I’ve bene playing the computer game *Arcanum * and it has me jonesing for Steampunk. Specifically books in the genre.
For those not in the know, there are more or less three types of steampunk:
Type A - Gibson-derived Steampunk. Takes the angle of modern inventions arriving, in crude ways, years ahead of their time. For example, in The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, Charles Babbage completes his difference engine and with its help, the computer era arrives a century ahead of schedule.
This is what I consider “true” steampunk as it truly mixes in the cyberpunk aspects. For me, the point of cyberpunk wasn’t that everything is grimy and people have no morals and such, but that technology has advanced far beyond the normal person’s grasp of it. The average person becomes a primitive in his own world because the world itself has surpassed him. This is the kind of stuff I’m most interested in.
Type B - Magic Steampunk. As in Arcanum or, from what I hear, the Lord Darcy novels of Randall Garrett (which are way out of print). In this world, you have an industrial revolution going on alongside a magical world, usually opposed to each other. While this can be somewhat interesting, I’ve always felt that, because of the definition of cyberpunk I gave above, including magic was redundant and missed the point. This is why I’ve never cared for the role-playing game “Shadowrun” which mixes magic and cyberpunk. To me, in cyberpunk, the technology is pretty much magic, since it’s so beyond the reach of most mortals.
Type C - Victorian Technology. For some reason novels such as “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” have now been taken into this genre. I suppose it stays in the idea of, “What if there was advanced technology in an earlier time?” but to me it kind of misses out on most of the point. Again, from my own point of view, I enjoy cyberpunk more for the comment on the sociological impact of technology rather than saying “cool! that tech is so neat!” Having higher-than-normal tech doesn’t do it for me unless you’re discussing the effects of such tech on the people around it. I consider this stuff more source material for steampunk rather than actual steampunk, but then again, I haven’t read any of it.
Is any of this pointless muttering making any sense? I’m looking for more stuff like Type A, and some good stuff in Type C. I’ve already decided to hit the Jules Verne and H.G. Welles sections of my library, as well as finally read some Lovecraft first-hand instead of people ripping him off. What would you kind folks recommend?
(Incidentally I have read the “Steampunk” comic book which is so poorly put together and so poorly drawn I’ve had a hard time getting very far in it.)