Theories abound to explain the interest in what Weird Tales contributor Cherie Priest has described as a “retro-tech SF via a Victorian sensibility” (12). For example, in her work “Reclaiming the Machine,” Rebecca Onion posits that Steampunk evokes “a desire to regain a human connection with the machine world” and “seeks to restore coherence to a perceived ‘lost’ mechanical world” (138). Richard Watson, author of Future Minds (2010), has stated that Steampunk “is highly relevant to our times” because it “is a response to the realities of modern life” particularly the ever-increasing reality that the individual’s sense of control has been lost. Steampunk offers “a counter-trend to the fact that life, especially in developed nations, is atomised, fast-paced, [and] over-loaded with information, choice and needless innovation.” Weird Tales editorial director Stephen H. Segal, writing for Fantasy Magazine, speculated that one appeal of Steampunk is that it tears down genderized walls. By “masculiniz[ing] romance,” writes Segal, the Steampunk narrative “takes something stereotypically feminine that most boys hate—Victorian lace and frills and tea and crumpets—and says, ‘Hey, how about some robots with that?’”
Steampunk’s place in the blurry spectrum of SF subgenres lies among several others that emphasize the notion of “retro” or backward-looking ideals and aesthetics. Although the retro thread is there, Steampunk is detached from other retro-nostalgic styles that predicted a highly streamlined aesthetic of personal jetpacks, flying automobiles, and glass domes as epitomized, satirically, in animated serials such as Hanna-Barbera’s The Jetsons (1962) and Matt Groening’s Futurama (1999). In her book Retro, Elizabeth Guffey explains retro-futurism as an oxymoronic “discrepancy between what the future once represented and what it no longer means” (152). Steampunk, and similar SF movements, seems to have a reverse approach. Rather than celebrating the past’s hopes and speculations on the future, the “futuristic-retro” aesthetic, which may or may not prove to be a suitable term, imagines how an alternate past would have looked if a pastiche of ideas from both the present and the present’s imagined future are fused with those the past. For example, Dieselpunk, a term popularized by game designer Lewis Pollak for his SF role-playing game Children of the Sun (2002), is an evolutionary outgrowth of Steampunk that moves the time setting from the end of World War I to World War II (roughly 1920 to 1945). Prime examples of the Dieselpunk paradigm in narrative can be found in Dave Stevens’ comic book Rocketeer (1982) and Kerry Conran’s film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004). A host of other “punk” subgenres, too long to list here, exemplify the millennial generation’s unique ability—and willingness—to unashamedly synthesize existing ideas into imaginative new concoctions.
While much of the subject matter in the fantasies of Jane Austen, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and even Mark Twain (particularly, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court) provides the visual modeling for Steampunk, the fact that these texts were composed in the nineteenth century—for a nineteenth century audience—precludes them from qualifying for the retro-facing Steampunk epithet. Strictly speaking, that is reserved for their twentieth and twenty-first century imitative adaptations. Nonetheless, these authors’ works are undeniably prerequisite reading for anyone who wishes to fully comprehend the inspiration behind Steampunk fiction. It would not be until English novelist Georgette Heyer (1901–74) propagated the historical romance novel (a genre-bending amalgamation of the previously established subgenres: the historical novel and the romance novel), in particular her twenty-six examples of Regency romance for which she is credited as inventor (Kloester xvi), that later writers of Steampunk fiction would have a pioneer to herald them. To a large extent, Heyer’s highly detailed narratives of the Regency era’s (1811–20) inner-workings—right down to avid descriptions of the technology used—and the Horatio Hornblower and Aubrey–Maturin series of nautical historical novels set in the Napoleonic Era (1799–1815), authored respectively by C. S. Forester (1899–1966) and Patrick O’Brien (1914–2000), created a benchmark for Steampunk which certainly demonstrates some overlap in subject matter.
Although the parameters of Steampunk, including the very label itself, were not identified until the late 1980s, contemporary enthusiasts have (re)discovered more than a few examples of Steampunk SF and Fantasy that actually predate the existence of the term. To place Steampunk narrative into historical perspective, some twentieth century predecessors—to be cross-referenced as proto-Steampunk— include, in order of appearance: the early twentieth century pulp fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs; The Crisis in Bulgaria, or Ibsen to the Rescue! (1956) by Jocelyn Brooke; the CBS television series The Wild, Wild West (1965–69); Queen Victoria’s Bomb (1967) by Ronald W. Clark; Pavane (1968) by Keith Roberts; The Warlord of the Air (1971) by Michael Moorcock; A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! (1972) by Harry Harrison; The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (1973) and The Adventures of the Peerless Peer (1974) both by Philip José Farmer; Into the Aether (1974) by Richard A. Lupoff; Transformations (1975) by John Mella; Sherlock Holmes’ War of the Worlds (1975) by Manly Wade Wellman; The Space Machine (1976) by Christopher Priest; the short story “Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole” (1977) by Stephen Utley and Howard Waldrop; Fata Morgana (1977) by William Kotzwinkle; Morlock Night (1979) by K. W. Jeter; The Digging Leviathan (1984) and Homunculus (1986) by James P. Blaylock; and The Anubis Gates (1983) and On Stranger Tales (1987) by Tim Powers.
Even though K. W. Jeter is traditionally credited for whimsically inventing the expression “Steampunk,” it is worth acknowledging that Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary (2003), traces the first documented usage of the word to a 1987 interview with James Blaylock from the May edition of Locus, a trade magazine dedicated to the SF and Fantasy publishing industry. Whoever said it first, according to F. Brett Cox, the word was coined to formalize a grouping, by subject matter and style, of the previously listed novels of Powers, Blaylock, and Jeter, including the latter’s Infernal Devices: A Mad Victorian Fantasy (1987). Each of these narratives bridged twentieth-century SF and Fantasy with the “early industrial landscape” of nineteenth-century London (756). Furthermore, the etymology of “Steampunk” is inextricably linked to the word “Cyberpunk,” a portmanteaux combining the word “punk” with “cybernetics,” discussed elsewhere in this anthology.
After 1987, Steampunk SF and Fantasy gathered momentum and produced The Stress of Her Regard (1989) by Tim Powers; Gotham by Gaslight (1989), a DC Comics alternate history graphic novel by Brian Augustyn and Mike Mignola; The Hollow Earth (1990) by Rudy Rucker; The Difference Engine (1990) by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling; The Werewolves of London (1990) and The Angel of Pain (1991) by Brian Stableford; Lempriere’s Dictionary (1991) by Lawrence Norfolk; the graphic novel From Hell (1991–96) by Allan Moore and Eddie Campbell; Anno Dracula (1992) by Kim Newman; Is (1992) by Joan Aiken; Lord Kelvin’s Machine (1992) by James Blaylock; Anti-Ice (1993) by Stephen Baxter; the Nomad of the Time Streams series (1993) by Michael Moorcock; the FOX television series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993–94); Harm’s Way (1994) by Colin Greenland; The Carnival of Destruction (1994) by Brian Stableford. In 1995, Steampunk fiction presented its reading audience with Northern Lights (known as The Golden Compass in North America) by Philip Pullman; The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter; The Steampunk Trilogy by Paul Di Filippo; and The Prestige by Christopher Priest. The end of the decade introduced The Cockatrice Boys (1996) by Joan Aiken; the short story “The Secret History of Ornithopter” (1997) by Jan Lars Jensen; To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998) by Connie Willis; and the graphic novel series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (1999–2003) by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill.
The millennium has received the following contributions to Steampunk: the short story “Seventy-Two Letters” (2000) by Ted Chiang; Perdido Street Station (2000) by China Miéville and winner of the 2001 Arthur C. Clarke award; the graphic novel Steampunk (2000–02) b
y Joe Kelly and Chris Bachalo; the Sci-Fi Channel television series The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne (2001); and the short story “A Study in Emerald” (2003) by Neil Gaiman. One of the most recent validations for the Steampunk subgenre has come with Phil and Kaja Foglio’s multiple wins of the 2009 and 2010 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story with their Gaslamp Fantasy comic book series Girl Genius, ongoing since 2001 (and available online at www.girlgeniusonline.com).
While Steampunk narratives are well represented in short fiction, the novel, and the graphic novel, they also feature prominently in big-budget films. In addition to the television series listed previously, some cinematic narratives incorporating the Steampunk aesthetic have included Marc Caro’s and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s La Cité des Enfants Perdus [The City of Lost Children] (1995), Barry Sonnenfeld’s Wild, Wild West (1999), Albert and Allen Hughes’s From Hell (2001), Stephen Norrington’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Katsuhiro Otomo’s animé Steamboy (2004), Stephen Sommers’s Van Helsing (2004), Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm (2005), Neil Burger’s The Illusionist (2006), Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006), Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Chris Weitz’s The Golden Compass (2007), and Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes (2009), to name only a few.
Since the gaming industry too has latched on to the appeal of Steampunk, fans of the subgenre are not limited to a passive reading or viewing experience—they can actively engage in virtual Steampunk worlds. Traditional role-playing games using a Steampunk motif include Frank Chadwick’s Space 1889 (1988); William H. Stoddard’s GURPS Steampunk (2000); and Alejandro Melchor’s and Scott Clark’s OGL Steampunk (2004). In addition to projects based on Hollywood films, personal computer video games with Steampunk elements include Robyn and Rand Miller’s Myst (1993) and its sequels; and Looking Glass Studio’s Thief: The Dark Project (1998) and its two sequels. A Steampunk Wiki dedicated to the subject—steampunk.wikia.com—has a growing list of many more.
The prevalence of the Steampunk aesthetic in fiction, film, and gaming has given rise to a pop subculture dedicated to the (re)creation and use of costume, jewelry, art and actual machinery inspired by its predominantly retro themes. It should be noted that retro styles, such as Steampunk, that amalgamate characteristics from the present with the iconic themes of a particular past era are not exactly new to the history of Western pop-culture. For example, the Victorian Gothic mode of architecture, a.k.a “The Gothic Revival,” had its roots in late eighteenth-century England, peaking later in the nineteenth-century. The Neo-Gothic movement, which cannot be wholly separated from the medievalist Arthurian Revival—imagine the nineteenth century homes of the British upper-class landscaped with recreations of middle age ruins—competed with other artistic trends that favored a look backward in time for inspiration. An extraordinary study of this particular chivalric revisitation—and the spin-off movements it inspired, such as “Muscular Christianity”—can be found in Mark Girouard’s The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (1981). Similar-minded movements of note included the Pre-Raphaelites and a neoclassical style of architecture, furniture, and clothing which was popular in England during the Regency period (the era just prior to the Victorian one). The Regency aesthetic corresponded with what was called “Empire” in France, “Federal” in the United States and “Biedermeier” in regions where German was spoken. In each case, a distinct revival of motifs from antiquity—whether, Greco-Roman, Egyptian (as inspired by Napoleon’s adventures there), and even Chinese—was resurrected as a fashion ideal tamed by early nineteenth century discernments. However, the Regency style, since it was fairly mainstream in its heyday, does not qualify as a subculture in the sense that it is understood today.
In his study Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige interprets a subculture “as a form of resistance in which experienced contradictions and objections to [the] ruling ideology are obliquely represented in style” (133). In his disquisition Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style, David Muggleton shows how many theorists see a correlation between subculture and art, especially music (69). Fast-forward to the late-twentieth century and a revival of the1950s mores-bending brand of music known as Rockabilly (a fusion of proto-rock and hillbilly musical styles) as a retro music/fashion subculture—as reinvented by groups such as The Stray Cats—merged the sensationalism of old rock-and-roll/country icons such as Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash, with their signature leather jackets, boots, pompadours, and ducktail clichés, with the anarchistic, punk rock tropes of the 1980s, e.g., tattoos, piercings, and colored hair. The international Goth subculture, which intersects with the Steampunk one, also began in the 1980s as a derivative of the punk rock scene, adding a distinctive flair for theatrical. The Goth aesthetic is a dark mélange of both horror film and bondage motifs and informed at its core by nineteenth century Gothic fiction. Consequently, a campy Goth enthusiast characterized as a tragic scientist archetype, e.g., Victor Frankenstein, complete with Victorian lab coat, rubber gloves and strapped goggles, might be able to effectively pass in Steampunk where the boundaries of these two subcultures blur.
Much has been written—and is still being written—on the curious Millennial predilection for the so-called “mashup,” i.e., the synthesis of two or more preexisting ideas into an entirely new work that pays homage to both while still receiving credit for a fresh uniqueness. Dominant in the fields of both digital media and amateur musical endeavors, examples of the increasingly popular literary mashup can also be found in such twenty-first-century works as Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies (2009) and its sequel, where a fantastically imagined meeting occurs between the authentically Victorian characters of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) and the apocalyptic hordes of Hollywood-esque zombies of recent pop-culture, à la director George Romero, as an alternate reality retelling of two traditions.
Steampunk, like the gadgetry its Darwinian tinkerers devise, is an evolving work in progress. It has been criticized, for instance, for being blatantly Eurocentric. It is troubling for some to see the romanticization of an epoch when racism was an institution, women’s suffrage was still a dream, and colonialism and imperialism were mainstream conventions. However, Steampunk’s revisionary sanitization of the past, when contrasted with the genuine, unidealized past, provides the student of SF with yet one more opportunity for scholarly discourse and edification. If those mustachioed Victorian writers who wanted to right the wrongs in their own time were able to time travel to our present time, we can only hope that they might approve of, at least, some of the progress they might observe through their lorgnettes as they synchronized their pocket watches after dismounting their penny-farthings.
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