[IW] 'Steampunk' timelines and settings?

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

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.


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.

Well, then. I sit corrected, and won't make the mistake in the future. :)

That's actually fairly good to know.

Still, I think the basic point stands, regardless of who coined the terms. Steampunk focuses on the dehumanizing effects of rapid social and cultural change driven by technological innovation that destroys entire ways of life (and, you're right -- Girl Genius does touch on that, despite its fairly lighthearted tone).

Gaslight romance is more of a nostalgic fantasy that focuses on the style of the Victorian era -- especially the elegant lives enjoyed by the small numbers of established nobility and gentry, as well as the rapidly-rising nouveau riche.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Steampunk focuses on the dehumanizing effects of rapid social and cultural change driven by technological innovation that destroys entire ways of life (and, you're right -- Girl Genius does touch on that, despite its fairly lighthearted tone).

Nowadays it does, mostly. Actually, when Jeter invented the term, he just said "Victorian fantasy". When he, Powers, and Blaylock were hanging out in a bar and reading Mayhew, their main interest seems to have been cool Victorian underworld slang - which tends to lead into stories about the dehumanising effects of Victorian social and technological progress, because that's how the Victorian London underworld happened, but the link is loose. I think that The Anubis Gates has to count as one of the four first steampunk-as-such novels, and that's painfully short of technology.

Later, Clute and Kaveney decided that "steampunk" was most useful as a label for "historical Technofantasies – to books which fit directly into the form developed by Tim Powers, K W Jeter and James P Blaylock from models derived by Michael Moorcock, Christopher Priest and others – books whose principal plot-driver is technological Anachronism" (which would work better if they didn't mention Powers, frankly). Again, the dehumanisation is quite strongly implicit, but not explicit.

To be honest, I think that "steampunk" mostly ends up being the stuff which people point to when they say "steampunk". Which definitely includes Boneshaker, though.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

(SNIP)

To be honest, I think that "steampunk" mostly ends up being the stuff which people point to when they say "steampunk". Which definitely includes Boneshaker, though.

Now, that probably has a lot of truth, and I agree that Cherie Priest's books qualify as "steampunk." I've enjoyed them, immensely.

[Prince Charon]

For those it may matter to, it occurs to me that I should mention that one of the Earths in my Five Earths setting (there's a link in my .sig) is a Steampunk Earth, in the somewhat dystopian sense (id est, it's the Victorian Age, with the inequities that entails, but with cool technology).

For example, clanks, so called after an early mechanical man called 'Mr. Clank', are growing common enough that by 1868 it was politically feasible for the US to put in place a Constitutional Amendment gradually phasing out slavery over the next twenty years. What did they do with the freed slaves? Offer them 40 acres and a mule out west, but give them as little help as they can reasonably get away with, so quite a lot of them either died on the way, or sold the deed for less than it was worth, and went elsewhere, like Liberia (which isn't such a wonderful place, itself).

One of the things I've been thinking of adding to the timeline is a reaction to the Women's Movement that people on the modern (Infopunk) Earth keep telling them about: pastors giving sermons about the vital importance of 'helping' women to 'understand their proper place in God's Plan', and preventing them from being 'lead astray' (a lot of people in the 1870s, even with the societal changes from advanced steamtech, would really not like some of the things we count as normal). With the development of vox radio (yes, in 1879), they can reach more people, and even rant at the folks on the Future Earths (Infopunk and Dieselpunk, which is going through WWII).

[Qoltar]

No....

No 'Dystopian" - please everyone go back to my opening post.

I wanted help in making a Good Setting - not a dystopian' one.

There is nothing inherently 'bad' about Steampunk. There seems to be quite a bit of confusion or over-interpretation of the syllable 'punk' going on.

The time period may be what we think of as 'Victorian' in that its between 1866 and 1912. However, the 'punk' part or rebelling is rebelling against the formalities and stiffness of Victorian/Edwardian social attitudes...

Also didn't want a back & forth about authors and books. My opening post said the parameters of the kind of setting I'm looking for help with.

- Ed c.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

For those it may matter to, it occurs to me that I should mention that one of the Earths in my Five Earths setting (there's a link in my .sig) is a Steampunk Earth, in the somewhat dystopian sense (id est, it's the Victorian Age, with the inequities that entails, but with cool technology).

For example, clanks, so called after an early mechanical man called 'Mr. Clank', are growing common enough that by 1868 it was politically feasible for the US to put in place a Constitutional Amendment gradually phasing out slavery over the next twenty years. What did they do with the freed slaves? Offer them 40 acres and a mule out west, but give them as little help as they can reasonably get away with, so quite a lot of them either died on the way, or sold the deed for less than it was worth, and went elsewhere, like Liberia (which isn't such a wonderful place, itself).

One of the things I've been thinking of adding to the timeline is a reaction to the Women's Movement that people on the modern (Infopunk) Earth keep telling them about: pastors giving sermons about the vital importance of 'helping' women to 'understand their proper place in God's Plan', and preventing them from being 'lead astray' (a lot of people in the 1870s, even with the societal changes from advanced steamtech, would really not like some of the things we count as normal). With the development of vox radio (yes, in 1879), they can reach more people, and even rant at the folks on the Future Earths (Infopunk and Dieselpunk, which is going through WWII).

For bonus points they can try to paint modern Western feminists as some sort of standard instead of being the more annoying/extreme outliers. Also don't forget that during the 1800s women were also opposed to the women suffragists.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

No....

No 'Dystopian" - please everyone go back to my opening post.

I wanted help in making a Good Setting - not a dystopian' one.

There is nothing inherently 'bad' about Steampunk. There seems to be quite a bit of confusion or over-interpretation of the syllable 'punk' going on.

The time period may be what we think of as 'Victorian' in that its between 1866 and 1912. However, the 'punk' part or rebelling is rebelling against the formalities and stiffness of Victorian/Edwardian social attitudes...

Also didn't want a back & forth about authors and books. My opening post said the parameters of the kind of setting I'm looking for help with.

- Ed c.

Well, okay. I'd take a look at S.M. Stirling's, The Peshawar Lancers. In that setting, a meteor shower in 1878 devastated much of the northern hemisphere, and triggered a years-long winter that finished off the most advanced civilizations.

The United Kingdom survived (sort of) by relocating en masse to India, and the hybrid culture that grew up is known as the Angrezi Raj. The year of the novel is 2025, but it's one in which industrial societies had to rebuild themselves from nothing (those that could), and the Angrezi Raj has only recently surpassed the technological sophistication of Victoria's England.

A lot of the rest of the world remains locked in barbarism, and Russia is a nightmarish hell in which a reactionary theocracy actively seeks out those with psionic abilities and recruits them as spies and saboteurs. The Great Game is far, far more deadly in The Peshawar Lancers than it ever was, in our world.

That said, life in the Angrezi Raj is actually pretty okay. Women are on the verge of earning the vote (or have just won it, recently), and while class, caste and ancestry still matter a bit, the concept of racial inferiority is considered at best "old fashioned," but mostly silly and offensive. The British Royal family married into India's nobility, and everybody has Indian ancestors and family-members.

That's about the most positive story I can think of, off-hand.