Not seeing from this article how "A Memory Called Empire" fits under Mesopunk at all -- Martine writes from the perspective of a historian of the Byzantine Empire. I would consider adding "The Actual Star" by Monica Byrne, which spans Mesoamerican history for thousands of years on either side of the present day.
I'm honestly not sure how this was missed, the influence is obvious and the author's bio makes it explicit. By the way, if anyone reading this comment has not read the work in question I highly recommend it. "A Memory Called Empire" is one of the best sci fi books I've read in the past 5 years, and a very fresh take on the well established "galactic empire" trope.
Well this is awesome for me; I’ve been studying Spanish for a few years, and want to read fiction, but jeez, A Hundred Years of Solitude sure is difficult. I love SF and generally want to read works original in the language.
We’ll see how the genre pans out, but regardless, I’m happy with those offerings that debut in Spanish.
Yeah, there’s that, stuff just keeps happening, repeating, but also, the magical realism, stuff happens, and I’m like “did I read that right”? Plus the vocab is really broad.
Hoping a native Spanish speaker can add to this. I don't like YA-style books, and would love to know if there's a quality sci-fi or fantasy with prose like A Hundred Years of Solitude (like Lord of the Rings does for English)
I feel like this comment is focusing entirely on the aesthetic qualities of -punk cultures. In cyberpunk's heyday it was tacitly understood that the genre was about abuse and loss of power incentivized by the accessibility of incredible technologies, but today it has a more pop veneer of shiny holograms and cyborg badassery. Steampunk seems to focus entirely on what-if worldbuilding at the expense of developing critiques on say rapid modernization in the industrial era. I am not so familiar with mesopunk but I have a feeling it's about more than just slice-of-life narratives in a particular setting.
One is the fusion of pre- and post-Christian religion and high culture, mix of folklore and myths and Catholicism that often has an occult feel to it. A preoccupation with death as a living thing, pagan themes in general.
What immediately comes to mind is something like the first two seasons of Westworld. Heavy use of Mayan architecture via the Llyod textile block houses, heavy Christian symbolism contrasted with native and Mesoamerican tradition, and so on.
The Shadowrun universe is pretty heavily influenced by Mesoamerican themes as well. It's not uncommon to show up in science fiction in particular.
>what are the tropes that characterize the genre? Stepped pyramids? Chocolate? Obsidian blades?
I suspect that the goal of authorship within this genre is expression through authentic cultural identity rather than the employment of a reductionist stereotypes. I mean, cyberpunk is more than orientalist fetishism and 1980s technology, is it not?
>The only two recommendations for the genre are one novel, and one collection of short stories that includes other -punk genres
The article does specifically claim not to provide a comprehensive list of examples, and that the genre is relatively new.
Also, I counted four recommendations: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, The Jade Bones (Book 2 of the Age of the Seventh Sun) by Lani Forbes, The Witch Owl Parliament (Clockwork Curandera #1) by David Bowles and Raúl the Third, colour by Stacey Robinson, lettering by Damian Duffy and Once caras del punk: Antología de relatos by Okami Maresco, Dean Wyes, Hannelore Adler Gailwain, Diego J. Sañudo, Kimara Louise, Vianey Medina, and others. A couple of those are the first books in a series. Is that not enough?
"Mesopunk builds on the sense of family, community, and the structure of society for the benefit of all." It seems pretty light though, although it's possible based on their examples that this is mostly a Spanish language genre.
I genuinely thought this was satire when I clicked on it. Honestly the -punk genre itself to me doesn't really make any sense. There is little to no real connection between punk genres with the notable exception of Cyberpunk and Biopunk and even those don't necessarily have much in common.
Personally I think it's great to see more american culture in novels but I feel like this is a stretch. It requires too much information for a writer to have knowledge of. There's a lot of faults and issues with modern day writing and the publishing industry as whole. But I just think it's getting ridiculous that we're expecting new and upcoming writers to be able to do all of these things in order to fit into possible niche genres that generate little to no profit. Honestly, a part of me is concerned this is a way for publishing companies to silo young and upcoming ethnic writers. I think it's great that we're trying to be more inclusionary but I don't think this is the way to do it.
I mentally replace "-punk" with "-schtick" and it makes sense. Steam-punk? Steam-schtick, everything is steam powered. Cyber-shtick, usually a bitter critique of consumer culture, with a protagonist that's heavily invested in the internet. Meso-shtick, they put a light veneer of classical Aztec culture on what is basically a detective novel in space.
It's interesting that it's almost 'punk' to be anti-punk - anti-inclusionary, etc. People always have reasons, but I think we recognize the form, tone, and conclusions of so many of these arguments.
> it's almost 'punk' to be anti-punk - anti-inclusionary, etc.
I see the most dull, buttoned-up conservatives claim this, but I think they're lying or delusional. Major hegemonic institutions have capitulated only superficially to the trappings and the suits of "punk," or liberalism, and certainly not in the slightest to the threads of Marxism/Socialism that demand a dictatorship of the proletariat, ie worker ownership, ie DIY.
The argument that conservatism is "punk," delusional as it is, is less based on any superficial capitulation to leftism but the premise that the mainstream power base of modern society (particularly American society) is leftist |"wokeist"|feminist|anti-white|anti-Christian, what have you, which they claim places them in the position of underdog rebels fighting against the establishment.
It's a weird phenomenon I've noticed within the right of claiming the identity and language of oppressed and minority groups in order to subvert them and claim whatever political and cultural power they have for their own, despite they themselves still being the most politically powerful and culturally influential demographic by orders of magnitude.
People naturally rebel against institutions. To a degree, it's healthy. As you say, a certain form of liberalism is institutionalized.
At the same time, the reactionaries (the right) has highly strategic, effective messaging: As you say they portray themselves as the oppressed; white people in the US are oppressed! A recent poll by CBS or Pew supported that it was a widely held view, at least on the right.
Also, they use the same tactics very frequently, in lost of situations:
First, just follow basic military tactics and stay on the attack; always keep the initiative and remain inside the enemy's OODA loop; force them to respond and reorient rather than plan and attack. You can see their attacks are often completely absurd, but it doesn't matter - they stay on the attack, keep the initiative, force you to respond rather than do anything effective. And their supporters love it, even knowing it's lies - they are winning the fight ('owning the libs').
One way they do it is to find their own biggest weakness (e.g., racism) and accuse the other side of it. Not only does it follow the tactics above but it disorients the enemy, and it floods the public space with so much BS that you can't talk about the topic. Try talking about racism, for example.
You are right. "A certain form of liberalism is institutionalized," and that's enough of a machine for millions of Americans, Europeans, and Brazilians to "rage against," as it were without too much self-delusion. I feel like there's a much wider world out there—especially given all historical context—which dwarfs today's liberal movement a thousandfold, but of course some people can't see the forest for this tree. Some people's Overton Windows are more like Overton peepholes. Can't say for sure I ain't such a person, myself.
Absolutely absurd to think of as fundamentally "woke" a government under the sway of the Heritage and Hoover Foundations, or the Cato and American Enterprise Institutes.
"Punk" wasn't political; GenX teenagers were into skateboarding and being cynical, not politics. People added that later on, although often young people get into politics just an excuse to get into fights.
As for "-punk" media genres, cyberpunk is but I felt like the term came from "steampunk", which is anti-political. I mean, it's basically about playacting Victorian colonialism and ignoring the bad parts.
> "Punk" wasn't political; GenX teenagers were into skateboarding and being cynical, not politics.
This seems like a very narrow view: the war on drugs, offshoring jobs or otherwise hammering working class employment, and, of course, rights for anyone who wasn’t a straight white dude were kind of prominent - an awful lot of punks were vocal about full rights for women, ending gay bashing, ending police brutality, etc.
> "Punk" wasn't political; GenX teenagers were into skateboarding and being cynical, not politics.
This is a strongly political position to hold. DIY aesthetics, too, deeply political. Not in the "electoral politics" sense, of course, but in terms of a country's distribution of power and determination of civic priorities.
How does it "require too much information" for a writer to have knowledge of their own culture?
No one is putting a gun to "ethnic writers'" heads and making requirements of them, or forcing them to "represent", all that's happening here is that more non-Anglo authors are choosing to write science fiction from other than the default cultural perspective of the genre, and more publishers are publishing it. I don't understand what your objection is.
> But I just think it's getting ridiculous that we're expecting new and upcoming writers to be able to do all of these things in order to fit into possible niche genres that generate little to no profit.
Who, pray tell, is "expecting" writers to do this? We're living in the digital content-driven death of monoculture, there's a Cambrian explosion of subgenres and niches out there in the literary world. Writers can write what they want to. There's room for both niche sci-fi such as these works, and a title with more mass appeal, such as Mexican Gothic. Book websites such as this are just as happy to populate SEO listicles full of affiliate links to advertise these works. Not to mention, it would appear that the YA market is bigger than ever, and there's much overlap with ethnic writers. And then there's the infinite demand (now with higher interest rates, perhaps less so) from streaming services for new works to adapt. There's been multiple times I've looked up something from a list of, say, AAPI sci-fi/fantasy novels that I've never heard of, only to find out adaptations are being worked on for them. (examples include Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao, The Poppy War by R.F. Huang, and Jade City by Fonda Lee).
Who are you to suggest that the authors behind these works are doing it out of some misprioritization of what the market is looking for? As far as the literary world is concerned, it would seem like it's looking for everything.
To some degree the -punk suffix is just branding. Maybe this genre would be as accurately called Mesofuturism, just as Afrofuturism could perhaps be renamed to Afropunk.
1a: of or relating to punk rock
1b: relating to or being a style (as of dress or hair) inspired by punk rock
2: very poor : inferior
3: being in poor health
But it comes from how punk was attached to cyber, i.e. cyberpunk, and then sub-bastardized out from there, originally meant to be a way to describe future ruffian dissidents who almost never engaged in direct physical altercations but instead used the awesome power of information asymmetry in a digital age to act outside of the bounds of the law, often supplemented with drugs or mechanical enhancements (cyborgs) and the like.
Matrix is Cyberpunk, then Steampunk is modern day technology in the 1800's BUT POWRERED BY STEAM!, Solarpunk is basically Slow Life Cottagecore, so now alternate histories are "MESOPUNK" because that sounds cooler I guess.
Maybe it's not dead center in the mesopunk genre, but Atomik Aztex by Sesshu Foster is a great and gritty fable of a protagonist/unreliable narrator shifting back and forth between life as an eagle warrior in Tenochtitlan and a migrant worker in a modern American meatpacking plant.
When did the meaning of the term 'punk' change from denoting an anti-establishment attitude to a 'buy me' trigger for certain customer segments,especially as suffix in the literary market?
And how much was the overlap?
