Reply by Dr. Zarkov on -
The Messerschmitt 262 was a real jet powered plane, made in 1942: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_262
Atomic energy was not a secret in the Dieselpunk-aera: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Hahn The first German (test-)reactor startet in 1939: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nuclear_energy_project
The famous German SciFi author from the 1920s and 1930s, Hans Dominik (1872 - 1945), wrote in the 1930s about the miracles and chances of atomic energie. His books are actually very Dieselpunk. But I'm afraid he is completely unknown in the english speaking world...
© 2013 Created by Tome Wilson.
