‘Hopepunk’ – never heard of it, but I kind of know what it is

I’m not really into this kind of analysis. I’m sure I’ll get in trouble if I write anything.

But this coinage seems to strike a chord for me, and I can’t resist looking into it.

Let’s be clear:  I read stories for the sake of reading stories.  When they are good, they are good.  They don’t have to have a political point, and I don’t expect to agree with the writer’s politics anyway.  And I really, really don’t care how people classify them.

So, what’s going on here?

I hadn’t heard of ‘hopepunk’ until this winter [1].  This is supposed to be something new, “a literary and artistic movement that celebrates the pursuit of positive aims in the face of adversity“.

Apparently, this term is supposed to be an answer to ‘grimdark’, which I also never heard of til now.   I guess some have proposed a category ‘noblebright’, which sounds pretty damn preachy to me.  But the opposite would be something like ‘gaybright’, no? And ‘gaybright’ sounds like something I might read sometimes.  (I’m seeing a glittering ballroom, with fancy dress, waltzes playing, and witty banter….  Sounds like Alfred E. Bester, actually.)

The coinage itself is dubious, IMO.  Paring random words with ‘punk’ works sometimes (“cyberpunk” and “steampunk” being the main two winners), but mostly it doesn’t make sense.  It’s particularly stupid to pair a positive attribute with the brutal, noisy nihilism and negativity of ‘punk’.  (At least for those of us old enough to have lived through the real ‘punk’ thing.)

Look, whatever the original “punk” was about, it was not about “hope”, that’s for sure.

Anyway, whatever the merits of this concept, it has also been inextricably Tangled Up In Trump, which doesn’t bode well for the long run. In 20 years, who will even understand what you are “resisting” here?  Let the stories stand on their own.

So, what the heck is it?

As far as I can tell, the core of ‘hopepunk’ is a humane future, where people live healthy, happy, lives together.  People are good, and they design the world to be good. 

So–“hopepunk” certainly a new word, but honestly it’s not really a new theme in SF or fantasy. Optimism has actually been a key theme of SF from the beginning, as has the notion that people will still be people, even in a technologically transformed future.  See, Arthur C. Clarke.  Heck, see H. G. Wells and Jules Verne.

As always, this kind of ‘genre’ is mainly described by examples.  So, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman top the list.  For good reason.  N K Jemisin, of course.  And a host of others, of more and less obvious.

Most of the lists I’ve seen leave off a ton of authors I would include.  So here are some of my own nominations for examples of ‘hopepunk’.  Please note that these writers are worth reading, ‘hopepunk’ or no.

• Nnedi Okorofor
• A. Lee Martinez
• Catherynne M. Valente
• Ben Aaronovitch
• Iain Banks
• Christopher Moore
• Cory Doctorow  (See perhaps, Eastern Standard Tribe (2003))

And from the classic SF canon, there are lot’s of “pre-Trumpian” stuff.  

• Ursala LeGuin (e.g., The Dispossessed (1974))
• Robert A. Heinlein (e.g., Friday (1982))
• Norman Spinrad (e.g., Little Heroes (1987), The People’s Police (2017))

And so on.

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OK, enough of this.  This kind of “genre” stuff is not my thing, really.  So take my suggestions for whatever you want.  And please keep reading widely, no matter how people try to classify stuff.

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1. David Robson, The sci-fi genre offering radical hope for living better, in BBC – Culture, January 13, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220113-the-sci-fi-genre-offering-radical-hope-for-living-better
2. Aja Romano, Hopepunk, the latest storytelling trend, is all about weaponized optimism, in Vox, December 27, 2018. https://www.vox.com/2018/12/27/18137571/what-is-hopepunk-noblebright-grimdark