Swinging through here because Fonda Lee tweeted about silkpunk, and feeling very like
@eclipse in seeing that "Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 120 days" note.
Says Fonda Lee:
"Silkpunk" is a term coined by the brilliant Ken Liu to describe a blend of sci-fi and fantasy inspired not by Victorian-era steam-powered technology ("steampunk") but by East Asian antiquity. It does NOT apply to every SFF story inspired by Asian history or culture.
I mean, shouting about what people want to label things is always a shaking-fist-at-cloud sort of scenario, but in this situation I feel that there's a nuance to the use or misuse of subgenre labelling to do with the minimisation or othering of an entire race-related body of work. i.e. "let's not talk about the details of what the work is and does; it's Asian and that's the only thing that matters".
As Lee further said in that twitter thread:
Leaving aside the issue of '-punk' being egregiously and erroneously overused *in general* - taking a term for a specific fictional aesthetic and lumping in all Asia-inspired works (or works by authors of Asian descent) simplifes, misrepresents, and flattens a huge range of work.
In the responses to this little thread, there's someone contemplating writing a piece for Fantasy Faction about the nuances of subgenres especially for "diverse" authors, and I definitely hope that happens!
What I'm uncertain about is whether the SC Emmett fits the bill. Sure, no magic, but also no real technological edge. It's just... non-magic fantasy?
