One White Guy’s Take on “Multiculturalism” and Steampunk
Given the sorry state of inter-cultural relations in our world it isn’t any surprise that the Steampunk community also suffers from issues of intolerance and obliviousness. In general, I think that we do better than a lot of sub-cultures at celebrating difference and embracing diversity. But we also have to police ourselves far more since [...]
Steampunk Ladies & A Clockwork Vulture
I’ve recently had the pleasure of spending some time with an incredibly talented and lovely fashion designer from the Big City. She took a break from determining what the slave-factories in China were going to be producing to draw me a couple of wonderful Steampunk images. They just got back from the framers and are [...]
Making Steampunk Cool(er) Part Three – Is there Steampunk Music beyond Abney Park?
“Steampunks have a fantastic opportunity unique to modern sub-cultures to define our community’s music, rather than to inhabit a community defined by it.” Lest any diehard fans come try to boil my cat, let me make it clear that I love Abney Park as much as the next goth who’s discovered brown. “Dear Ophelia” [...]
Making Steampunk Cool(er) Part Two – What’s in a Name?
![Jeter's 1979 novel (here with a contemporary cover) was a science-fiction/fantasy tale set in 19th century England threatened by the eponymous creatures from The Time Machine. It was in describing it, along with the work of his colleagues Blaylock and Peters, that Jeter invented the term "Steampunk[s]."](/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/morlocknight-450x450.jpg "Morlock Night")
Names are powerful things. They provide foundations for castles and the bedrocks of empires. But that strength is seductive, and inevitably comes at a cost. At some point, instead of being empowering they become constricting – instead of describing reality they create it . . . and instead of liberation they offer enslavement. I was [...]
Making Steampunk Cool(er): Part One – Beyond Popularity Contests
I’m worried about Steampunk. Over the last few years I’ve watched Steampunk conventions grow and proliferate like fungi and Steampunk become a word that is greeted with nods of understanding rather than blank stares. But I worry that these signs of external good health obscure a potentially fatal, or at least disfiguring, disease. I’m worried that [...]
Why Steampunk (still) Matters
“There is nothing better than imagining other worlds . . . to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn’t yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.” Umberto Eco, Baudolino I administer one of the largest (virtual) communities of self-identified steampunks, Steampunk Facebook. [...]
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