"The steampunk written today is part of a fourth wave. While some of it is quite good there are a..."
“The steampunk written today is part of a fourth wave. While some of it is quite good there are a great many writers that go steampunk gatherings, take notes, and sell the fantasies of their target audience back to them. Not only does this produce terrible books, it leads to creative stagnation on both sides. A review of classic steampunk smashes many current tropes.
Steampunk isn’t just Victorian. By including The Anubis Gates in the works Jeter dubbed steampunk he made it clear that he meant Victorian as a stylistic generality not a set of dates. Moorcock further disproves the idea that steampunk is strictly Victorian. In Morlock Night, Jeter flits through time beyond the Victorian era. Steampunk is generally Victorian in flavor but it has no fixed period.
Steampunk is not about the aristocracy. Politically conservative steampunks often try to exclude Michael Moorcock from the genre because of his explicitly anarchist/left political messages. Even if we humor them, Jeter, Blaylock and Powers used Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor as their major reference and their work portrayed poverty frequently and unflinchingly. There are only two prominent aristocrats in their collected work, Lord Bendray in Infernal Devices, and Lord Kelvin in Lord Kelvin’s Machine. Both characters nearly destroy the world through their arrogance and foolish abuse of technology. In The Difference Engine the aristocracy is made up the merit lords of the Industrial Radical Party. The London they govern turns into a hell on Earth. Classic steampunk has nothing nice to say about the power elite. Those who pontificate about Victorian manners or style themselves unsatirically as lords and ladies need come to terms this fact.
Steampunk isn’t always about gadgets either. Steampunk technology is not featured in Anubis Gates at all. In Homunculus it takes a backseat to supernatural elements. Goggles are only mentioned once in the Indifference Engine and not at all in the other novels. Certainly no one in these stories walks around with gizmos hanging off them like Christmas tree decorations, nor do they seem to have any particular fondness for the color brown. If you’re tired of the many barriers that seem to box steampunk in you have only to look at its roots. The barriers were never really there.”
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Steampunk isn’t just Victorian. By including The Anubis Gates in the works Jeter dubbed steampunk he made it clear that he meant Victorian as a stylistic generality not a set of dates. Moorcock further disproves the idea that steampunk is strictly Victorian. In Morlock Night, Jeter flits through time beyond the Victorian era. Steampunk is generally Victorian in flavor but it has no fixed period.
Steampunk is not about the aristocracy. Politically conservative steampunks often try to exclude Michael Moorcock from the genre because of his explicitly anarchist/left political messages. Even if we humor them, Jeter, Blaylock and Powers used Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor as their major reference and their work portrayed poverty frequently and unflinchingly. There are only two prominent aristocrats in their collected work, Lord Bendray in Infernal Devices, and Lord Kelvin in Lord Kelvin’s Machine. Both characters nearly destroy the world through their arrogance and foolish abuse of technology. In The Difference Engine the aristocracy is made up the merit lords of the Industrial Radical Party. The London they govern turns into a hell on Earth. Classic steampunk has nothing nice to say about the power elite. Those who pontificate about Victorian manners or style themselves unsatirically as lords and ladies need come to terms this fact.
Steampunk isn’t always about gadgets either. Steampunk technology is not featured in Anubis Gates at all. In Homunculus it takes a backseat to supernatural elements. Goggles are only mentioned once in the Indifference Engine and not at all in the other novels. Certainly no one in these stories walks around with gizmos hanging off them like Christmas tree decorations, nor do they seem to have any particular fondness for the color brown. If you’re tired of the many barriers that seem to box steampunk in you have only to look at its roots. The barriers were never really there.”
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Johnathan Sebastian Greyshade, over on Steampunk Workshop.
This intrigued me to no end.
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