Atompunk is a subgenre of science fiction that centers around a view of the future from the perspective of the 1950s and 1960s , a darker version of Retrofuturism . Modern depictions tend to use a distinct, brightly-colored art style but it can also appear just as it does in the page's main image. It often depicts imagery associated with "traditionally American" values, particularly a belief in the nuclear family and the suburban lifestyle. But it's important to note that this isn't the Raygun Gothic aesthetic; it does not center itself around a utopian future but rather a dystopian nightmare. Atompunk is the dark underbelly of 1950s and 1960s sci-fi characterized by potential dark futures such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep , satirical parodies of typically suburban American life such as Dad's Nuke and more recently satirical parodies of the Raygun Gothic aesthetic such as Futurama .

The Atompunk aesthetic originated from the Raygun Gothic and Googie aesthetics being born from the eccentric but brilliant mind of Philip K Dick with the book known as Solar Lottery . It is the dark underbelly of that aesthetic and was created as a way to vent frustration at 1950s and 60s American society, acting as the counterculture to the typically utopian or otherwise non-dystopian stories that were popular at the time.

The term Atompunk was coined after Cyberpunk was invented, but it has existed long before the aesthetic made dystopian stories popular, similar to Dieselpunk and works such as Metropolis and Things to Come .

What differentiates Atompunk to the non-dystopian 50s/60s retrofuturism of Raygun Gothic is the '-punk' suffix . While some consider its meaning to just being connected to the Punk movement, like Cyberpunk , that's a misattribution. Instead, the term -punk refers to how countercultural it was in its context. Steampunk was countercultural in the sense that it was the development of a completely unique and new genre that oftentimes defied societal norms. Dieselpunk consists of two aesthetics: Ottensian Dieselpunk/Decopunk and Piecraftian Dieselpunk (every other part of the Dieselpunk genre like Brazil , Metropolis , Things To Come , etc.) which were created as counterculture in their respective genres; Ottensian after World War 2, and Piecraftian during and before World War 2. Overall, while Raygun Gothic is more of a celebration of its technological advancements and not something designed to push against the culture, Atompunk was designed as counterculture to that zeitgeist. The most well-known example of this aesthetic in the present day is the Fallout series, which takes influences from early-to-mid Atompunk media such as 2000 AD and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep .

Atompunk typically envisions a satirical or dark twist on the Raygun Gothic aesthetic such as post-apocalyptic Space Age settings like Dad's Nuke and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep , though it will sometimes take the form of the simple Googie aesthetic, just with punk sensibilities.

Atompunk fashion tends to draw heavy inspiration from how people in the 1950s/1960s viewed how the future was going to look, similarly to Raygun Gothic 's fashion, so a lot of the outfits seen in pulp sci-fi of the time tend to be the primarily focus, as well as T-shirts adorned with graphics invoking the covers of pulp sci-fi comic books of the time, which tended to be sexually suggestive from time to time, being part of its fashion.