What's the steampunk?

[Grinner]

Steampunk. It's an interesting concept, but I can't say I've ever really liked it. It's cyberpunk without the flash and style. Moreover, it's much more difficult to work in a satisfying manner. I just don't get why you'd want to force cyberpunk into a nineteenth century dystopia when there's a perfectly functional dystopic future to be had.

I get that the aesthetics of brass and soot have a certain appeal, but that alone doesn't seem compelling enough to necessitate the investment any significant amount of time.

What do you all see in it, if anything?

Edit: And sorry about title.

[DM Nate]

Just replace "steampunk" with "Jules Verne/H.G. Wells" and it makes more sense.

[Eldan]

It's an interesting period in history to build around. So much wonderful grime and bigotry to build around, I find it helps build inspiration. Whereas with Cyberpunk, I have at best some science articles to help me, instead of books and books of history.

[Alent]

Personally, I'm fond of Steampunk as it's more or less a trope for trope pattern match with all of today's modern problems, and you can use that to address them in fiction in a way that people are less likely to attribute a modern political agenda to it.

It helps that it also doubles as a junction where you can get the best of fantasy, westerns, Tesla, MacGyver, Sherlock Holmes, and a few other great stories all in the same era with essentially no thematic conflicts.

[Eldan]

I'd say there's plenty of thematic conflict. People have very different ideas on what Steampunk means.

On the one side, you have those who come from cyberpunks. Let's call this steamPUNK. It's a grimy world, of exploited underclasses, fat robber baron factory owners, a sneeringly jingoistic aristocracy with no connection to anything outside their gentlemens clubs, of colonialism and the great game, of suffrage and socialism, of tuberculosis, miner's lung and crippled orphan factory workers. What you get if you mix Dickens, Kippling, Wells and Tolstoy with some light science fiction where every new invention only further drives the poor into poverty and from there to despair and rebellion.

On the other hand, you have those who want adventure stories. STEAM!punk. A world of gentleman scientists and brave explorers, noble pirates and funny old military officers. Wondrous machines and fabulous inventions, airships and endless horizons. A world of idealized Livingstones and Brenchleys and Spekes and Stanleys. Instead of anarchists and bombs, you have smugglers and tesla-coil-swords, instead of wars you have duels at noon and instead of explotation you have, at worst, noble savages.

Diametrically opposed in theme. Often given the same name.

[Tarlek Flamehai]

Wenches in steam-corsets are way hotter than than chicks in cyber-tube tops!

[Alent]

I'd say there's plenty of thematic conflict. People have very different ideas on what Steampunk means.

On the one side, you have those who come from cyberpunks. Let's call this steamPUNK. It's a grimy world, of exploited underclasses, fat robber baron factory owners, a sneeringly jingoistic aristocracy with no connection to anything outside their gentlemens clubs, of colonialism and the great game, of suffrage and socialism, of tuberculosis, miner's lung and crippled orphan factory workers. What you get if you mix Dickens, Kippling, Wells and Tolstoy with some light science fiction where every new invention only further drives the poor into poverty and from there to despair and rebellion.

On the other hand, you have those who want adventure stories. STEAM!punk. A world of gentleman scientists and brave explorers, noble pirates and funny old military officers. Wondrous machines and fabulous inventions, airships and endless horizons. A world of idealized Livingstones and Brenchleys and Spekes and Stanleys. Instead of anarchists and bombs, you have smugglers and tesla-coil-swords, instead of wars you have duels at noon and instead of explotation you have, at worst, noble savages.

Diametrically opposed in theme. Often given the same name.

I meant "thematic conflict" in the sense of "And the themes mesh together with no mechanical conflicts". :smallwink: Probably not the best choice of words.

The only real limit with steampunk is your own writing skill, at least that's what I've come to think. You can even mesh SteamPUNK and Steam!Punk together in the same story and have both extremes be true and present.

[Comet]

Wenches in steam-corsets are way hotter than than chicks in cyber-tube tops!

This is pretty much it for a significant number of people. Steampunk is, first and foremost, an aesthetic. A lot of people like top hats and vests and elaborate dresses and all that old-timey stuff and steampunk lets you add gears and pistons and chains and other accessories in and around that old-timey fashion.

That said, the point of actually trying to look at what kinds of stories steampunk usually tells is interesting.
I've been interested in looking at the kind of steampunk that tries to duplicate as much of cyberpunk as possible. What would be the steam equivalent of hackers and console cowboys, though? Street punks and other such rebels are pretty universal, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a counterpart for the malcontent technocrats like Case from Neuromancer and such. Disgruntled factory workers, inventors? The MegaCorps would probably be empires or other nationalities, right? That would need to play into such a character's dynamic, too.

[warty goblin]

This is pretty much it for a significant number of people. Steampunk is, first and foremost, an aesthetic. A lot of people like top hats and vests and elaborate dresses and all that old-timey stuff and steampunk lets you add gears and pistons and chains and other accessories in and around that old-timey fashion.

So basically making history safe for things that nerds like, by ignoring history?

[Grinner]

Just replace "steampunk" with "Jules Verne/H.G. Wells" and it makes more sense.

It helps that it also doubles as a junction where you can get the best of fantasy, westerns, Tesla, MacGyver, Sherlock Holmes, and a few other great stories all in the same era with essentially no thematic conflicts.

That does give it a little more credibility as a genre, yes.

Thanks.


I've been interested in looking at the kind of steampunk that tries to duplicate as much of cyberpunk as possible.

But that's just the problem, isn't it? There are many parallels between a typical cyberpunk megalopolis and the image of a nineteenth century city, but the conventions of cyberpunk as a whole will have great trouble existing there. Like you said, a downtrodden ruffian is a fairly universal image, and I think it's possible to do the whole cybernetics schtick a la Fullmetal Alchemist. Between The Island of Doctor Moreau and Frankenstein, there's also precedent to do some crazy stuff with biology.

The problem is that there isn't a clear analogue for one of the most important elements: a profusion of electronics. Behind the glamor of technology, a pervasive presence of cheap electronics seems to bind humanity closer together, making humanity itself ever so machine-like. Mass media unifies the minds of nations, and a failure of ethics places those nations into the hands of a few warring plutocrats. And then there's the punks, who lash out at this state of affairs and just refuse to play the rat race.

The solution seems clear: simply don't include those sort of things. If you do that though, are you also cutting out the heart of the -punk? There's room for fascinating lines of thought there, but can they be made to work in a relatively low-tech environment?

[Stubbazubba]

The problem is that there isn't a clear analogue for one of the most important elements: a profusion of electronics. Behind the glamor of technology, a pervasive presence of cheap electronics seems to bind humanity closer together, making humanity itself ever so machine-like. Mass media unifies the minds of nations, and a failure of ethics places those nations into the hands of a few warring plutocrats. And then there's the punks, who lash out at this state of affairs and just refuse to play the rat race.

The solution seems clear: simply don't include those sort of things. If you do that though, are you also cutting out the heart of the -punk? There's room for fascinating lines of thought there, but can they be made to work in a relatively low-tech environment?

Absolutely (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMYNfQlf1H8).

Let me just rewrite this for you: Behind the glamor of technology, a pervasive presence of cheap electronics cities, factories, and printing seems to bind humanity closer together, making humanity itself ever so machine-like. Mass media Religion unifies the minds of nations, and a failure of ethics places those nations into the hands of a few warring plutocrats aristocratic dynasties. And then there's the punks, who lash out at this state of affairs and just refuse to play the rat race.

The stories are the same, down to technology and modernization creating the sense of disenfranchisement. Religion was the opium of the masses then, not consumerism (and by extension consumer media), so steampunk media has that lively sense of idealism; media as liberator, media as rebellion. Media is on the punks' side, but religion and law and money are all arrayed against them. But steampunk is infused with an idealism, a faith in technology and humanity that hasn't been proven wrong yet, as it has in cyberpunk, where it's been replaced with an almost nihilistic cynicism. That, I think, is the difference in the -punk end of the pool (disregarding the STEAM! side).

[123456789blaaa]

So basically making history safe for things that nerds like, by ignoring history?

...yes? Is that bad thing? I think sticking to accurate history all the time would suck horribly.

[Eldan]

What you want for that is three movements from the 19th century, which go hand in hand: nationalism, industrialization and socialism.

Nationalism.
Everything is changing. What were once hundreds of squabbling states ruled by petty nobles are now Empires once again, united in language, history, ideology and hierarchy. Instead of a thousand tiny wars, we have the concert of Europe. Superpowers are uneasily eyeing each other over their borders, delegating their fighting to the colonies and balkans of the world.

Industrialism.
The world is shrinking. The rail and the steamer bind a world together. Around the world in eighty days, instead of years. A craftsman no longer makes a product with his hands, instead we have the Machine, stamping out thousands of copies of the same item, day and night. Goods for everyone! But the humans themselves have become replaceable parts. It's too expensive to shut down the machine to save the cleaners stuck in the gears. We'd loose too much product. Just hire new ones, we can't lose the bottom line.

Socialism.
They can't do that to us. I have more in common with a worker across the border than with that factory owner, more in common with that soldier in that trench over there than with my own officer. We fight back. We unite. We are one.



Really, steam can very well hit many of the same themes as cybertech. The humans are expendable, but the machines are expensive. Workers are a raw material. And you have plenty squabbling plutocrats.

And your punk hacker? A socialist, an anarchist, a printer of leaflets, a slave-smuggler on the underground railway.

[Eldan]

Absolutely (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMYNfQlf1H8).

Musical? Really?
Real Steampunk. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jfPRa7kD-Y&list=UUqrvM6yDi8akGAMlCTIX4eA)

Or rock, at least. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ckCo80imFo)

[infinitetech]

i have to say, the style and outfits/time frame are secondary, i as an inventor like this genre for these reasons:

1, analogue machines are so much more "alive" than computers, they take heart and soul to create
2, even your bum on the street can understand how these work with only a little explanation
3, you don't rely on flimsy chips and wires(usually for wires) instead you have good solid metal and steam or fire
4, you can explain traps and tools to dms/pcs even if they aren't geniuses
5, you can have master craftsmen build things almost as good as magic
6, there are some awesome enemy types it adds
7, you can add in steam punk type mad science to make creatures/mutations and stuff as well,

steam punk is effectively playing in the dream world of Nicola Tesla

[Milodiah]

Whenever I see posts about "steampunk", I usually tend to slip this into the conversation, then scuttle away Zoidberg-style.

WHOOOOP-woop-woop-wooop! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA)


Moral of the story is that (at least in real-world manifestations of the style) the mechanical stuff you're sticking onto completely unrelated non-mechanical stuff should at least have a purpose. The goggles, the random-ass gears, etc. are meaningless, and just look shallow to me.

Of course this isn't as much a problem in a nonvisual medium like tabletop gaming. Go for the airships and the absurd...machines (I realize now that for all the fanfare, I can't actually think of the function of these high-order mechanical devices...)


Now that I start thinking about it, steampunk is basically just "the real world circa 1880, but everyone got incredibly OCD about cogs and started worshipping them" in its typical incarnation. Intricate (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/AnalyticalMachine_Babbage_London.jpg) mechanical (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Arkwright-water-frame.jpg) devices (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WgTINFLJcgs/TOG2R9jw8mI/AAAAAAAAAAs/uBusAMYW7uQ/s1600/springworleg03.jpg) fully existed in the 19th, somewhat in the 18th, and even a few in the 17th century. Factories, mechanical calculators, auto-looms.

People hated that ****. This is also the era of Henry David Thoreau's Walden and the philosophy of simple living, the time when the working poor spent 12 or 14 hour shifts in factories that were horribly unsafe and tended to mangle those who were simply unlucky, when smog and pollution began to manifest in urban areas. I always have to think, "Why the hell would the average person on the street want to celebrate the thing that took her husband's left hand last month?"

[Eldan]

Workers and charity organisations hated it. Tycoons loved it.

[Aedilred]

...yes? Is that bad thing? I think sticking to accurate history all the time would suck horribly.

Yes and no. I'm a fairly firm believer in the general principle that you have to know the rules before you can break them. This is something which is basically a given in science fiction, where even if a writer isn't themselves a top-level physicist or what have you, they're generally at least aware of which bits of real science they're disregarding, and a lot of sci-fi tries to work with real science as far as possible. Unfortunately, and this absolutely isn't limited to the writing of fiction, history, along with most other humanities, isn't regarded as something worth doing serious research in before you start messing around with it.

But in fact an understanding of the realities that underpinned a society in a given period in history is pretty much essential for depicting it convincingly. Not just the weapons and armour that people carried, but the structure of society, the mindset, the economics and demographics. You don't have to keep it that way, but you need to know what you're changing, why, and how the world will cope in the absence of these factors. If you just write what you know - a modern society with a historical aesthetic - it's not really going to work.

It's not about creating a setting that slavishly mimics history: unless you're writing historical fiction that's just silly. It's about creating a setting that feels conceptually possible, habitable and lived-in, one which if the current story stops can still stand up. And to do that there's very little substitute for examining how the elements of real life that you're aping held together and functioned.

Of course, you can get away with it, and innumerable authors, film-makers and game designers have. It could even be quite entertaining. But it's only ever going to be mindless pulpy flim-flam, or at best fairly heavy-handed contemporary social commentary/propaganda. Verisimilitude is one of the first things to end up on the cutting-room floor, and as soon as anyone starts poking at how the world actually functions the whole edifice comes crashing down, which also limits the kinds of stories you can tell. So long as you know that's what you're doing when you go into it, that's ok, I guess, but if you want to create anything lasting or meaningful, you need to put the work in.

[123456789blaaa]

Yes and no. I'm a fairly firm believer in the general principle that you have to know the rules before you can break them. This is something which is basically a given in science fiction, where even if a writer isn't themselves a top-level physicist or what have you, they're generally at least aware of which bits of real science they're disregarding, and a lot of sci-fi tries to work with real science as far as possible. Unfortunately, and this absolutely isn't limited to the writing of fiction, history, along with most other humanities, isn't regarded as something worth doing serious research in before you start messing around with it.

But in fact an understanding of the realities that underpinned a society in a given period in history is pretty much essential for depicting it convincingly. Not just the weapons and armour that people carried, but the structure of society, the mindset, the economics and demographics. You don't have to keep it that way, but you need to know what you're changing, why, and how the world will cope in the absence of these factors. If you just write what you know - a modern society with a historical aesthetic - it's not really going to work.

It's not about creating a setting that slavishly mimics history: unless you're writing historical fiction that's just silly. It's about creating a setting that feels conceptually possible, habitable and lived-in, one which if the current story stops can still stand up. And to do that there's very little substitute for examining how the elements of real life that you're aping held together and functioned.

Of course, you can get away with it, and innumerable authors, film-makers and game designers have. It could even be quite entertaining. But it's only ever going to be mindless pulpy flim-flam, or at best fairly heavy-handed contemporary social commentary/propaganda. Verisimilitude is one of the first things to end up on the cutting-room floor, and as soon as anyone starts poking at how the world actually functions the whole edifice comes crashing down, which also limits the kinds of stories you can tell. So long as you know that's what you're doing when you go into it, that's ok, I guess, but if you want to create anything lasting or meaningful, you need to put the work in.

Yep.

I pretty much agree with all of this. I don't think it contradicts what I meant.

[Urpriest]

This is pretty much it for a significant number of people. Steampunk is, first and foremost, an aesthetic. A lot of people like top hats and vests and elaborate dresses and all that old-timey stuff and steampunk lets you add gears and pistons and chains and other accessories in and around that old-timey fashion.

That said, the point of actually trying to look at what kinds of stories steampunk usually tells is interesting.
I've been interested in looking at the kind of steampunk that tries to duplicate as much of cyberpunk as possible. What would be the steam equivalent of hackers and console cowboys, though? Street punks and other such rebels are pretty universal, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a counterpart for the malcontent technocrats like Case from Neuromancer and such. Disgruntled factory workers, inventors? The MegaCorps would probably be empires or other nationalities, right? That would need to play into such a character's dynamic, too.

You want an equivalent of Case in Steampunk?

Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, from Perdido Street Station (http://baslag.wikia.com/wiki/Isaac_Dan_der_Grimnebulin). A scholar of dubious sciences, fallen on hard times due to his own moral failings, performing unusual jobs for unusual clients in order to keep doing what he loves.

[toapat]

I'd say there's plenty of thematic conflict. People have very different ideas on what Steampunk means.

On the one side, you have those who come from cyberpunks. Let's call this steamPUNK. It's a grimy world, of exploited underclasses, fat robber baron factory owners, a sneeringly jingoistic aristocracy with no connection to anything outside their gentlemens clubs, of colonialism and the great game, of suffrage and socialism, of tuberculosis, miner's lung and crippled orphan factory workers. What you get if you mix Dickens, Kippling, Wells and Tolstoy with some light science fiction where every new invention only further drives the poor into poverty and from there to despair and rebellion.

On the other hand, you have those who want adventure stories. STEAM!punk. A world of gentleman scientists and brave explorers, noble pirates and funny old military officers. Wondrous machines and fabulous inventions, airships and endless horizons. A world of idealized Livingstones and Brenchleys and Spekes and Stanleys. Instead of anarchists and bombs, you have smugglers and tesla-coil-swords, instead of wars you have duels at noon and instead of explotation you have, at worst, noble savages.

Diametrically opposed in theme. Often given the same name.

why exactly cant these aspects be in the same setting?

However, alot of whats up with each is significantly different, take the worker:

In Steampunk, the worker is expendable because the machines are too valuable. In Cyberpunk, the worker is expendable because there are 1000 people in line for your job waiting for you to get kicked out.

Another major difference is exactly what the worker is afraid of in the setting. In steampunk this is very much that they cant provide for their family. Their job isnt some megacorp that has no interaction with them, its a job that provides the means. In Cyberpunk, the worker is terrified of losing their job, because they work for a mega-corp that employs so many people and has so many more applicants per day that getting a new job is immensely difficult. The Steampunk worker isnt expendable, they are just less valuable then what they work on, In cyberpunk, the worker is a Statistic

[GorinichSerpant]

why exactly cant these aspects be in the same setting?

However, alot of whats up with each is significantly different, take the worker:

In Steampunk, the worker is expendable because the machines are too valuable. In Cyberpunk, the worker is expendable because there are 1000 people in line for your job waiting for you to get kicked out.

Another major difference is exactly what the worker is afraid of in the setting. In steampunk this is very much that they cant provide for their family. Their job isnt some megacorp that has no interaction with them, its a job that provides the means. In Cyberpunk, the worker is terrified of losing their job, because they work for a mega-corp that employs so many people and has so many more applicants per day that getting a new job is immensely difficult. The Steampunk worker isnt expendable, they are just less valuable then what they work on, In cyberpunk, the worker is a Statistic

You can still have people being expendable in Steampunk as they are in Cyberpunk because that was the reality during the real Industrial Revolution.

[Aedilred]

why exactly cant these aspects be in the same setting?

However, alot of whats up with each is significantly different, take the worker:

In Steampunk, the worker is expendable because the machines are too valuable. In Cyberpunk, the worker is expendable because there are 1000 people in line for your job waiting for you to get kicked out.

Another major difference is exactly what the worker is afraid of in the setting. In steampunk this is very much that they cant provide for their family. Their job isnt some megacorp that has no interaction with them, its a job that provides the means. In Cyberpunk, the worker is terrified of losing their job, because they work for a mega-corp that employs so many people and has so many more applicants per day that getting a new job is immensely difficult. The Steampunk worker isnt expendable, they are just less valuable then what they work on, In cyberpunk, the worker is a Statistic

Visually, aspects of each often do appear in the same setting and might even appear indistinguishable. However I think what toapat was getting at is that the attitude that underpins and informs those two approaches is almost fundamentally incompatible. What he refers to as STEAM!punk largely rejects the "punk" aspects of the setting altogether: the class struggle and exploitation of the workers is glossed over, ignored or written out in favour of classic adventure stories involving characters adhering to a sort of nineteenth-century noblesse oblige. His argument wasn't that steampunk doesn't or can't have anything in common with cyberpunk: rather that a lot of steampunk is a kind of reskinned cyberpunk, but that a lack of clarity of definition for the genre as a whole means that what some people call stempunk might not have anything recognisable to someone coming from cyberpunk at all.

You can get elements of the two coexisting, although it's hard to pull off, because the "gentleman adventurer" archetype feels completely out of place against the oppressive punk backgroun unless done ironically or otherwise deconstructed. See for instance The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the books, not the film) and the approach taken to characters like Quatermain and Nemo there. There is a kind of sliding scale, but what it ultimately means is that "steampunk" as a genre often refers to little more than the aesthetic and doesn't tell you anything about how the setting functions.

[Eldan]

why exactly cant these aspects be in the same setting?

However, alot of whats up with each is significantly different, take the worker:

In Steampunk, the worker is expendable because the machines are too valuable. In Cyberpunk, the worker is expendable because there are 1000 people in line for your job waiting for you to get kicked out.

Another major difference is exactly what the worker is afraid of in the setting. In steampunk this is very much that they cant provide for their family. Their job isnt some megacorp that has no interaction with them, its a job that provides the means. In Cyberpunk, the worker is terrified of losing their job, because they work for a mega-corp that employs so many people and has so many more applicants per day that getting a new job is immensely difficult. The Steampunk worker isnt expendable, they are just less valuable then what they work on, In cyberpunk, the worker is a Statistic

No, that was very much the case too during the Industrial Revolution. There's always unemployment, so there's always more workers. There's always people on the country or in the rookeries who will take the job of any worker who gets ideas about "work safety" and "unions".

Or if you want a more extreme case that's out of the time period, the Great Depression.

[toapat]

No, that was very much the case too during the Industrial Revolution. There's always unemployment, so there's always more workers. There's always people on the country or in the rookeries who will take the job of any worker who gets ideas about "work safety" and "unions".

but not what i was getting at, the fundamental underpinnings are extremely different between each even with the scenarios being so similar. In steampunk, a worker does their job for their family and for a better tomorrow that will never come no matter how horrible today was. A Cyberpunk worker works their job in order to survive to the even worse tomorrow, because at least a terrible existence you know how it will be is better then non-existence with no idea asto what comes next. Steampunk has Civilization marching on regardless of the people left behind, while leaving some hope for something better. Cyberpunk is Technology marching on while civilization is left to die a horrible death.

[Eldan]

Civilization went somewhere in our world. But our world wasn't Steampunk. It just provides some of the foundations for it.

Who's to say that our fictional steampunk world ever gets over the industrial age, to a more humane era? Maybe they never find antibiotics and vaccines and their equivalent of the Spanish flu or some other pox just totally takes the planet apart. Maybe world war I happens thirty years early, before working gasoline engines and radios, and just keeps raging on. Maybe air pollution just keeps getting worse and worse as the forests are cut down and more coal is mined.

It's a SciFi setting. It doesn't have to end like our world did. After all, our world never had giant steam-powered war machines, like we often see in Steampunk.

[runeghost]

Wenches in steam-corsets are way hotter than than chicks in cyber-tube tops!

While there have been excellent posts on the deeper aspects of themepunk, the above is a not insignificant portion of steampunks appeal for me. :smallbiggrin: (Also, polished brass is awesome.)

[Grinner]

I get the feeling that people have very different ideas of what steampunk is...What examples of steampunk would you all say are iconic?

I just saw Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky", and that struck me as being hard on the STEAM!punk end of the spectrum. In one of the first scenes of the movie, I was afraid that they were going to have an industrial accident, but for the most part, it was pretty innocuous. It was pretty cool how they demonstrated the technology, though.

[Aedilred]

I get the feeling that people have very different ideas of what steampunk is...What examples of steampunk would you all say are iconic?

In some ways I think a lot of the iconic material for the "steam" side of things is roughly contemporary: H.G. Wells and Jules Verne being prime examples. I suspect Victorian/Edwardian "visions of the future" contributed heavily to the aesthetic. Most of the modern steampunk media I've encountered has been comic-side or visual media based on them (LXG; Grandville; Girl Genius). Presumably Steampunk strove to be on the iconic list, albeit I'm not actually familiar with the content. While awful films, the LXG, Van Helsing, Wild Wild West and Sky Captain movies represented forays into the mainstream, I think, and probably helped popularise it if not originally define it. You could even make an argument for Back to the Future's later iterations (which also dabbled in the cyber- side of things).

I am far from a proper steampunk afficionado, though.

[Milo v3]

Sky Captain

I never got how Sky Captain counted as Steampunk when it's all electricity based and is ridiculously pulp. :smallconfused:

[Aedilred]

I never got how Sky Captain counted as Steampunk when it's all electricity based and is ridiculously pulp. :smallconfused:

I don't think pulp is a barrier. The electricity might be, although I remember the film maintaining a vague steampunk aesthetic even if the power source wasn't technically steam. Then again, my brain melted out of my ears about five minutes in and I've since done my best to smother any remaining memory of the experience, so I probably recall incorrectly.

[Grinner]

I never got how Sky Captain counted as Steampunk when it's all electricity based and is ridiculously pulp. :smallconfused:

If anything, I'd say it's because, in review of Wikipedia's list of steampunk works (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steampunk_works), steampunk seems to be a label defined more by aesthetic than technical requirements or theme. To paraphrase Randall Munroe, everything seems equally old-timey.

Or maybe the Steampunk Club is just desperate for membership.

Who knows?

[Milo v3]

If anything, I'd say it's because, in review of Wikipedia's list of steampunk works (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steampunk_works), steampunk seems to be a label defined more by aesthetic than technical requirements or theme. To paraphrase Randall Munroe, everything seems equally old-timey.

Or maybe the Steampunk Club is just desperate for membership.

Who knows?

..... Treasure planet is considered steampunk..... :smallconfused: :smalleek:

[warty goblin]

If anything, I'd say it's because, in review of Wikipedia's list of steampunk works (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steampunk_works), steampunk seems to be a label defined more by aesthetic than technical requirements or theme. To paraphrase Randall Munroe, everything seems equally old-timey.

Or maybe the Steampunk Club is just desperate for membership.

Who knows?

I can't say I thought Sky Captain looked steampunk. For one thing there seemed to be a real lack of, well, steam. Maybe I'm not up with the cool kids, but the absence of steam does seem probative. It also lacked a gear fetish. Really it was drawing aesthetically from either World War II era technology or what we think 1950's sci-fi looks like. Sorta like Fallout, but not terrible.

[Urpriest]

I can't say I thought Sky Captain looked steampunk. For one thing there seemed to be a real lack of, well, steam. Maybe I'm not up with the cool kids, but the absence of steam does seem probative. It also lacked a gear fetish. Really it was drawing aesthetically from either World War II era technology or what we think 1950's sci-fi looks like. Sorta like Fallout, but not terrible.

Dieselpunk then?

[warty goblin]

Dieselpunk then?

Not really. In part because I'm not overly enamored of sticking '-punk' on the end of a source of mechanical power and calling it a genre - look a knight on a horse! So horsepunk! But mostly because Sky Captain was in my opinion mostly rooted in classic pulp stories, and I generally find it a mistake to backdate modern ideas of genre onto things the predated them, or indeed to apply very modern genre labels and ideas to things that are deliberately playing in older waters. That just leads to nonsense like saying Beowulf is fantasy and thinking it means something, or a tacit assumption that what's interesting and worthwhile about any particular story is how it influenced the current ossification of genre as if these are fixed and inevitable, rather than a story written in its own time and context for that understanding of genre.

Which is not to say that an understanding of genre evolution is not a worthwhile investigation itself. However I think such an undertaking has to remain grounded in the realities that produced each particular work, and follow those through time, rather than start with the modern understanding of 'fantasy' as a universal and start slapping it willy-nilly on everything that contains dragons.

The tl;dr of which is that I probably read too much mid-twentieth century weird stuff.

[Rainbownaga]

Not really. In part because I'm not overly enamored of sticking '-punk' on the end of a source of mechanical power and calling it a genre - look a knight on a horse! So horsepunk!

Now Ive got the thought of a setting where literal horse-power is driven beyond it's logical maximum into sci-fi realm completely bypassing fossil fuels. Horse-mills and gears everywhere!

Edit: And horse-pulled main battle tanks; lots of those :)

[warty goblin]

Now Ive got the thought of a setting where literal horse-power is driven beyond it's logical maximum into sci-fi realm completely bypassing fossil fuels. Horse-mills and gears everywhere!

Edit: And horse-pulled main battle tanks; lots of those :)

Horse-drawn main battle tanks were actually more or less a thing, although they're more commonly called war wagons. But a big tough wagon with reinforced sides to shelter handgunners and crowsbowmen and a smallish cannon on top is functionally pretty much a tank. Thanks to pre-made breachloading charges, they could apparently have a pretty decent rate of fire as well.

The great thing about history is that it's always weirder than we give it credit for.

[Urpriest]

Yeah come to think on it Attack on Titan is basically horsepunk.

[toapat]

I don't think pulp is a barrier. The electricity might be, although I remember the film maintaining a vague steampunk aesthetic even if the power source wasn't technically steam. Then again, my brain melted out of my ears about five minutes in and I've since done my best to smother any remaining memory of the experience, so I probably recall incorrectly.

the closest to steampunk anything in Skycaptain is are the robots. Most of it otherwise is an equal blend of 50s Scifi, WW2 Tech, with 20s gangsters painted over an Indiana Jones movie. The submersible planes were badass though. Avengers does Helicarriers better

[GorinichSerpant]

Yeah come to think on it Attack on Titan is basically horsepunk.

I am tempted to sig this.

[Urpriest]

I am tempted to sig this.

Go ahead!

Granted, the amount of steam tech means it may technically be steampunk...but for the most part, it's emphatically "let's make a dystopian, high-tech society out of medieval europe", which seems like it should be the definition of horsepunk.