Steampunked!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 1, 2013

So this is what I did last weekend… though the photo is more steam than punk.

Salt City Steamfest Photos

Gotta admit… I had a blast. Last year I only went to a single evening of it, and was overwhelmed by an over-full convention and underpowered air conditioning at the convention hall. This year, sadly, it seemed like attendance was down a little – possibly because they moved to a larger venue (with adequate air conditioning!) quite a bit further north.

It was totally worth it.

I’m not much of a convention-goer. And, to be fair, I’ve not been overwhelmingly into Steampunk, either, though I do get a kick out of it as a genre of speculative fiction (and, of course, games). I really enjoy the wild costumes, sensibilities, and inventions that go along with the “steampunks” as well… the whole “Victorian era as it should have been,” including the “gonzo” fantasy / science fiction elements. Particularly when it is given an appropriately broad definition (and it didn’t seem to me that steampunk “purists” are all that common or popular amongst this kind of crowd…)

There was plenty to do at the convention. My oldest daughter got deeply involved in the live-action role-playing and storyline running throughout the weekend. I tended to attend panels on fiction and gaming, and some of the more academic panels. My wife liked to attend the workshops, particularly involving dancing and costuming. And she was one of the panelists, telling Victorian ghost stories the first night. My youngest did a bit of everything. There were concerts in the evening, authors to chat with, and plenty of merchants to browse. The people were pretty awesome and friendly, the costumes were fantastic, and I met with plenty of old and new friends. It was easy to have a good time.

(For those curious… the concert picture is Vernian Process, with Unwoman perfoming with them…)

So if you aren’t familiar with Steampunk, it’s… well, here’s the Wikipedia entry on it, which doesn’t do it justice. To go with the broader definition… it’s basically speculative fiction (that’s fantasy / sci-fi / supernatural / “weird” ) set in an era that is more-or-less centered around the Victorian and Edwardian period, generally around the mid 1800s to about World War I. While it’s typically rooted in British culture, it’s not necessarily so… and is often inclusive of American “Weird West” stories as well. As I usually explain it, it’s a subgenre that was accidentally created far in advance by Jules Verne, Mary Shelly, and H. G. Wells. Now the steampunks have jumped off from there and turned it into its own thing, a weird alternate-history thing from 100+ years ago.

From a gaming perspective, if you’ve played Bioshock: Infinite, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Guns of Icarus, Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness,  many of the older Final Fantasy titles, the Thief series, the Torchlight series, Dishonored, Wild Arms, or the Syberia series, then you have had some experience with the subgenre (or it’s close siblings, “Dieselpunk” and “Weird West”).

I figure it’s a fairly natural evolution of fantasy. I mean, by my understanding, the Arthurian legends kind of evolved in the medieval era as they applied their own culture and technology and fantasies onto a questionably historical figure of an earlier era. So the real King Arthur – if there was ever such a person – was probably some dark-age tribal chieftain. But the stories threw in all kinds of anachronisms, which is what we have today. Steampunk is sort of evolving the same way… we’re willfully tossing anachronisms and mythology of the modern era into fantasies of an era of the not quite so distant past.

And mainly, it’s just a lot of fun.

It’s that recency of the era that might make steampunk more than just a subgenre fad. Many people tire of medieval European style fantasy (I hope I never do!), and steampunk is an easy substitute. As that era is even better-remembered than medieval Europe, it provides an easy shortcut for world-building that doesn’t feel too alien to modern audiences. You don’t have to spend too much time explaining what a locomotive or an airship is, or describing clockwork mechanisms. Considering we nearly entered the age of computers nearly a hundred years earlier than we did (if only Charles Babbage had known to limit his scope!), the attribution of some of the elements of the information age aren’t quite as anachronistic as one might think they’d be set back in 1890 or so. And, as Arcanum showed, it can be a lot of fun to have a world populated by traditional fantasy races, monsters, and wizardry that has simply moved up a few hundred years in development to something analogous western society 100 or 150 years ago.

I suspect, due to its rising popularity, we’re going to see a lot more Steampunk-themed video games. At least I hope so.

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