In late 2008, GCSociety launched its largest competition to date called “Steampunk: Myths and Legends”. There was $22,000 in prize money for artists to render traditional myths and legends in the steampunk style, “using elements of gears, springs, brass and steam power.”
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Darek Zabrocki is a concept artist from Poland who has worked on such projects as the video game Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate and the movie Maze Runner. There are also a few steam- and dieselpunk pieces among his personal artworks.
Continue reading “The Art of Darek Zabrocki”
It took quite a few years, but the long-awaited sequel to 2012’s Iron Sky has landed! (Pun intended.)
The sequel takes place 29 years after the events of the first movie (our review here), which you’d have to see to understand what’s happening in the second. Considering the first is an absolute dieselpunk classic, you absolutely should if you haven’t already!
I won’t go into the plot of this movie. Suffice to say that, like the first Iron Sky, it is utterly and completely out there and I’m here for it. Old villains, old heroes, new villains, new heroes. A total sarcastic approach to non-fictional personas, dieselpunk tinkering and utter madness: it’s Iron Sky alright.
Continue reading “Iron Sky: The Coming Race”
Priest has been out for a while, since 2011 in fact, but it has aged well enough and we haven’t reviewed it before. It’s also available on Netflix.
I haven’t read the original comic, so I can’t say in how far it’s an faithful adaptation. The movie, however, combines the vampire genre, Weird West and post-apocalyptic, giving it a unique take on what we’re used from either of those three.
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Rumors that the Nazis survived the fall of the Third Reich started to circulate almost as soon as the war in Europe ended in May 1945. There were stories that Adolf Hitler had escaped to Spain or South America. Some of his top lieutenants, notably Martin Bormann, were missing.
The speculation had some basis in reality. There really were efforts to smuggle Nazis out of Europe, but not on the scale Allied intelligence feared in the aftermath of the Second World War. Nor did anyone make serious preparations for a Fourth Reich.
Don’t tell diesel- and atompunk authors, who tend the exaggerate this history to spin wild tales of Nazi conspiracy.
Continue reading “Nazis Survive”
Seacombe Island is the first novel by Karen Garvin. The story follows the protagonist Tom Ashton in his misadventures on the mysterious eponymous island.
We meet Tom as a struggling baker who is neglecting his fiancée, Ellie. He loses both in a fire from which he only barely manages to escape himself. As people suspect him of having caused the fire, Tom turns to his friend, Sam Grey, for help, who puts him up with uncle Edward.
This uncle seems to be in shady business and it doesn’t take long for Tom to get involved. As he becomes a suspect in Ellie’s death, Edward and Sam persuade him to work for them on Seacombe Island.
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A dastardly and murderous plot, the Church is up to something, murder in Victorian London, (mad) science, automata and resurrection. That’s pretty much the theme of season 2 of The Frankenstein Chronicles. An excellent example of the darker side of Victorian storytelling.
It has finally landed on Netflix with its second and (as far as I know) final season.
Season 2 takes off where season 1 ended, with the resurrected man John Marlotte (Sean Benn) trying to solve the mystery that led to his untimely demise, aided and thwarted by a mix of recurring and new characters.
Continue reading “The Frankenstein Chronicles, Season 2”
It was Sunday morning and the first thing I read on Facebook was a call from someone in the steampunk community demanding that another person be “unfriended” by all of her followers. Along with this, she posted a screencap of a meme this terrible person had posted which said, “Share if you also want to see Hillary Clinton in jail.” It had the former secretary of state’s face photoshopped behind bars.
For one anti-Clinton meme, this steampunk woman demanded the deplatforming of someone I didn’t even known before this incident. One wrong meme in some circles and you’re out.
By that logic, I should have been “canceled” a long time ago. I’ve disliked Hillary Clinton since the early 1990s. But social media has made it much easier to scout out thoughtcrimes. Don’t belong to the right political party? Don’t hate politicians from the other side? Someone will screencap something you wrote, share it on their own page and demand that you be shunned.
We’ve crossed into a weird McCarthyism — Jenny McCarthyism — where if you’re not liberal enough you’ll be chased out of whatever fandom you’re in.
Continue reading “The Steampunk Political Guillotine Machine”
Didier Graffet is a steampunk artist who is quite well known in his native France but far less so in the English-speaking world. That ought to change; his paintings are gorgeous.
Continue reading “The Art of Didier Graffet”
Summer Geek Festival is a small, and with its second edition also relatively new, convention in Mons, Belgium.
It’s not a steampunk event, but it is so incredibly diverse that it does a really good job catering to the whole of the pop culture spectrum, from cosplay and geek stuff to Japanese fashion and music to steampunk — and pretty much everything else. Here are some steampunk photos for you to enjoy.
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