Steampunk’s Victorian and Edwardian aesthetics, combined with its imagined technologies has captured the imagination of designers, hobbyists, and writers. Now a literary publicist hopes to launch the same kind of movement for green technologies.

Matt Staggs, a literary publicist who specializes in speculative fiction, has put forth a “GreenPunk Manifesto,” to define the concept and his hopes for a possible eco-friendly fiction movement:

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.

What Staggs misses, however, is the design component that has made steampunk so popular. Because it’s rooted to a particular aesthetic, steampunk is easy to recognize and simple for enthusiasts to replicate. Staggs is trying to compile a list of novels and stories that fit within his definition of greenpunk, but he might do better to work with designers and solicit images as well.

A GreenPunk Manifesto [Enter the Octopus]