[IW] 'Steampunk' timelines and settings?

[Ashtagon]

fwiw, while cyberprep has existed as a term for years, I have not seen the -prep suffix applied to other genres in the *punk field. "steamprep" as a term is purely an invention of this thread, albeit a logical one derived from established terminology.

I've absolutely no problem with steamprep as a genre. I am even happy to regard it as a subgenre of steampunk. But it is not the whole of steampunk, not the originator of the term, and I doubt it is even dominant in steam* circles outside of conventions and maker culture. istm that the literary genre is dominated by the darker/grittier side of steampunk.

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by aesir23

But they don't get to define what Steampunk really is. There's a literary movement older than the fashion movement and it's not generally cheerful and optimistic.

Things change in appearance and 'style'.

Both "Wild Wild West" (TV series version) and "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." can be called or nicknamed Steampunk.

Nothing dystopian about either one.

I started the parameters of the thread the way I did because I want a Steampunk setting that looks the way it is portrayed these days, not 35 years ago. The age of the style or term does not trump the way the term is used currently and the current appearance of it.

Blacks and women are equal and have equal voting rights in a Steampunk world.
That's the kind of Steampunk setting that I was talking about in my opening post...before it got derailed by others. (thread jacked?)

Friday I went to a Steampunk convention - so I did not have access to my computer again til Sunday night.

- Edmund C.

[Ashtagon]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

Things change in appearance and 'style'.

Both "Wild Wild West" (TV series version) and "The Adventures of Brisco County Jr." can be called or nicknamed Steampunk.

Nothing dystopian about either one.

Can't say I have seen Brisco County. But I have seen Wild Wild West (film version). And I say plenty of institutional racism in that. Heavily lampooned, but no one was in any doubt that the characters believed themselves to be in a racist society. In the first fight scene, they are a punch away from using the N-word.

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

Can't say I have seen Brisco County. But I have seen Wild Wild West (film version). And I say plenty of institutional racism in that. Heavily lampooned, but no one was in any doubt that the characters believed themselves to be in a racist society. In the first fight scene, they are a punch away from using the N-word.

The film version is generally ignored by people who LOVE the original the show.
The 'N-word' is not part of TV show - which is what is being referred to.

Can we go back to trying to make a GURPS setting instead of making strange claims that Steampunk is racist?

- Ed C.

[Ashtagon]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

The film version is generally ignored by people who LOVE the original the show.
The 'N-word' is not part of TV show - which is what is being referred to.

Can we go back to trying to make a GURPS setting instead of making strange claims that Steampunk is racist?

- Ed C.

Wait, are we saying the film version is NOT steampunk?

If we are talking the 60s series only, may I ask how many ethnic minority or female characters were portrayed and were considered "good guys" and pillars of society? Did the show even pass the Bechdel test, or an ethnic minority equivalent?

I'm confuzzled.

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

Can we go back to trying to make a GURPS setting instead of making strange claims that Steampunk is racist?

This is a gross and insulting mis-characterization of the argument.

"Portrays racism and sexual inequality in a historically accurate way" \= Racism.
If it did, than "Selma" would have been the most racist movie of 2014.

However, you're right that this thread has gone off track. Your original post made claims about what Steampunk means that I, a fan of the literary sub-genre, and others found in accurate. I've said what I have to say about that issue and will henceforth drop it.

If you haven't found this thread from several years ago, you may find it useful. You said you want airships to play a role in your setting--I contributed a martial arts style to that thread specifically designed for airship engineers.

[scc]

I think only cyberpunk has dystopian elements, the -punk for other punkpunk genre's seems more to indicate use of tech in advance of what was used/is possible, in GURPS terms it's TL5 or TL5+1, possibly with weird additions from higher TL's due to it's punk heritage, like mechanical replacement arms.

Grim and dark? Steampunk tends to 'hard' is the best way I can put it. Steam in used to power everything, so the whether is going to be overcast from all the smog and everything will be covered in soot. With that sort of a background you don't get light and fluffy stories about bunnies.

Racism and sexism. This was the era when those where invented, or at least the modern forms that people these are familiar with, so don't expect an elgatian utopia

[tshiggins]

To add a few points to the discussion, and then to make a few suggestions about setting.

The suffix "-punk" derives from the 1970s "punk rock" music and associated subculture, which meant to criticize some of the soft-core artists such as Simon & Garfunkel, and Elton John. Their music was called "rock and roll," but to guys such as the Ramones, social criticism and youthful rebellion against an oppressive status quo were vital themes in rock music. To them, any artists who ignored that aspect weren't "real" rockers.

(To a large extent, I agree -- so much so, that I consider John Mayer's song, Waiting on the World to Change, to be not just insipid, but so actively offensive that I turn off the radio. Weak-ass whiner needs to grow a pair....)

So, from its beginning, the descriptive term, "punk" included hard-edged social criticism and vocalized outrage at social structures the artists considered dehumanizing. The reason they dressed so "outrageously" was to express their outrage at the majority culture's oppressive status quo.

Ideas spread, and when the "punk" sensibility reached "alternative fiction," especially science fiction, the writers saw a lot of parallels between the alienation experienced by 1970s and '80s young people in the face of rapid economic and cultural change, and the cultural problems described by writers such as Charles Dickens and H.G. Wells, a century before.

(Remember, Alvin Toffler's book, Future Shock, was published in 1970, and Orson Welles' documentary based on it appeared in 1972).

So, the authors began to tell stories about alienation and rebellion against dehumanizing cultures, loosely set in the rapidly-industrializing Victorian era. Moreover, because some of them were science fiction writers, they tweaked with the science, a little (or a lot) to emphasize the dehumanizing effects of a rapidly mechanizing culture that multiplied human labor to such an extent that it created vast amounts of wealth, but then distributed that wealth in a grotesquely unequal fashion.

Eventually, the idea mutated (as ideas usually do) into a romanticized sensibility that muted (or entirely eliminated) the bitter social criticism. That was still called "steampunk," but I prefer the term coined by Phil and Kaja Foglio: Gaslight Romance. The Drs. Foglio forthrightly state that Girl Genius is too lighthearted and fun to make any sort of legitimate claim to "punk" sensibilities.

Now then, as to settings, GURPS: Castle Falkenstein skews pretty hard to the "gaslight romance" side of things, but it has "steampunk" elements. Some of those darker ideas get fleshed out a little more in the R. Talsorian Games original books -- especially The Memoirs of Auberon of Faerie. That book went into exactly how and why the Fae pose an existential threat to humanity, as a whole.

The combination of awesome magic, outrageously powerful techno-magical steam contraptions, and the presence of non-human intelligences that frequently see humans as little more than pawns (or even food), and Falkenstein can become a setting that offers a thin, bright veneer over a pit of unmitigated darkness.

(In fact, I planned to move my abortive G:CF campaign in that direction, eventually. Sigh.)

Space: 1889 has already been mentioned, and Bill Stoddard's excellent GURPS supplements, Steampunk and Steamtech make that conversion pretty easy. If you want to use something that doesn't need as much conversion, use the "Dying Mars" setting in GURPS: Mars, as part of a Victorian Space campaign.

Roma Aeterna, in Alternate Earths, is pretty steampunkish, although the society is not Victorian. However, that society is pretty freakin' oppressive, and it's fairly close to TL5(ish).

[aesir23]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

If you want to use something that doesn't need as much conversion, use the "Dying Mars" setting in GURPS: Mars, as part of a Victorian Space campaign.

Roma Aeterna, in Alternate Earths, is pretty steampunkish, although the society is not Victorian. However, that society is pretty freakin' oppressive, and it's fairly close to TL5(ish).

I would add to this list the following official GURPS 4e Steampunk worlds: Tripod ("Blood in the Craters) from GURPS Horror, Gothic 2 from Infinite Worlds: Worlds of Horror, and Etheria from Infinite Worlds: Lost Worlds.

This last is probably closest to what the OP is looking for.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

Things change in appearance and 'style'.

They do indeed. However, so far as I can see, the big-name currently active-as-such steampunk writer of the moment is Cherie Priest, who's fairly recently wrapped a sequence of novels that she clearly and openly labels as "steampunk", and which are basically people in goggles and gasmasks vs cannibal zombies, in a world where the American Civil War is dragging on interminably.

This is definitely a bit dark and grubby, and if you don't allow Cherie Priest to be called "contemporary steampunk", I suggest that your definition is so narrow that it's disappeared where the sun don't shine.

Originally Posted by tshiggins

... I prefer the term coined by Phil and Kaja Foglio: Gaslight Romance. ...

I wish that people would stop claiming that the Foglios invented that term. They didn't, and I don't think that they ever claim to have done so.

Actually, according to Wikipedia, what Kaja Foglio called Girl Genius was "Gaslamp Fantasy". She says that she misremembered another term, but she doesn't say what.

Anyway, that was in 2006. The term "Gaslight Romance" appears to have originated in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy in 1997. The text of that book is now online, and the relevant entry is at http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=gaslight_romance. The two terms now seem to have become somewhat interchangeable, probably because they sound similar and few people are clear what either of them means.

The fact that Girl Genius is arguably more "steampunk" than "Gaslight Romance" by the Encyclopedia definition is just one of life's little ironies. Anyway, the fact remains, Roz Kaveney and John Clute invented the latter term. It's more polite not to insult two professional critics by incorrect attribution.