I’ve been in the mood for steampunk lately, but there are precious few movies available, and I’ve never been much of a science fiction reader. I love the aesthetics – the techno-Victorian metropolises, the clockwork robots, the gleaming airships, the excellent men’s suits with vests and topcoats and nice hats, and everyone wearing goggles. As far as movies go, I’ve seen *The Time Machine * with Guy Pearce (not good at all) and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (mediocre; the comics were a million times better). I haven’t been a video gamer in at least a decade, but I always liked the Final Fantasy games, especially for their blending of steampunk, sci-fi, and medieval/fantasy elements.
What about books? Any good ones? I’ve heard of an author named China Mieville (who I thought was a woman up until very recently, just due to his name). How is he?
I’d also be interested in any Western stories (movies, books, etc) that blend sci-fi/futuristic elements with the standard Western stuff. Of course I love Firefly, and I enjoyed The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. back in the day. The less said about Wild Wild West with Will Smith, the better. From what I understand, the Wild Arms video games fit this perfectly, but again, I’m not a gamer, I just like the look and style. I’ve heard this Western-hybrid subgenre is actually referred to as “Weird West.”
Recommended : The webcomic Girl Genius. A steampunk world dominated by mad scientists, known as Sparks by the polite, and madboys/girls by everyone else.
And yes, it has airships. Fleets of them. And brassy riveted robot armies.
You said you weren’t a gamer, but the Myst series was not your typical video game and very much has a steampunk aesthetic. Screenshots are easily obtained on-line so you won’t need to invest in the games to check it out.
[Anime] Well, there’s the movie Steamboy (which is good but not great) and the TV series Nadia (which is great.)
There’s a rather odd lack of proper steampunk stuff. It always seems like you’ve seen something good, but then can never think what it was, and what you can think of isn’t very steampunkish or is fairly mediocre.
I picked up Perdido Street Station on a whim from a secondhand book store and couldn’t put it down.
It’s very much Steampunk with a healthy dose of magic and mysticism thrown in and I thoroughly enjoyed that book.
The second and third books in the trilogy are still quite steampunky but they got very political, and after a while (for me) started to get a bit too dry. But the world he’s created around the city is huge, well thought out and definitely very interesting.
My only comment on the steampunk sub-genre is that I do find it fairly interesting. I’ve always been interested in the past’s take on the future.
But, do we now have yet another meaning of punk, or is it just getting used strangely, like hardware/software/apps/features being called “sexy” back in the 90s?
So far, we’ve got:
Noun
1: archaic : prostitute
2: [probably partly from (3)punk] : nonsense; foolishness
3: a: a young inexperienced person : beginner novice; especially : a young man b: a usually petty gangster, hoodlum, or ruffian cslang : a young man used as a homosexual partner especially in a prison
4: a: punk rock b: a punk rock musician c: one who affects punk styles
or
Adjective
1: very poor : inferior <played a punk game>
2: being in poor health <said that she was feeling punk>
3 a: of or relating to punk rock b: relating to or being a style (as of dress or hair) inspired by punk rock
or Noun (again)
1 : wood so decayed as to be dry, crumbly, and useful for tinder
2 : a preparation (as of a stick of coated wood) that burns slowly and is used to ignite fuses especially of fireworks
I’d have hoped we did not need to do this again so soon.
Suffice to say there’s more to the punk lifestyle/aesthetic and steampunk than that one decidedly circular dictionary definition.
He is great (as already said). But fairly dark and very political.
TV had The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne.
Movies: I see Disney’s Atlantis hasn’t been mentioned - more dieselpunk, but cool submarine. Another steampunk movie I rate highly is City of Lost Children. The recent Golden Compass and* Stardust* movies also fall into/have elements of steampunk, especially airships.
The Difference Engine, by cyberpunk authors William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, is set in an alternate Victorian Britain where Babbage actually got his mechanical computer to work and it sparked a scientific, technical and political-social revolution – but electricity still has not been harnessed, and everything is driven by steam or pneumatics. Computers are giant steam-powered machines doing their calculations on huge spools of paper.
The original steampunk might be considered the 19th-Century Edisonade genre, especially the Frank Reade stories with their helicopter-airships.
Thanks to all for the recommendations. I looked up a few of them, and added China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station to my library request list. I looked over the Girl Genius website, but I’m afraid I’ll never get into it because of the art. It reminds me a bit too much of the Burger King Kids Club, or the kind of pseudo-manga stuff that gets LiveJournaling fangirls all a’twitter. That’s my own geek-prejudice coming through, but I kept expecting to run into some anime-styled Captain Jack Sparrow/Harry Potter slash fiction in there. It’s a shame, because it looks like a comic I could appreciate with a different artist on board.
Visiting the blogs you all posted, I did discover an awesome band that dresses in steampunk-inspired fashion. They’re called Abney Park, and they have an amazingly-designed website with several free, downloadable mp3s available. They’re also some really good-looking people! Their music is more goth-industrial than what I’d expect “steampunk” music to sound like (I had Tin Hat Trio more in mind for that), but Abney Park has this really dark, haunting, exotic, sexy sound that I loved immediately. They brought to mind nine inch nails, the Cure, Dead Can Dance, and even Garbage. They also have a Myspace page.
One more thing… I have no real problem with the “steampunk” designation, but I find “techno-Victoriana” a lot more descriptive for the look and feel of all this stuff.
+10000000 for China Mieville’s “Bas Lag” books. Truly masterful stuff cribbing from the aesthetic driving the best elements of the Final Fantasy games, but far more urban. My absolute favorite element is an entire system of what amounts to pneumatic tube e-mail. The three books in the shared-world series are also each their own steam subgenres - “Perdido Street Station” is straight urban fantasy steampunk, “The Scar” is a “steam sea adventure,” and then “Iron Council” is a “Steam Western.”
