Biopunk, This is Not: Leaving Cyberpunk's Shadow

 Repost from my old substack I had. I deleted it because, honestly, it was too much for what my main purpose for what I need.

So I am going to be re-posting old stuff here.

Bio-observance, Not Biopunk.

Alone in the Void setting has been one that I have been hoping on and off of for the last ten years, with some of the original documents from when I was planning on it being a TTRPG setting being lost to time (aka I can’t find the fucking USB which has the files).

In the original iteration, it was supposed to have some surface level cyberpunk elements, however over time that part got pulled out. I don’t know why at the time, but I think it felt like it limited the setting versus enhancing it, and my passions (nature, conservation, and biology) did not line up with it. 

However, the removal of the cyberpunk themes left the body of the setting without a skeleton to mold itself around, leaving a lump of flesh on the ground held together by skin in the end. 

The logical option would be biopunk, however currently this subgenre is much like diesel-, solar-, and steam-punk subgenres: aesthetics without any substance. All skin, no flesh, no bone.

My next thought was to build what biopunk should be: a rebellion and critique of a system.

However, this setting is not about rebellion about such a system, because there is no singular system to critique here, especially one such as above. 

There is a military with governments attached on Luna (which while paranoid, is trying its best to maintain and protect humanity. What that means? It depends on the faction in charge), there are syndicalist unions on Mercury (which bicker among each other but hate everyone else not from Mercury more), that are remnant nation-states in the sky cities on Venus (which jerk off about great and influential they are, but are just jokes among the Inner Solar System, pretty much glorified reservations for cultures of an Earth that no longer exists),  there are the thousands of city-states on Mars (this place resembles Earth the most with it bickering except on a less grander scale), and there are the thousands of city-habitats in around the inner solar system who pretty much practice a resemblance of autarky out of necessity with how big space is.

As you can see, there is no need for rebellion in this world for there is no singular system to rebel against.

This setting, and its stories, are just reflections of what is going on in the world in which these characters live in a world that is post-post apocalypse.

A setting in which the vast, vast majority of the biosphere and humanity has been wiped out, the survivors taking only what they can on their thousands of rockets into space, and having to use extreme amounts of biological constructs, and genetic engineering to keep some resemblance of a modern society going when humanity does not have an entire planet’s industrial base at their disposal, and a large amount of people are dead.

These Great Filters that humanity went through forced it to evolve or change on multiple levels, from industrial to social to psychological to ultimately biological as the time goes forward, and some humans desire to leave the inner solar system entirely (on better terms than the Exites at least) to colonize beyond the belt. 

 
Alone in the Void is not biopunk, just an observation to a biosphere level extinction event, and the evolution of humanity and remaining biosphere on a societal, psychological, and biological levels.