Dieselpunk

Atmospheric sub-genre of science fiction, dieselpunk - a term coined at the dawn of the new millennium by game designer Lewis Pollack - quickly met with widespread approval in the English-speaking world, especially in the realms of cinema and videogames. These stories have a retro-futuristic flavor, inspired by the interbellum era, that is, the period between the two World Wars, sometimes extending as late as the early 1950s. Highly compelling on the figurative level, this sub-genre is characterized by the fusion of three main elements:

1. Technology based on the diesel engines of the historical period in question;
2. A concurrent science-fiction element (amazing devices, futuristic modes of transportation, a world in which all technology is based on mechanical engineering and its bronze-colored inventions);
3. A post-modern sensibility that often ends up satirizing the typical 19th-century optimism and ideals of rationality and progress which are also well represented by the majority of steampunk productions.

 
Further, although there are certainly dieselpunk stories set against a "utopian" backdrop (that is, promoting an edifying vision of human behavior), those with a decidedly less optimistic tone prevail, given that the golden age of diesel engines and Art Deco is inextricably linked to one of the darkest socio-political scenarios ever seen in Western history. By extension, this Tag will encompass films whose esthetic aims to evoke that of dieselpunk, regardless of the time and place in which they are set.