That alternative history is called Steampunk, a play on Cyberpunk. But it struck me that in some ways, we do live in a steamy-punkish world. True, the technology that is the most ubiquitous is Wi-Fi and iPads and social media. But what still drives it, the underlying industrial infrastructure mostly unseen by today’s cell phone addict, is gears and wheels, powered by burning gas, oil and coal, turning water into steam to produce electricity.
« The Math
Steampunk planet
« The Math
My story world is somewhat Steampunk. It’s Steampunk with some magic, though.
While sword and sorcery do exist, there are more modern weaponry and tools – guns for example (though these are your old-fashioned, Victorian Era stuff.)
LOL! Your description of Steampunk is… quaint.
The reason why steampunk is a play on cyberpunk is because first-wave steampunk was dystopic. It looked at the many problems of the second half of the 19th century — the extremes of classism, racism, cultural elitism and misogyny, the massive deforestation followed by strip mining coal to fuel industry, the resulting toxic pollution, the huge gap between rich and poor, the work houses, and so much more — and used them as parables to show the start of modern problems and how little those problems have improved. Cyberpunk, in contrast, takes today’s problems and projects them into the future to show what might happen if things continue as they are. Both genres are political and can be pretty subversive.
Second-wave steampunk, which is the culture celebrated by most people, really has nothing at all to do with first wave. It celebrates innovation and exploration and generally ignores the heavy costs they impose. It’s fun in an escapist way, and I even have some neo-Victorian outfits I wear to SF/F conventions. I just wish it wasn’t called “steampunk”: it has nothing whatsoever to do with actual steampunk.
BTW for anyone who’s new here: if you notice the main post changing as people chime in with ideas and refinements in comments, that’s kinda how this works. It’s sometimes a group collaborative process, in this case I may use a steampunk intro derived from the one above for a piece on Keystone that will be prominently posted; it’s useful to put that out here first and have people with more experience weigh in.
@Gregory:
I’d argue what most people like nowadays (the kind of neo-Victorian genre) is more a return to the 0th-wave. Jules Verne, after all, was the first steampunk author.
I’m not going to click on the video because right there in the still shot is a blatant example of what I hate most about steampunk: Gears That Don’t Work. The four gears on the right-hand side of the mask constitute a locked train. They will not, can not, rotate. Even if the two larger ones were separated, the differing ratios to the two smaller ones would prevent rotation. At least the tooth pitch is pretty much the same. Usually it’s not.
Why yes, I am a mechanical engineer. How did you guess?
@Kevin #5 – There is a difference between being a writer in Victorian times describing contemporary science fiction, and a writer from much later who uses the Victorian era as a setting. Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs… they did not write steampunk by any definition. And the vast majority of people I see wearing neo-Victorian outfits are either steampunk aficionados or goths, with a few historical recreationists or Dickensian Christmas carolers thrown into the mix. I can’t recall every seeing someone dressed in costume to honor Jules Verne.
@Gregory:
That’s why I used 0th. It’s not technically steampunk as much as it is Victorian-era science fiction. But the modern steampunk arguably pulls significantly from those writers.
Click on the link, Tre! Just think of it as an art form. Victorian era based art. Like showing a sparkplug icon on a PC desktop for a power application, or a decal on a kitchen device, that doesn’t actually have or use a sparkplug.
@Kevin #8 – I will concede the point, then :-D
For a similar notion see
http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/
1950s SF would be 0th wave rocketpunk.
especially the 1st real entry
http://www.rocketpunk-manifesto.com/2007/04/on-rocketpunk.html
Some of the entries in this
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/
have a somewhat steampunk feel.
The authors of this
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
prefer the term ‘gaslamp fantasy’.
Trebuchet, it’s a parking brake.
Don’t forget the Tens of thousands of miles of fiber optic cable and Millions of miles of copper wire needed.
Lots of stuff under the hood.