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Let's make an atompunk setting

Lord Ultimus

Lord Ultimus

Beautiful...
Location
Undisclosed Warehouse
Okay, so in case you don't know, atompunk is a slightly different take on what's known as "raygun gothic". It doesn't necessarily have to be set in the 1950s, but it's heavily based on the science fiction and "modern" design of the 1950s. It's also very closely related to dieselpunk, but with a more optimistic, less military feel to it. Think Flash Gordon, or Buck Rogers. Art deco is everywhere, and every family has a flying car.

The rules:

You can post as many facts about the setting as you want, as well as any character bio.

You can't contradict a fact that another poster has posted but you can expand on what others have said.

If somebody doesn't like your post (including yourself) you can delete it, edit it, or expand on it.

You do not have to be completely serious and some silly ideas are fine, but please avoid adding in outright joke posts.

Try not to break the setting.

The setting will be generally optimistic, but more socially realistic than those older stories: inequality exists, the government has a scandal or two every year, and right and wrong is not always clear. And maybe the science isn't quite as terrible.

The first fact is:

Earth was attacked in the 1950's by alien space pirates. While humanity won and even gained alien technology, victory was extremely difficult, and effectively ended the Cold War. Earth soon created a one world government, and began a massive space program to defend themselves against any future invasions.
 
The invaders originated from the vile swampy lowlands under venus's poison clouds. They are feathered reptiliods approx 4 feet in height who required bulb shaped rebreathers to operate outside their massive invasion vessels.
 
-The Zarthok are a species of lizard/avian-like creatures. Originally most of our understanding of their culture came from the downed skiffs and sloops that the various governments around the world managed to down. The mentions of successful hunts on stone tablets and the abundance of trophies suggested a predatory culture of sorts, and the nature of their raids- Seemingly aimed at museums and laboratories at random- Invoked the idea of precision raids.

-Eventually, contact with non-raider Zarthok- Who still rely on large spaceships that can switch from atmospheric flight to "void-travel"- Was made, thanks to a downed skiff containing captives from non-raider cultures. They were released back to their polities over the course of several years, enstablishing a sort of solid alliance with some Zarthok nations/kingdoms/what-have-you.

-There is still a lot of infighting among the various "divisions" of the One Concern Government, and several states are clamoring for a return to a non-unified government once the "alien menace(s)" are dealt with.
 
Roadie said:
...so where's the "punk", though?
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I'd say you could easily have anti-enstablishment, anti-conformist sentiment brewing in the face of the One Government's attempt to force a conformist, fully positivist lifestyle that disregards shit like "hey maybe all this ultra powerful science has repercussions."

Like it's the 50s, and even after the aliums attacking and unification and all of that I can easily see the One basically having a very, mmh, colonialist 'ttude towards the rest of the Sol System and most of Earth too.
 
-Nuclear fission is still highly regulated, due to concerns over the proliferation of nuclear weapons

-That said, nuclear fusion based on reverse engineered Zarthok technology is ubiquitous, cheap, and stuck in damn near anything. That flashlight in your pocket is not powered by a battery, it is powered by a fusion reactor. The same goes for personal vehicles.

-On the opposite side of the Zarthok sphere of influence from Earth, a group of insane aliens from a completely different species only known as the Missionaries are involved in a massive war. This is taking up the vast majority of the Zarthok's attention and resources just to keep the Missionaries from stomping all over them.

-Interstellar travel is achieved using a sub-dimension known simply as Tension Space, where the distances between the 'shadows' of massive bodies in realspace are compressed based on their mass and relative proximity. This makes supermassive stars transport hubs, even if those passing by typically stay in Tension Space the entire time to avoid the massive amount of radiation they throw.
 
Arkalest said:
I'd say you could easily have anti-enstablishment, anti-conformist sentiment brewing in the face of the One Government's attempt to force a conformist, fully positivist lifestyle that disregards shit like "hey maybe all this ultra powerful science has repercussions."

Like it's the 50s, and even after the aliums attacking and unification and all of that I can easily see the One basically having a very, mmh, colonialist 'ttude towards the rest of the Sol System and most of Earth too.
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Another thing to add was that the original 50s was the time of punk precursors Greasers, fans of the original rock'n'roll many punks were nostalgic for (most notably The Ramones), and The Beat Generation and resulting Beatniks.

So Space Greasers and Space Beatniks definitely need to be a thing, though I shudder to think what a future version of William S. Burroughs would be like.

Also, for the Atompunk/Raygun Gothic aesthetic, you might want to check out 70s band Roxy Music for inspiration, since music reviewer John McFerrin described them as sounding like "what the 50s would think rock'n'roll in the future would sound like":
 
-The war between Missionaries and Zarthok is fought largely by proxy, using corsairs and funding rebel groups from the remnants of past Sol System civilizations, such as Martians.
Missionaries have the edge due to their tech being superior to the Zarthok, but at the same time they can only barter single pieces of it. They do not intend for people to reverse-engineer any of their technologies, which means their drives/ships/guns/data drives are hardwired to explode if tampered with.


-Zarthok technology uses nuclear fusion more sparingly. It is portable yet, but their technological development has favored "generator" -style devices that are worn and power an array of wearable, suits and machinery through contact.


To continue on the punk wave:

-The Missionaries, Zarthok and One Concern Government all have their fair share of deserters trying to stay ahead of the colonialist waves surging outwards from the sol system. Many holdouts of rebels without a cause, corsairs, utopians, mad scientists, pioneers and the like exist both in Sol and outside of it.

-Several of these holdouts rely on dangerous activities to maintain a constant income stream. Stealing Missionary tech, extracting cavorite from the battlezones and ruins on Mars, plundering Europa's oceans for super-alloys, escorting minor polity members around, or plain ol' space trucking.


-Their lives are often on the edge of legal. Many of these colonies squat in "claimed, but not actually colonized" territory, and often rely on One Government-appointed officers being lazy, looking the other way or being downright sympathetic to their causes.
Other holdouts exist right under the nose of the government(s), using the sheer size of the bureaucracies they're enmeshed in to thrive. Pirate spaceports in the Caribbeans, slums clinging to the side of Mons Olympus between one Martian spire and another, junk-stations in the asteroid ring are all things that thrive on being not worth the effort of eradicating.
 
I think a critical, and possibly defining trait of "punk" in the whole punk genera is that whatever tech it's based on is something regular people can fiddle with in their garages and make something that works.
In your concept, the atomic batteries or whatever you want to call them have to be "plug and play" so to speak.
You see, once you have a powerful and compact enough power source, stuff like flying cars and rayguns are totally doable with 1950s tech.
In fact, once you have something like that, something punk-ish is almost inevitable.
People want to fiddle around and make shit.
Look at all the stuff on youtube people have made in their backyards since better batteries and electronics have become available that would have been pure sci-fi fifty years ago.
Production of said "atomic batteries" would be regulated at first, but as more of them come into use, that stops being practical as a black market would pop up and people would start scavenging them from crashed vehicles and stuff. Repurposing Atomic batteries could be illegal as hell, but just like crack, anybody can get their hands on one if they want.
 
sockmonkey said:
I think a critical, and possibly defining trait of "punk" in the whole punk genera is that whatever tech it's based on is something regular people can fiddle with in their garages and make something that works.
In your concept, the atomic batteries or whatever you want to call them have to be "plug and play" so to speak.
You see, once you have a powerful and compact enough power source, stuff like flying cars and rayguns are totally doable with 1950s tech.
In fact, once you have something like that, something punk-ish is almost inevitable.
People want to fiddle around and make shit.
Look at all the stuff on youtube people have made in their backyards since better batteries and electronics have become available that would have been pure sci-fi fifty years ago.
Production of said "atomic batteries" would be regulated at first, but as more of them come into use, that stops being practical as a black market would pop up and people would start scavenging them from crashed vehicles and stuff. Repurposing Atomic batteries could be illegal as hell, but just like crack, anybody can get their hands on one if they want.
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Considering that said batteries are powered by nuclear fusion, re-purposing them as a bomb is basically impossible; on the other hand, using them as a radiation source for some project or other is totally doable.
 
sockmonkey said:
Production of said "atomic batteries" would be regulated at first, but as more of them come into use, that stops being practical as a black market would pop up and people would start scavenging them from crashed vehicles and stuff. Repurposing Atomic batteries could be illegal as hell, but just like crack, anybody can get their hands on one if they want.
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I think part of the punkiness would also come from defining the entities people have a bone to pick with. And the whole nuclear battery thing could be an interesting angle to define how much the One Government and its subsidiaries oppress people, and how.

Like a big part of this IMO is related to that: IE why people rebel, why people are pushed to the fringes of society. Is the OG an organization that's carried the old world's grudges forward? IE does it still enable institutionalized racism and discrimination based on its constituent states' social make-up? Or is the setting more about new problems for a new era, with discrimination popping up in different forms?

Furthermore, as the OP mentioned, the setting is supposed to be optimistic. So I feel that while there'd be traces of old discrminative practices and the like, there'd also be a whole 'nother set of problems. Problems that the OG is trying to address in a way or another, but the solutions are coming in and are being implemented slowly.

-Personally I envision there being a conflict between the OG and its colonial holdings wrt how to treat aliens. Like I got the feeling the OG's pretty "The only good alien is out of the Sol system and/or has acknowledged humanity's superiority". Not to the extent of bombing like, alien settlements and then pissing on the ashes, but there's clearly a majority that believes man's rightfully the new big dog in the Sol System.
And as a result of this attitude, they've taken on a less integrative, more gunboaty diplomacy approach. They park corvettes and other heavily armed ships out of alien settlements within the OG's claims, and aren't exactly shy about their distaste of Zarthoks, pirates and corsairs as a whole.

-This ends up causing friction with those colonies that have propped themselves up using commerce with alien settlements. Furthermore, the older colonies are probably the ones which have deviated enough from the OG's culture to start worrying the more hardliner elements.
 
I wanted to ask wrt this: I kind of want to spin this off into its own setting but I'd rather ask for permission from people to include/allude at their ideas. So..There's that?
 
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