How Steampunk Took Over the World

If you’ve been to a convention on any geek-related topic lately, you’ve probably noticed them. Girls in corsets brandishing clunky ray guns. Guys who look like they just stepped off their dirigible, goggles resting on their forehead. Sure, you’ll still see a stray Trekkie, Browncoat, or anime cosplayer, but it’s Steampunk that’s been the big up and comer in recent years. Now it looms over the geek landscape like a riveted Victorian spaceship, and people who used to make sense are throwing around terms like “retro-futurism” and trying to hook brass typewriter keyboards up to their computer. How did this happen?

It can be hard keeping up with trends in the Geek world. For some, Steampunk seems to have come out of nowhere. In reality, it’s been a long time coming. It started as an attempt to bring back the feel of the early “science fantasies” we all read growing up, tales of adventure by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. The classic Steampunk milieu is a sort of alternate Victorian era where some modern technologies became available earlier, or, alternatively, is the future as imagined by a Victorian. It has grown into not only a genre of literature and film, but also a style of dress, an aesthetic used in art and design, a full-fledged subculture, and even a philosophy.

Gibson and Sterling's "The Difference Engine" is credited with putting Steampunk on the map.

There were works in this genre before there was a name, but the term “Steampunk” was apparently coined by author K.W. Jeter in an attempt to name the “Victorian Romance” style of works by himself, Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and others in letter to SF Mag Locus in 1987. The term was a play on “Cyberpunk”, which had been popularized in the previous few years by William Gibson and others. Ironically, it would be Gibson himself who, co-writing with Bruce Sterling, would write Steampunk’s first break-out hit, 1990′s The Difference Engine. This award-winning novel imagines that Charles Babbage succeeded in his ambition to build a computer a hundred and fifty years early. Since then, the genre has amassed a large number of literary works, ranging from Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to Gail Carriger’s novels about “vampires, werewolves, and parasols” to Jay Lake’s imaginings of a world where the Earth is a giant clock-work created by God. Steampunk has also begun to filter into the mainstream consciousness through films and TV . Warehouse 13 uses Steampunk props by artisan Richard Nagy, and some have called last year’s Sherlock Holmes the first Steampunk blockbuster.

But how did what started out as a literary genre turn into a lifestyle? In just the past couple years, Steampunk has increasingly bled over into the real world. Pick almost any household object, and you can now buy a Steampunk version of it. Even our local Columbus farmer’s market periodically features a booth from a local group giving you instructions on how to Steampunk-ify various technological items.

Perhaps it is a reaction to the way technology has trended in recent years. Your iPhone fits in your pocket and can instantaneously perform a thousand different tasks from checking sports scores to recording video… but it is impossible to open even to change the battery. In a Steampunk world, technology feels handmade, and you can see the gears and hydraulics that make things work. No matter how advanced the computers in The Difference Engine become, they still run on punch-cards that have to be fed in by human beings. Some days in our world it feels like we’re about three months from humans becoming obsolete.

A Steampunk version of a cell phone.

In a way Steampunk is also the ultimate escape. It fulfills that wish of going back to a simpler, more romantic time, when men were adventurers with excellent horsemanship, women wore big poofy dresses and magnificent hats, and courtship was conducted Jane Austen-style, with a chaperone along for the ride. Of course, if you really went back to 1880, poverty would be rampant, there would be no indoor plumbing, and it would be almost impossible for women to own property. But in the Steampunk world, these ills have been fixed by the power of technology.  Steampunk has also always featured strong roles for women, leaving female fans with the ability to indulge their romantic side at the same time they play up their girl-powery butt kicking. Among the more popular female ensembles at online retailer Steampunk Emporium are “Egyptian Explorer”, “Treasure Seeker”, and my personal favorite, “Beguiling Horticulturalist”.

Steampunk is about a return to a time that was somehow more innocent and brawny simultaneously, to a time when the future was bright and shining instead of dominated by worries about war, limited resources, and overpopulation. It is no wonder that in a time when we have more technology than ever and yet it can often still feel like everything is going to hell, Steampunk has come into its own. It combines a relentless creative, can-do spirit with a resolved sense of anachronism and oddity. So if you haven’t run into Steampunk yet, you will soon. It’s taking over.

About Dan

Dan Joslyn grew up in Ohio but now lives in Las Vegas, NV with his lovely ginger girlfriend, Tiarra, where he works as an office monkey. He enjoys reviewing movies and television for the site, and over-analyzing such things. He may be the Chosen One… but he probably isn’t.

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