Gail Carriger.
I"M A STEAMPUNK author and I have a shameful confession to make. Long before I discovered Moorc.o.c.k, when I still thought Jules Verne was destined to remain safely trapped away in the 1800s forever, I wore steampunk. I proudly donned my Victorian silk blouses and little tweed jodhpurs. I twirled my bug-in-resin necklace and clacked about in buckle-topped riding boots. I didn"t know there was steampunk to read, I only thought there was steampunk to wear. Finding out about steampunk literature for the first time was a complete revelation. "You can do that?" I thought. "You can marry a love of dressing the past with a love of writing a new version of it?" You could have knocked me down with an aetherogram.
This epiphany pushed me into undertaking a bit of a personal quest. For there I was, noted clotheshorse and proud science-fiction nerd, learning for the first time about a movement that effectively combined the two. Never had such a thing happened to me before. How had a rabid fan-girl such as myself completely missed this revitalized subgenre? How had the fashionista side of my personality happened upon an aspect of sci-fi literature without my inner geek even realizing it? Never before had fashion brought me so firmly into contact with fandom. In the past, I am sad to say, the two almost never met. Twenty years or more bopping about the convention circuit and my obsession with high-heels and pretty dresses was more a dirty little secret than proud bedfellow. Science fiction was getting stylish? How could this be? I felt that something must be wrong with the universe. So, in cla.s.sic archaeologist fashion, I began to hunt about in history for an explanation as to this mystery.
It seems that, before the dawn of the modern steampunk literary movement, cyberpunk ruled the 1980s. This sparked a memory in my dark high-school soul: cyberpunk too was tied to a fashion movement in its heyday. Perhaps ten years after blue-haired protagonists plugged themselves into computers and battled mafia nanotech, some small pod of the alternative culture types started dressing cyberpunk. While most of America went on to explore the fine art of grunge in the 1990s, cyberpunks donned metallic eye makeup and fabrics that had more in common with red plastic bags than any known fiber. You have only to watch the movie Hackers to see the style come to life. Despite its candy-mod meets cyborg appeal, cyberpunk fashion always remained on the sidelines. It never hit mainstream popular dress and rarely walked the catwalks (with the possible exception of Betsey Johnson-who still looks like old-guard cyberpunk). Instead, cyberpunk went off to j.a.pan, had a dirty little affair with the Wicked Witch of the West, and sp.a.w.ned Gothic Lolita. It may also have dropped a couple tabs and flirted with a hippy, if Burner style is to be believed. But essentially, the fashion of cyberpunk vanished.
So how is this tied to steampunk? Well, for one thing, history would seem to indicate that the literature came first and the fashion second. Right around the time of cyberpunk in the early "80s (1980s not 1880s, mind you) aberrant author pens began to deviate from one subgenre to the next, scratching out steampunk instead of cyberpunk. K. W. Jeter, Tim Powers, and James Blaylock led the charge, but with the page, not the pocket-watch, for it would take fashion around two decades to catch up. Not so suddenly, some six to eight years ago, those of us who had been waiting patiently for the Goths to discover color found our wait was over. Brown fabrics began to make a tentative appearance and bronze jewelry instead of silver. Vests were seen displaying their paisley goodness in public, lace blouses came in cream instead of just black, here and there a gratuitous pocket attached itself in patch-like glory, and Cool Things on fobs dangled and jangled. Oh, perhaps not everyone had heard about steampunk fashion, but there it was, and we knew about it. And we started to wear it. We started to turn typewriter keys into earrings. We started to haunt secondhand stores looking for old leather jackets to cut apart and metal cogs and clock parts to sew in rows down the fronts. Finally, in 2008 Ralph Lauren put steampunk down the runway, and there was no question-the style was mainstream. People may still not know the term "steampunk," but if you describe the clothing trend, they"ve seen someone wear it, or know someone who"s into it. It"s all around us, the b.u.t.toned up bra.s.s beauty of old tech and new ideas.
So we now have both steampunk fiction and steampunk fashion, which left me wondering: Was the pen tied to the petticoat, or did they spring up independent of one another? Taking into account the temporal lag between the arrival of The Difference Engine and the khaki corset, and combining that with time spent milling about observing both communities, there seems to be very little connecting the fiction and the fashion. Add this to the unfortunate truth that authors tend to have only a nodding acquaintance with decorous attire, and one can only conclude that these disparate aspects of the steampunk movement were separated at birth. The two seemed wholly unaware of each other until relatively recently, when, like long-lost fraternal twins, they were finally reunited. Sure, the authors might have known, in a vague way, that there was some weird thing to do with goggles and top hats going on at the fringes of their universe. The steampunkers might have had some hazy idea that somewhere, somehow, someone was writing something to do with dirigibles and automatons. But that was the sum total of the mutual acknowledgement. I"m inclined to believe it was fate or serendipity or one of those cosmic coincidences that caused the two to coalesce. We all simply found each other in the end: and not just the writers and the fashionistas, but the makers and the musicians and the artists as well. And we formed into a strange little social movement without any real objective, organization, or political agenda.
That said, while we may have arrived at this point together, many of us came by way of the mighty heel of a patent leather spat-cut boot with little b.u.t.tons up the side. There are still plenty of people out there who are dressing steampunk without realizing it and making steampunk without reading it. Entirely unscientific inquiries suggest that at least 70 percent of steampunkers came to the lifestyle because of the fashion, not the fiction. (Okay, I totally made that up, but it sounds about right.) So, how to explain the basis of the appeal of steampunk style?
It"s hard to detail all the threads of steamy fashion that draw us clotheshorses in. It"s Edwardian formal wear with industrial trim. It"s the lovechild of Hot Topic and a BBC costume drama. It"s the gentility and politeness of Victorian manners with free-range cross-dressing options. It"s salvaged suits with maker gadgets attached. It"s clock parts and candy stripes, and everything in between. It"s open to change, it"s adaptable, it welcomes invention, innovation, and art. It"s personalized and characterized-the ultimate in individuality. It can be worn only in part-a waistcoat here, a vintage military jacket there-or in full-on head-to-toe glory. However, there is more to it than just the look-there are underlying cultural components as well (or so I"m fated by my profession to believe).
It seems to me that a good portion of the lure of the steampunk aesthetic has to do with rebelling against modern design. We are living in an age where technology is trapped inside little silver matchboxes. Functionality has become something shameful, a tiny thing to be hidden away behind plastic and metal. But with steampunk fashion the inner workings of a machine become not just approachable but glorified. We steampunk DIYers force cogs and gears back out into the open. We configure them to spout great gouts of steam (or pretend, using dry ice). We hot-glue-gun them onto top hats. We are sticking our collective tongue out at the teeny tiny tech of an increasingly micro-plasticized world.
Steampunk also has a wonderful cross-gender and cross-generational appeal. Young makers are forming apprenticeships with older and more established artisans, joining tech shops, and hunting down artists and retired engineers for advice and help. Shopping for a stylish outfit tempts some into steamy goodness, while tinkering with gadgetry draws in others. (I won"t break that down along gender lines but I certainly have my opinions on the matter.) Steampunk is something couples can engage in together. It has so many different aspects that it can even interest the whole family. It is already bringing fractured groups into semi-harmonious discussion (Burners, sci-fi geeks, tech-heads, cosplayers, rebels, home decorators, DIYers, and, yes, even authors), and best of all, it teaches new artistic skills along the way. We are all forced to be creative and inventive in our effort to personalize and characterize our attire.
There also seems to be psychological components to the appeal of the steam-punk aesthetic. It provides us with a nonpartisan means by which we can dress to withstand modern life. There is a pervading feeling of political upheaval and economic chaos right now, a sense that the world is crumbling about us. Steampunk is quietly coping with this impending doom by busily tying itself to the green movement, reusing old parts for new beauty. We are taking things society has thrown away and making them useful again. Also, the connection to the Victorian era ads an element of politeness and order to both the clothing and the people who wear it. In the best of all possible worlds, steampunkers are helpful and kind to one another, we mind our manners, we reinvent etiquette to go along with our reinvented spats. We try to tap into the n.o.blest aspects of 1800s England without the cla.s.sism or bigotry. This, combined with the aforementioned recycling of rejected technology, brings with it a sense of control in chaotic times. Whether acknowledged openly or not, I believe there is a part of the steampunker psyche that believes if we can dress and act the part with integrity and cla.s.s, making use of society"s unwanted inanimate objects, we are exerting control over the crumbling ugliness of the world around us.
Even though I am a steampunk author, I genuinely believe that the attire of steampunk is as vital to the movement as the literature. Fashion is one of the things that sets steampunk apart from other science-fiction and fantasy subgenres. The clothing is a visual representation of the melding of an aesthetic with a sense of creativity and community. It"s true that some people are more into the literature and others more into the craftsmanship, but these days almost everyone will nod in the fashion direction with a vest, or a pair of goggles, or a newsboy cap. Fashion has become the social construct that connects the eco-warriors with the threadbangers, the artists with the makers, the scholars with the dilettantes, and the authors with the fans. The power and the potential in steampunk attire is in its community-building effects, in the connections that it fosters and conversations it opens up between people. Steampunk style is not this season"s throw-away runway look, nor this year"s throw-away cell-phone technology. Steampunk is the opposite of planned obsolescence, which is one of the many reasons the look is still around.
As with any burgeoning social movement, whether we like it or not, the style and the literature have become linked. Whether we are making it, or hearing it, or writing it, or wearing it, we are all steampunk. So I say, "Reach for those top hats and wear them with pride: for goggles, gaiters, glory, and beyond!"
At the Intersection of Technology and Romance.
Jake von Slatt.
STEAMPUNK MEANS MANY things to many people. That which began as a literary movement has slowly changed into what is colloquially referred to as a "subculture." Throughout that process of change, one element of steampunk that has continually grown in recognition is the idea that the "punk" in steampunk is a direct descendant of the Punk Rock do-it-yourself credo. This rings absolutely true for me, as I grew up during the Punk era and have always been a fanatic do-it-yourselfer or Maker.
When I first started identifying my work, and occasionally myself, as "steampunk," it was not so much that I had discovered a movement to be a part of as that I had discovered the name for the movement to which I had always belonged. This idea that "I"ve finally found a name for what I am" is something that I have heard countless times from people I"ve met because of my involvement in the steampunk community, and I think that it"s an indication there is a broader phenomenon at work here and that steampunk is just one face of it.
There is currently a resurgence of interest in making things oneself and this is very much a multi-disciplined phenomenon. Whether it be tailoring, textiles, beer, soap, electronics, or bio-hacking, people are starting to get interested again in pursuing hobbies with a technological basis. I have a theory as to why this is happening and particularly why it"s happening now. Steampunk is part of this Maker Movement and I am going to walk you through the process of the decline and resurgence of technology-based hobbies using the example of electronics, since it is the one with which I am most familiar.
For many years technology-based hobbies, such as electronics and amateur radio, have been in decline. The magazines that supported the electronic hobbyist are all either out of business or are now purely gadget review rags- and there used to be dozens of them! Many towns had an electronics store packed with kits and components, and national companies like Heathkit and Eico sold build-it-yourself versions of radios, electric "eyes," amplifiers, and even color television sets. All of this is long gone.
The current resurgence of interest in electronics and other technological hobbies isn"t being driven by folks like me who have been involved with these activities for decades. It"s being powered by young people, and they are bringing to it their own sensibilities and aesthetics. In the past these were established hobbies. If you had an interest in electronics, you"d usually start with a crystal radio, and then maybe step up to a 100-in-1 Electronic Projects kit. You"d go to Radio Shack or the local hobby center and there would be a whole wall of kits and components and books of things to do. The same was true for other hobbies as well; they each had a progression of standard projects that everyone would do.
However, I think the current resurgence of interest in technological hobbies lacks such defined paths and this means that young people are developing these hobbies later and infusing them with what they are already pa.s.sionate about. This is what"s leading to the development of fascinating hybrids like steampunk.
I"ve often described steampunk as the intersection of romance and science, and I think romance has a lot to do with steampunk"s genesis as a subculture because I believe it"s all due to what is essentially a love affair gone wrong.
The Victorian era was the last time that the typical high-school-equivalent education, for those lucky enough to attend school, gave the graduate all of the tools that he or she needed to understand the technology of the time. But more precisely, it was an age where the average educated person was expected to have an understanding of how the machines that made modern life possible worked. It helped a great deal that the machines of the time were designed to be appealing and to glorify the technology that made them work. Their inner workings were often exposed and their outer cha.s.sis embellished with pin-striping and gold leaf.
A young woman watching a train pull away from the platform could identify all of the parts that made the engine run. The boiler, the firebox, the great steam piston rod that drove the wheels and the smaller rod that worked the valve gear; these components were all visible and their functions obvious.
Technology was handsome, straightforward, and an honest, hard worker. All and all, a very attractive package.
Then along came the excitement of the first date with electricity! Electricity was clean and fast and could do things that used to require incredibly complex mechanisms. But while at first strange and mysterious, once one sat and played with a battery and some wire, electricity was easily understood. If you wrapped the wire around a nail and connected it to a battery, you could pick up another nail with your "electromagnet." When you disconnected the battery, the second nail would drop, and the proverbial light bulb illuminate. "Ah! That"s how a telegraph works!" As for light bulbs themselves, the secret behind them was made immediately clear if you short circuited a battery of sufficient power and observed a length of wire grow hot and glow.
Electricity was clearly efficient and helpful, but just a little mysterious. Very s.e.xy indeed!
But it was actually the advent of electronics that initiated the change that drove a wedge between us and technology. With mechanics, action and reaction are clear. In electrics, the action is once removed, but still directly observable. In electronics, instruments are required to convert the electrical impulses within the machines into something that we can sense with our eyes and ears. In the case of the radio, this instrument is the speaker. In the case of television, it"s the cathode ray tube. In addition, to troubleshoot and repair any of these things you need meters and specialized testers to detect what"s wrong-you can"t simply look at it and see the malfunction like you can with something mechanical, such as a steam engine.
Of course, there were still folks who learned to master these tools and build their own radios and televisions, not as part of a profession, but as a hobby, for fun. These were often young people excited about the technology and it would often lead them into technical careers. Most importantly, these concepts were still being introduced to children in schools. Basic electronics was often taught at the middle-school level in the U.S. right up until the late twentieth century.
There were also popular magazines that contained projects for the amateur radio and electronics hobbyist and many folks eagerly awaited the next issue. (Although these same young people were often teased and called names like "Poindexter" after the nerdy character in a popular comic of the time.) Electronics, and particularly those that relied on vacuum tubes, contained dangerous high-voltage power supplies and thus needed to be enclosed in cabinets. You could no longer view the components that made up your TV, let alone see them working. The television was the first real "black box" appliance in many homes. While commercial radios were equally mysterious, the majority of young people at the time had built or had friends who built crystal sets and understood some of the basics of radio transmission and reception.
Technology was harder and harder to understand for the casual user. It was keeping secrets and refusing to explain itself. Some folks thought it was worth the effort and found that mystery very attractive, but many decided that it wasn"t worth the effort.
World War II came along and the rate of technological advancement increased incredibly because it was necessary for our security. We didn"t worry that technology had gotten kind of dark-that it was now focused on destruction-we needed it for our very survival.
When the atom bomb ended the shooting war and the cold war began, technology got very scary indeed. It was clearly dangerous and destructive, and in much the same way that societies are always frightened of the veteran returned from war, no matter how grateful they are for what he or she accomplished, we started to truly fear technology ourselves.
The advent of the digital computer during this time further alienated us from our understanding. Now you not only needed special instruments to understand what was going on inside a machine, you needed to learn a new language. As they got smaller and cheaper, computers began to play a greater role in the functioning of everything. Automobiles, once purely mechanical things, now had engine control computers that failed without any obvious sign that something was wrong. People who had been fixing their own cars for years now had to rely on the dealer"s "technicians" because not even the local repair shop had the proper tool to diagnose the problem.
Technology now had little connection to the average person. It was just too complicated to understand. And it was dangerous too, and getting more so every day-terms like "artificial intelligence" didn"t help in the least, they just fueled the idea that the machines were becoming aware and would one day supplant us as the dominant inhabitants of this planet.
If you were one of those few who were still interested-if you were still seeking out information, mostly online since the electronic hobby magazines are all gone and the guy at Radio Shack no longer knows what a diode is!-you probably got called "nerd" and "geek," sure. But you also got to see names like "hacker" unfairly vilified in the press by reporters who did not understand the origins of the word. And if you brought your electronics project into school to show your friends and teachers, you were as likely to cause a bomb scare as you were to get a compliment for your cleverness, because the average person has no clue how our technological world works.
Many of us have witnessed this progression in our lifetimes. Several years ago, I even found myself saying, "Why should I spend a day figuring out how to fix that when I can just buy another?" In fact, a whole generation made that calculation and decided to stop trying to understand and maintain their own tech. They decided to treat technology as purely consumable, to be bought and discarded as needed.
But a kid growing up will always ask: "Daddy, how does a light bulb work?" and when Daddy can"t answer that question, the child is left with a tiny hunger. It is that hunger that"s driving the resurgence of electronics as a hobby today. I think that Geek Culture, the Maker Movement, and the reclamation of the pejoratives "nerd" and "hacker" are all a result of a generation of curious kids whose parents had trouble answering that query.
MAKE magazine is one example of a publication that services this interest and has met with fantastic success in the last few years. Now that Radio Shack is simply "The Shack" and no longer serves the electronic hobbyist, providers of kits and components like Adafruit Industries and SparkFun have sprung up online to provide electronic component fodder for a new generation of makers and amateur engineers.
This phenomenon is not limited to electronic hobbyists either. Automotive hackers are reverse engineering the engine control systems on their cars and making open-source trouble-code readers so they can "talk" to their vehicles and once again fix them. One group has even developed its own computer controller fuel-injection system that can be retro-fitted and customized to any vehicle.
Each group has responded to this resurgence of interest in our technological world in its own way. Each has brought to it its own pa.s.sions, desires, and aesthetics. The steampunks are simply the romantics of this movement. We are as interested in how technology makes us feel as we are in what it does for us and we want technology that makes us feel good.
Steampunk is about taking a breath, starting at the beginning, and understanding the building blocks of technology from the nineteenth century upon which all of today"s gadgets are based and realizing that we are the ones in control.
Steampunk is about falling in love again.
The Future of Steampunk: A Roundtable Interview.
WE FELT IT would be fitting to conclude this anthology with a short roundtable interview on the future of steampunk, which may be very different than its past. To that end, we invited just a few of the many interesting people who bring wonderful vitality, energy, and vision to steampunk to share their thoughts on the future of the genre and the culture. Here"s what they had to say. -The Editors LIBBY BULLOFF, photographer, maker, creative clairvoyant, anachromancer, WWW.EXOSKELETONCABARET.COM.
I would like to see more steampunk in meats.p.a.ce, such as additional steampunk s.p.a.ces akin to the Edison, which capture the mystery, elegance, and whimsy of the aesthetic in three dimensions. I crave more objects that inspire through both their form and function, and more fashion that leans toward style, sus-tainability, and self-awareness rather than pa.s.sing trends. I want to view the emergence of a magic-tinged steampunk world that is less hypothetical, less cautious, and totally immersive, a world that doesn"t fear political dissonance, or change, or a.s.similation. I desire steampunk to find its true place outside time and settle into being a cla.s.sic, respectable style, drawing on a wider variety of vintage and science fiction influences, from periods that aren"t specifically Victorian and/or bra.s.s-colored in nature.
S. J. CHAMBERS, researcher and a.s.sistant editor of The Steampunk Bible, as well as writer of various sundries, both fictional and non, WWW.SJCHAMBERS.ORG.
My hope for the next steampunk decade is that its emphasis on sustainability and DIY will continue to inspire and impact how society thinks of consumption. Sure, I love the clothes and gadgets, but I love more the philosophy behind all aspects of steampunk culture: if you think it, you can make it. We are currently a society of the quick fix: Is something broken? Buy a new one. Can"t afford the new model? Here"s a loan. We are completely dependent on the Industry of Others, and have no interest in the Industry of Ourselves. Steampunk promotes a self-industry by encouraging within each individual self-reliance, ingenuity, education, perseverance, and trans.m.u.tation. Things that are quickly fading in our shiny, happy, consumerist iWorld.
JAYMEE GOH, aka Jha, writer, blogger, intersectional theorist, steampunk postcolonialist, WWW.SILVER-GOGGLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.
I, for one, would like to see steampunk grow as a story-telling vehicle that invites diversity and self-awareness, touching all corners of the world. It would be nice to see folks honestly discussing how real-life issues factor into the fantasy, and actively promoting various forms of play, to show there"s not just one way to steampunk. With the research into history, steampunk could be an avenue for cultural pride and acceptance of different perspectives, as well as a really entertaining tool for education. I want to see more empires beyond Victoriana, traditionally marginalized ident.i.ties towering up and above where they have been set, engaging with the self-confidence they would ordinarily be punished for. Being entrenched in history, steampunk is well-placed to examine the hubris of the past and present, to make way for a better future, through the power of stories. More folks should take advantage of that.
MARGARET "MAGPIE" KILLJOY, founder and former editor of SteamPunk Magazine, is proud to be a hobo, WWW.BIRDSBEFORETHESTORM.NET.
Steampunk, as a subculture and as an aesthetic, is at its best when it is a way of radically re-addressing the ways that we interact with technology. A way of challenging the a.s.sumptions of the industrial revolution. Which is probably more important right now, and over the next ten years, than it has ever been in human history. Top-down approaches to industry have backed our species into a corner (and outright wiped out thousands of others).
I"d love to see steampunks at the forefront of the DIY revolution. We can present people with sustainable approaches to technology and living. We can help people realize that progress is not necessarily linear: we might have to go back in order to go forward. Perhaps fixed-wing aircraft, while militarily superior to lighter-than-air craft, are not as appropriate for our future. Perhaps what we need are more airships. Run collectively by trade syndicates instead of capitalist corporations, if you ask my opinion. In order to do this, of course, we"re going to have to keep the "punk" in steampunk.
JESS NEVINS, librarian and author of The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, RATMMJESS.LIVEJOURNAL.COM.
Confining myself to fiction: I"d like to see an emphasis on defining steampunk as a subgenre. "Steampunk" is too often used as a sort of catchall term; ungenerously, it is invoked by writers to add cachet and hipness. If the definition of steampunk has changed from what it was in the 1990s-and, clearly, it has-then what the word now means remains unclear. Steampunk is currently a nebulous concept applied to everything from Wild West steam mechas to African zeppelins to the Imperial British colonizing Mars. But we"ve always had a phrase for those concepts and stories: "science fiction." Steampunk has yet to settle on a set of clearly defined tropes and concepts by which it can be differentiated from historical science fiction. Until those are generally agreed upon, "steampunk" has no utility as a critical term and is best used by marketers rather than writers, critics, and fans. Enthusiasm for steampunk is wonderful; the a.s.sumption that "steampunk" is preferable as a term of description to "science fiction," without deciding upon a definition of "steampunk," is not so splendid.
MIKE PERSCHON, THE STEAMPUNK SCHOLAR, STEAMPUNKSCHOLAR.BLOGSPOT. COM.
Many have p.r.o.nounced steampunk dead or no longer having anything original to offer. I feel conflicted about such statements. I agree that steampunk seems to be slouching toward a stagnation of redundancy, but this is because steampunk still sees itself as a subgenre of SF or fantasy. Whatever it was in its nascency, it is no longer a subgenre, or even a genre. Elements from SF and fantasy remain, but current steampunk literature is anything but a coherent genre (and this is a.s.suming steampunk ever was one to begin with). Steampunk is not a narrative structure, but an array of aesthetic elements. It is a visual style that can be imposed upon a genre, as well as multimedia: art, music, fashion, decor. Science fiction and fantasy are still the mainstays of steampunk texts, but we are already seeing steampunk applied to horror (Alan Campbell"s Scar Night), romance (Gail Carriger"s Soulless), and even mainstream fiction (Thomas Pynchon"s Against the Day). In film, steampunk is used in period pieces (The Prestige), as well as contemporary (Franklyn). In novels, the steampunk aesthetic is used for whimsical, high-flying adventures, such as Philip Reeve"s Larklight, as well as serious, politically minded works like Theodore Judson"s Fitzpatrick"s War.
Some might construe derision in my definition of steampunk as visual style, not narrative substance. This definition does not reduce steampunk: it enlarges it. If steampunk is only science fiction or fantasy, it is restricted. Genre is structure, and while structure can be a skeleton, it can also be a straight jacket. If steampunk is an aesthetic employing the conventions of science fiction and fantasy, it can use them in other genres, allowing writers to move beyond homages to Verne, Wells, Reade, or Burroughs into those of Austen, Conrad, Melville, Poe, and Lawrence. It offers the possibility of applying this aesthetic to other forms of fiction, such as medical, political, or philosophical novels. It offers the possibility of being applied to novels as substance, as well as fluff.
So while I have some concern about the current state of steampunk, I disagree that it has reached its expiration date. There are still unexplored horizons for steampunk. And while I have limited my suggestions to the literature of steampunk, I hope they find application in other expressions and media. If steampunk is only a genre, then we can continue rehashing the themes of imaginary voyages and scientific romances. If it is an aesthetic, then the sky in which the airships fly isn"t even a limit.
DIANA M. PHO, known in the steampunk world as Ay-leen the Peacemaker, writer, wanderer, wonderer, and the founding editor of BEYONDVICTORIANA. COM.
The definition of steampunk shouldn"t limit itself to a "past that never was"; it presents a great opportunity to examine how the past binds us and how we, today, are breaking free from those rusted, time-eaten chains. Currently, steampunk examines the development of modernity in the West. But modernity doesn"t end there, and neither should steampunk. I"d like to see steampunk"s cultural range broaden in order to decenter its current Western, Eurocentric framework. I want to hear about steampunk from more folks who aren"t white, middle-cla.s.s, straight, Christian, and male. Most importantly, I want steampunk to foster an open and equal exchange between various sets of global experiences. As other countries become more developed and as the world becomes more interconnected, I"m fully expecting new voices to start celebrating, questioning, and subverting their own pasts. For history"s breadth cannot be limited to simple dualities: East versus West, North versus South, industrial versus developing. The face of history is a compa.s.s and steampunk is its wandering arrow, pointing out the ways where we can go.
EVELYN KRIETE has been actively involved in the steampunk subculture since its development in the early 2000s, WWW.JABORWHALKY.NET.
I would like to see steampunk continue to develop as an artist movement. I would like to see the community grow and gather more positive public attention, because an influx of new people is very important to the longevity and vitality of a subculture. And I would definitely like to see steampunk prove to be a viable market to support the numerous artists in the trend. At this point it"s pretty much inevitable that steampunk will hit the mainstream, which is fine so long as the increased popularity doesn"t drown out the people who have been working in it for years. If the artists, writers, and fashion designers who have been making steampunk art since the mid-2000s and before are able to make a living off their work, steampunk will have been a good thing. On the other hand, if mainstream products and fans who have just gotten into steam-punk end up stealing the spotlight from long-established steampunk artists who need to make a living off their work, it will be a terrible thing. And let"s not forget that because artists are so busy making their art, there is a very real risk that they will be overlooked in favor of new people who spend more time in the public eye than contributing to the steampunk trend.
That said, I would also like to see people continue to explore the whole range of what steampunk has to offer. There"s a lot of potential diversity in steampunk in terms of aesthetics and subject matter, and I really do hope that people will explore the wide range of what they can do in steampunk. And I would also like to see steampunk keep a solid sense of its ident.i.ty and origins. It"s inevitable that people are going to try to capitalize on the word "steampunk" without wanting to stay true to the genre.
At some point, people are going to try and strip steampunk"s historical 19th-century-based ident.i.ty away from it, and I hope that the community is strong enough and dedicated enough to stand fast and maintain steampunk"s ident.i.ty as Victorian sci-fi. Because once steampunk loses its historical grounding, it really has lost itself and the key thing that makes it unique. And I hope we won"t see that happen.
Art by Eric Orchard.
Nonfiction.
GAIL CARRIGER is an archaeologist, self-t.i.tled fashionista, and steampunk author who, when not excavating in Peru, lives on a vineyard in Northern California with one cat, three vehicles, and fifty pairs of shoes. She began writing in order to cope with being raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. Her debut novel, Soulless, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and won an Alex Award despite its irreverent, and often facetious, mash-up of several fiction genres. She has two more books in the same series due out in 2010, Changeless and Blameless.
JAKE VON SLATT is a steampunk contraptor and proprietor of the popular website The Steampunk Workshop (steampunkworkshop.com). He has built many of the iconic computer and keyboard "mods" widely circulated on the Internet and has had his projects featured numerous times on Boing Boing, Make, and Wired magazine"s blogs (BLOG.MAKEZINE.COM and WWW.WIRED.COM) as well as countless others. Jake has been interviewed on the subject by the New York Times, the journal Nature, Newsweek, National Public Radio"s All Things Considered, PBS"s Wired: Science television show, and he was the keynote speaker at the California Steampunk Convention in Sunnyvale, California, in 2008.
Artists.
JOHN COULTHART is an ill.u.s.trator, graphic designer, and comic artist. His recent work includes CD designs for various record labels; book design for Savoy Books, Tachyon, and Underland; and a cover for Alan Moore"s magazine, Dodgem Logic. A book collection of his H. P. Lovecraft adaptations, The Haunter of the Dark and Other Grotesque Visions, was published in a new edition in 2006. His website is www.johncoulthart.com. He lives and works in Manchester, England.
ERIC ORCHARD, who contributed the frontispiece and endpiece for this anthology, is an award-winning ill.u.s.trator and cartoonist living in Canada. He grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he began ill.u.s.trating stories in grade school. He studied painting and art history at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Eric has ill.u.s.trated three children"s books. His third children"s book, The Terrible, Horrible, Smelly Pirate, was released in the spring of 2008 and was nominated for the Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award. In 2008, his work was featured in the Totoro Forest Project charity auction. His work has been recognized in the Spectrum Annual of Fantastic Art and the Society of Ill.u.s.trators annual exhibit, winning silver in comics in Spectrum 17.
When RAMONA SZCZERBA (a.k.a. Winona Cookie) is not being a psychologist in private practice in San Diego, she"s busy making art, something she has done for as long as she can remember. She enjoys creating whimsical children"s ill.u.s.trations in watercolor, but also loves working with collage and a.s.semblage. She favors the darkest faeries, legendary women, arcane subject matter, and inventors who never were. She is currently obsessed with the steampunk genre and is trying to keep up with the torrent of characters who insist on being depicted and having their stories told. She has ill.u.s.trated several coloring books, published two calendars, and written a feature article that appeared in Somerset Studios. About her collages combined with short stories, she writes: "For many years I tried to come up with charming and whimsical children"s stories so that I might ill.u.s.trate them, and hopefully, realize large profits. The stumbling block seemed to be plot-I couldn"t think of any. Great characters materialized and meandered about, doing absolutely nothing. When I started creating these collages, something different began to happen: stories come to me as I work on them, usually beginning with the character"s name and evolving from there. It"s as though their stories really happened, and if they didn"t, they should have."
Contributors to "A Secret History of Steampunk"
MATTHEW (ALCOTT) CHENEY ("Mimeographed 1976 Bulletin of New Hampshire Folklore & Miscellany, Mecha-Oliphaunt") lives in the town in New Hampshire where Nathaniel Hawthorne died. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a wide variety of venues, including One Story, Las Vegas Weekly, English Journal, Lady Churchill"s Rosebud Wristlet, and elsewhere. He is the former series editor for Best American Fantasy and is a columnist for Strange Horizons. Of his steampunk researches, Cheney says, "New Hampshire has given the world many things, including one of the all-time worst presidents (Franklin Pierce), the first famous American serial killer (H. H. Holmes), a lurid bestselling novel (Peyton Place), one of the most powerful conservative media outlets before the rise of Fox News (the Manchester Union Leader newspaper), and refuge for the late J. D. Salinger. Naturally, such a great state has made its share of contributions to the reality and fiction of steampunk. One must simply know under which slab of granite to look."
RIKKI DUCORNET is one of the preeminent surrealists/fantasists of the past three decades, with cla.s.sic books that include The Complete Butcher"s Tales, Phosphor in Dreamland, and Gazelle. The excerpt from her work used in "A Secret History" is from a short story in her collection The Word "Desire".
FaBIO FERNANDES is a writer living in So Paulo, Brazil. Fernandes is the author of A Construco do Imaginario Cyber (2006), Os Dias da Peste (2009), and Os Anos de Silicio (2010). Also a journalist and translator, he is responsible for the Brazilian translations of several prominent SF novels, including Neuromancer, Snow Crash, and A Clockwork Orange. His short stories have been published in Brazil, Portugal, Romania, UK, New Zealand, and USA. In 2008, he created the SFF review blog Post-Weird Thoughts. Fernandes contributed an excerpt from "The Arrival of the Cogsmiths," in the context of inspiring the character XY to complete his mechanical ostrich. The story was "written in the same universe of The Boulton-Watt-Frankenstein Company, both of which were published originally in Everyday Weirdness in 2009. The idea was: What if Victor Frankenstein had decided that machines would work better because they would most probably do their master"s bidding? The entire story was conceived to be a kind of tableux vivant in which I would present the Cogsmiths, apprentices of Frankenstein."
FELIX GILMAN ("An Ode, On Encountering the Mecha-Ostrich") is the author of the novels Thunderer and Gears of the City. His new novel, The Half-Made World, is forthcoming from Tor in September 2010. For better or worse, it doesn"t have any mecha-ostriches. He lives in New York, and his website is www.felixgilman.com. "The spark for the story was that Jeff e-mailed me and said "would you like to write a few words about seeing a mecha-ostrich in a 19th century inventor"s yard I need it by Friday please" and I said "ok why not." That"s not a very good story I"m afraid but it"s how it was."
L. L. HANNETT ("Notes & Queries" and "Excerpts from Sh.e.l.ley Vaughn"s journal") lives in Adelaide, South Australia-city of churches, bizarre murders, and pie floaters. She has sold over a dozen stories to venues that include Clarkesworld Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Weird Tales, ChiZine, and Electric Velocipede. Her story "On the Lot and in the Air" was on the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2009. She is a graduate of the Clarion South Writers Workshop, and hopes to complete her PhD in medieval Icelandic literature before she grows older than her subject matter. She writes of her collaboration with Angela Slatter, "Notes & Queries," which riffs off Jeffrey Ford"s "Dr. Lash Remembers" in the Stories section of this anthology: "When Slatter and I were planning our piece, I found myself mentioning the word "serendipity" way more frequently than is probably acceptable-but I couldn"t help it. This was one of those mythical occasions when the universe was out to help us put this mad thing together. Angela had recently been reading some of Ford"s other works (and she seems to remember every single line she has ever read in her life), so she quickly came up with really inventive ways to incorporate them into her "Prisoner Queen" and "Air Ferry Disaster" sections, thus earning herself the t.i.tle Queen of Intertextual References. I have always wanted an excuse to write something in a "N. & Q." style, and since I"ve been reading a lot of 19th-century literature lately, the tone and approach we took seemed the natural way to go. We both wanted to play with the ideas in Ford"s story without directly translating them into our piece, so we decided to take a couple of concepts that really jumped out at us and mess with them: I was dying to get my hands on "Dr. Lash" and the mysterious spores, and Angela was instantly attracted to the idea of transforming Millicent and the Prisoner Queen. Our writing styles are different, but complementary, so it"s always fun working together. After a few drafts, pa.s.sing the piece back and forth, it became hard to tell where one Brain ended and the other began-which is just how it should be. All we need now is a Cerebral Exchange Compressor and we"ll be set."
MECHA-OSTRICH. The Mecha-Ostrich"s fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Black Clock, Tor.com, and many year"s best anthologies. After writing the frame story for "A Secret History of Steampunk," the Mecha-Ostrich is a very tired bird.
EKATERINA SEDIA ("Two pages from The Russian Book of the Improbable") resides in the Pinelands of New Jersey. Her critically acclaimed novels, The Secret History of Moscow and The Alchemy of Stone, were published by Prime Books. Her next one, The House of Discarded Dreams, is coming out in 2010. Her short stories have sold to a.n.a.log, Baen"s Universe, Dark Wisdom, and Clarkesworld, as well as the Haunted Legends and Magic in the Mirrorstone anthologies. Visit her at www.ekaterinasedia.com. As for her contribution, she writes that she has been "working on Russian steampunk for a while now-my agent is currently shopping an alternative history novel in which Russia abolishes serfdom in 1825 instead of 1861, becoming an industrial rather than agrarian power. This setup of course offers itself to all sorts of fun alternative history twists and insane technological developments-and what better place to test airships than Siberia?"
ANGELA SLATTER ("Notes & Queries" and "Mary Lewis" letter to Eudamien Fontenrose") is a Brisbane-based writer of speculative fiction. Her short stories have appeared in such anthologies as Dreaming Again (Jack Dann, ed.), Tartarus Press" Strange Tales II and III, the Twelfth Planet Press"s 2012, and in such journals as Lady Churchill"s Rosebud Wristlet, Shimmer, and On Spec. Three of her stories have been shortlisted for the Aurealis Award in the Best Fantasy Short Story category and her work has had several Honourable Mentions in the Datlow, Link, and Grant Year"s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. She has two short story collections out in 2010: Sourdough & Other Stories (Tartarus Press) and The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales (Ticonderoga Publications). She works parttime at a writers" center. She is also a graduate of Clarion South 2009 and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop 2006 and she blogs at angelaslatter.com about writing and random things that catch her attention. Of her collaboration with Lisa Hannett, she writes, "Brain and I at first talked about doing a straight narrative called "An Audience with the Queen" or "The Prisoner Queen in Bloom." However, I am very lucky because Lisa knows everything in the world and mentioned the idea of doing our section in the form of the old Notes & Queries section of an 1800s broadsheet. She even had examples she was able to send me-huzzah for nerdish habits! So we brainstormed to do four main entries and picked four points from Ford"s story that we thought could be used. In one of them I wanted to make an oblique reference to Ford"s "The Night Whiskey," hence the note about the deathberry in the Prisoner Queen, and I also wanted Millicent to be less innocent that she might appear. I also liked the idea of crossing the Hot Air Opera with the Air Ferry Disaster. Lisa had ideas about the spores, Dr. Lash, and the ear-ink that left pictures on the pillows of the sufferers. The other random queries were things we pulled out of the air. I had to read up on the writing style, and luckily Lisa had been reading a surfeit of Oscar Wilde and was able to edit over the worst of my inconsistent and anachronistic phrasings! We did a back-and-forth on the entries about four times before we were happy. I love working with Lisa as we have a similar work ethic, a comparable aesthetic sense, and yet still have very different voices."
BRIAN STABLEFORD ("Excerpt from "The t.i.tan Unwrecked" and the translation from Albert Robida"s "The Railway War") lives in Reading, England. He has published more than 160 books of various sorts, including the recent novels Prelude to Eternity and Alien Abduction: The Wiltshire Revelations, the recent story collections The Return of the Djinn and Other Black Melodramas and Beyond the Colors of Darkness and Other Exotica, and the recent nonfiction book The Devil"s Party: A Short History of Satanic Abuse. He is currently translating cla.s.sics of French scientific romance, including works by Maurice Renard, J. H. Rosny the Elder, and Albert Robida (from whose The Adventures of Saturnin Farandoul "The Railway War" is taken). "The t.i.tan Unwrecked" is a sequel to both Paul Feval"s Knightshade and Morgan Robertson"s "Futility, or, The Wreck of the t.i.tan."
IVICA STEVANOVIC (two images attributed to the comic strip "American Tinker Under the Influence of Absinthe") was born in 1977, in Nis, south of Serbia. He grew up on comic books and old horror movies. In early childhood he began to draw, and is still working. He ill.u.s.trated a large number of t.i.tles for children, and designed the books" covers...He mostly likes to ill.u.s.trate picture books, and his favorite is Andersen"s story The Emperor"s New Clothes. So far, he has worked mainly with Serbian publishing houses. His specialty is graphic novels and art book projects. To date he has published Kindly Corpses (2003), Lexicon of Art Legions (2005), Anatomy of the Sky (2006), and Katil (Bloodthirsty Man) (2008). When creating art, Ivica uses different techniques: from ink pen drawing as a basis, through watercolors to digital painting and collage. The results of his work can be seen on www.behance.net/IvicaStevanovic and EDGE77 cgsociety.org/gallery. Stevanovic lives in Veternik (northern Serbia) with his wife, Milica, who is also a children"s ill.u.s.trator. Stevanovic currently works as a lecturer at the Academy of Art in Novi Sad (Serbia), the Department of Graphic Communication. He has won several prizes in the fields of design, ill.u.s.trations, cartoons, and comics.
The Editors.
Hugo Award winner ANN VANDERMEER and World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer have recently co-edited such anthologies as Best American Fantasy #1 & 2, Steampunk, The New Weird, Last Drink Bird Head, and Fast Ships, Black Sails. They are the co-authors of The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals. Future projects include The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Fictions for Atlantic and The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities for HarperCollins. Jeff"s latest books are the Nebula-nominated novel Finch and the writing strategy guide Booklife. Ann is the editor-in-chief of Weird Tales magazine. Together, they have been profiled by National Public Radio and the New York Times" Papercuts blog. They are active teachers, and have taught at Clarion San Diego, Odyssey, and the teen writing camp Shared Worlds, for which Jeff is the a.s.sistant director. They live in Tallaha.s.see, Florida, with too many books and four cats. For more information, visit WWW.JEFFVANDERMEER.COM.
end.