__punk, Cities and Detectives

There have been a few posts over at Monsters and Manuals on __punk (Cyber-, Steam-, Diesel-, &c). Reading them over reminded me of an old, short piece of writing I once did....

Times are tough in New Ur. The mammoth-drivers guild are in the third week of strikes, the fire-priests have raised the spark tariff again and the palm wine has gone bad. But in the shadow of the great ziggurats, rumours have come to the ears of a secret informer about a new technology that can successfully preserve for all time the secret speech of the Grand Hierarch....and that somewhere in the city, one woman can help him get it.

The point was, in so many words, to gently satirise the tendency of __punk works to end portray a world drawing greatly from images of hard-boiled detectives and urban life of the twentieth century (see also this other post on the Victims of the New). 

Now, one sees the worth of the private investigator as A) a protagonist that can go to all parts of the society being portrayed - slums and spires alike - in search of the truth, uncovering sins and secrets - and B) someone who can get into thrilling fist-fights, gun battles, &c. (Among other examples: Rick Deckard is a re-activated former policeman, Section 9 might be government agents but have a usefully wide remit - the private eye model is a useful one).

But the notion that the cities of humanity would always end up as something like, say, The Naked City or Taxi Driver - or the pastiches of the same .... is odd. And the visions of cities shown in __punk works don't quite have the strong 'sense of place leading to verisimilitude' that we might see in (say) Chinatown. Gotham is (or can be) a background for our hero; New York is an ongoing intrusive reality. They can feel oddly generic, despite megastructures and future-tech - where generic is '20th century western world, probably Anglophone'. This is foolish, even if one was born in the twentieth century in the Anglophone world; it becomes more foolish to apply it to counterfactuals and uchronia.

Hence, well, my moderate scorn. I've communicated the same thing here: the 'snarky, streetwise magician' is now quite well known. The appearance of a portentous, pompous decidedly uncool scholar-mage in the vein of Carnacki or Gilbert Norrell would be somewhat refreshing (drop one of them into a Marvel film: unsightly, quip-less, irritable and apparently completely sincere when speaking of 'the most dreadful peril unto your very soul.')

So, what is there to say for my Blade Runner but Flintstones mock blurb? Not a lot. (Neanderthals as replicants?) It might be complete in some fashion to make a Bastionland district out of it, but that's all. 

However, beyond the above, it does make me want to think about the kind of cities one portrays. Setting aside (or at least non-centrally) the crowded metropolises of Dickensian derivation and 20th century mass transit, though avoiding the stagey puzzlebox cities of Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities is good, but not quite what is wanted).

To suggest examples: 

• The manufactured new cities of a centrally planned economy, with districts ordered by industry. 
• A conquered city, now governed by a distrustful coalition of four powers, whose representatives travel everywhere in quartets. 
• A city distorted by the central lump of a palace complex in its centre, and by the demands of ritual centres around it.
• Fortress cities are nothing new (see Minas Tirith*; contrast Osgiliath), but the image of a fortress city full of perpetually humourless guards, bunkers and chokepoints, difficult to traverse even for residents ....I've rarely seen the like, with the exception of Abnett's vision of Cadia. 
• A city riven by municipal factionalism manifesting in sporting contests, brawls, and sporting contests that produce brawls. Your entire life may be bound up in the district: your place of worship, your family, your friends, your trade.....

Now, I concede that this is just me casting out somewhat loosely: actually connecting any of the given above schemes with a retro-futurist setting/aesthetic/message/theme/&c may be more difficult. But I hope that this can suggest alternatives to the cliches and defaults that __punk produces. 

*Incidentally, if you were to tell me that prior to The Return of the King Dol Amroth was a much nicer place to live than the capital, I'd believe you. The threat of Mordor aside, you're living in an actual city (comparable in age and fame) rather than an inflated barracks, and you aren't under the gaze of Denethor.