Jump to content

Steampunk and Retro-Futurism


Larry.

Recommended Posts

I thought I'd start this topic to see what people think of steampunk fiction (I separate this from the larger steampunk culture because some of the concerns addressed in steampunk fiction may run counter to other steampunk areas) and the idea of retro-futurism, or recreating a past and providing a future that is different from our own based on differences of technological development. I'm thinking of this in light of a lengthy review essay I posted on my blog this morning of three recent steampunk/retro-futuristic anthologies and am curious to see what others here have to say on the issue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never really been able to buy into alternate history or "retro-futuristic" fiction if I can't believe the premise is at least somewhat plausible as an alternative (aside from Rocketpunk, possibly for the same reason that I can enjoy fantasy novels). Steampunk, especially, tends to fall into an area where I have a hard time getting into such stories because I've studied industrialization and the rise of steam power as part of my Political Science education, and there's realistically no reason to avoid the switch to liquid fuels if they're available. Even if petroleum as we have now was super-scarce or non-existent, we'd probably invent liquid fuels from a different area (such as coal-to-liquid or animal/vegetable oils, the latter of which can fuel diesel engines).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great essay. I'll try to address it more directly later, but here are some surface level thoughts -

On the one hand, I agree there's more opportunity for steam punk to explore the ramifications of technology, colonialism/imperialism, and cultural shifts. I think there is an interesting question as to what the "punk" suffix buys you - Valente has talked about "mythpunk" before:

I've always considered the appending of -punk to whatever other word to indicate that X is not merely being explored or ruminated upon, but in some sense broken, harmed, and put back together again with safety pins and patches, a certain amount of anxiety, anger, and messy, difficult emotionality expressed in the direction of X. Additionally, I look for some of the aesthetic of punk—they may be three chords used by everyone, but if you shred them hard enough and scream loud enough they can become something new.

Given that definition it's hard not to think of steampunk as failing to live up to the punk part of it's own name if the only offering is Victorian era caricatures of other cultures. I'm not the best judge as to its failings, my steam punk knowledge is limited (Mieville, Valentine).

I do think the quote that starts your essay speaks to the need for a continual breaking down and reexamining that is probably healthy for all genre.

On the other hand, I'm not sure about the charge - not necessarily made by you but it is out there (Tidhar's Facism for Nice People)- that steampunk is a celebration/glorification of colonialism/imperialism any more than the Ramayana is a glorification of caste systems or a love of Heidegger being a celebration of Nazism.

It's an interesting question - can someone just like gears and the cultural mores? It's easier for me to digest someone saying "Can I just like that Victorian stuff?" than it is for me to hear "I just like the Antebellum South" so maybe it's my American status that blinds me as I am, if anything, someone who has immensely benefited from imperialism/colonialism despite being Indian.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's an interesting question - can someone just like gears and the cultural mores?

In think, on the surface - well-why-not, but more deeply, wrt the "punk" part of the equation as Valente lays it out: the presupossition the all punkery must be explicitly political. That is, the steam/diesel/rocket/clock/whatever-punk bit of a book lets you reconfigure the world in a new way. That might touch directly on race/gender/colonialism, but just the act of creating these new juxtapositions and situations, dragged out of real history and geography...well, it's fun.

Airships over skyscrapers, corseted vampire hunters (I think that's why Steampunk goes hand in had with the supernatural so often, rather than with SF), robots invading the Ottoman Empire...you can create a world that is bent, and the "punk" aesthetic lets that happen without needing tedious explanation or thinking through logical consequences or whatever. Thats inevitably a different effect than using a totally made up world, though those pop up as well.

I mean, if we go back to cyberpunk (lol, back to cyberpunk...nevermind.) what i've read of it is about attitude and strangeness, about how the world might end up configured different by a different technological paradigm - it's less about the technology itself. That is the point of most steampunk, i'd say, not to rigorously work through what would have happened if Babbage had built his computer or if Edison had been killed in a tragic fly-fishing accident - but shift things around, to create situations that are deliberately unreal, that never happened and never could have. What you do with them, well, thats where it gets explicitly political - but I don't find the bending frivolous or worthy of dismissal in itself.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think a big part of the appeal is that technology more advanced than what we have now is too limiting. In particular, information technology - the immediate accessibility of near-limitless amounts of information, being able to stay in constant real-time communication over any distance, etc. The real future is post-apocalyptic or a panopticon; if you want a fun story about cool gadgets, retro-futurism is the way to go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, I'll try to respond coherently to several good questions here, but time is limited:

I've never really been able to buy into alternate history or "retro-futuristic" fiction if I can't believe the premise is at least somewhat plausible as an alternative (aside from Rocketpunk, possibly for the same reason that I can enjoy fantasy novels). Steampunk, especially, tends to fall into an area where I have a hard time getting into such stories because I've studied industrialization and the rise of steam power as part of my Political Science education, and there's realistically no reason to avoid the switch to liquid fuels if they're available. Even if petroleum as we have now was super-scarce or non-existent, we'd probably invent liquid fuels from a different area (such as coal-to-liquid or animal/vegetable oils, the latter of which can fuel diesel engines).

A good percentage of my history coursework focused on the Industrial Age, so I know the feeling about it being implausible. Yet I find the notion to be intriguing precisely because it should at its heart involve not just a radically different technological "past," but also because some of the better works seem to be critiques on how our petroleum-based society has evolved. In that regard, steampunk stories that concentrate on exploring different socio-political realities intrigue me, even though I often get frustrated by the shallowness of many stories.

Great essay. I'll try to address it more directly later, but here are some surface level thoughts -

On the one hand, I agree there's more opportunity for steam punk to explore the ramifications of technology, colonialism/imperialism, and cultural shifts. I think there is an interesting question as to what the "punk" suffix buys you - Valente has talked about "mythpunk" before:

Given that definition it's hard not to think of steampunk as failing to live up to the punk part of it's own name if the only offering is Victorian era caricatures of other cultures. I'm not the best judge as to its failings, my steam punk knowledge is limited (Mieville, Valentine).

I do think the quote that starts your essay speaks to the need for a continual breaking down and reexamining that is probably healthy for all genre.

On the other hand, I'm not sure about the charge - not necessarily made by you but it is out there (Tidhar's Facism for Nice People)- that steampunk is a celebration/glorification of colonialism/imperialism any more than the Ramayana is a glorification of caste systems or a love of Heidegger being a celebration of Nazism.

It's an interesting question - can someone just like gears and the cultural mores? It's easier for me to digest someone saying "Can I just like that Victorian stuff?" than it is for me to hear "I just like the Antebellum South" so maybe it's my American status that blinds me as I am, if anything, someone who has immensely benefited from imperialism/colonialism despite being Indian.

I don't really agree with Tidhar's statement, as I think it's too broad of a charge. What I think is the case is that there's a shallowness to many steampunk stories that focus on the costumes (or trappings of such an imagined age, rather) at the expense of any meaningful social commentary. Yet many stories go further, which is part of my interest in seeing what is being produced outside the Anglo-American spheres. As for the "Antebellum South," very touchy topic with many Southerners such as myself, who have direct ancestors who were plantation/slave owners. The desire to modify things so those ancestors are not complete villains can be strong in such alt-histories, I suppose.

I have always been interested in steampunk (I'll give out my opinion of the article as soon as I can). I have some issues with the concept of steampunk and I think that the strangeness about it has little to do with history and a lot to do with actual technologies.

There are many varieties of steampunk. What I focused on were anthologies that focused more on various approaches to reconciling true history with imagined pasts/presents.

I think a big part of the appeal is that technology more advanced than what we have now is too limiting. In particular, information technology - the immediate accessibility of near-limitless amounts of information, being able to stay in constant real-time communication over any distance, etc. The real future is post-apocalyptic or a panopticon; if you want a fun story about cool gadgets, retro-futurism is the way to go.

I agree to a large point, although I think the "real future" could be more banal than either one of those extremes. But the optimism of the 1890s fin-de-siecle period is very attractive today, even knowing that less than a generation after 1899, World War I transformed life in very unexpected ways and shattered world-views.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it's a quite interesting setting.

You know, I'm a gamer (p&p only, some pbem), and there are a couple of roleplaying-games set in an steampunk environment - "Deadlands", "Castle Falkenstein", etc.

I liked it very much.

I still want to create my own steampunk outfit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don't like steampunk. It seems to me a excessively superficial alternate history sub-genre; discarding most of alternate history potential ( if not often realized in practice because of excessively revisionist/unimaginative/militaristic fans/narratives ). It displays some of it's vices and discards most of it's virtues, while at the same time being infected by 'comedy of manners' soap (which is actually never funny ah those language divergencies, isn't using the 'gay' adjective in the original meaning amusing? Hohoho), and other stuff like fetishism-pulp-SCIENCE!.

The point of calling it 'punk', may not resonate with people today, but i'm fairly sure that a real average 'middle-class' Victorian would be horrified at the mores (ours) on display on a steampunk book, even (or especially) if analyzed on a purely abstract mode. So i'm kinda inclined to letting that be.

Maybe the new Testament is Judeapunk?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...