The 1993 computer game Transarctica introduced us to a post-apocalyptic world in which huge armored trains were the only way to safely travel between remote human settlements.
The game wasn’t much of a success — one reviewer called it “intentionally annoying” — but the setting proved to be an inspiration.
Continue reading “Big Trains in the Snow: From Transarctica to Snowpiercer”Dieselpunk fans will be familiar with the 2012 movie Iron Sky, which shows how a group of Nazis fled to the Moon after Hitler’s defeat in 1945 and return to Earth with flying discs and a huge zeppelin-like spaceship.
Not all may be aware that the fantasy of a German Moon base precedes this film.
Continue reading “Nazis on the Moon”During World War II, German scientists synthesized anabolic steriods and experimented on concentration camp inmates and prisoners of war in an attempt to treat chronic wasting. Experiments were allegedly conducted on German soldiers to increase their aggression and agility, however, there is no evidence whatsoever that something like an Übersoldier (a play on the Nazis’ idealized Übermensch) was ever in the making — let alone created.
Yet “supersoldiers” keep appearing in video games.
Continue reading “Dieselpunk Games’ Obsession with Nazi Supersoldiers”Soon after the war in Europe ended, rumors began to circulate that part of Germany’s military and scientific establishment had fled the fatherland before Soviet troops could conquer Berlin. Stories of missing U-boats and forbidden aviation technologies fueled wild theories of Nazi redoubts and the imminent resurrection of the Third Reich. A huge United States Navy operation in the Antarctic in 1946 seemed only to confirm the worst of fears — that the Nazis’ reign of terror had been able to survive underground near the South Pole.
Continue reading “Nazis in Antarctica”If you hang around the dieselpunk crowd long enough, sooner or later you will hear someone retelling an experience about them being called a fascist or Nazi sympathizer because of the way they dress.
Granted, it seems if you are into dieselpunk, you can only go one of two ways: Either you use the Jazz-era American style (civilian and military) or you play with German Interbellum designs, in which case there seems to be no nonuniform option whatsoever (which does not make sense in itself, mind you).
Continue reading “Dieselpunk and the Shadow of Nazi Aesthetics”Gerry Canavan has assembled a great collection at his blog of depictions of New York’s Statue of Liberty in various states of decay. We spot vintage pulp covers and posters of modern-day films such as The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and Cloverfield (2007) as well as imagery from comics and video games like Red Alert 2 (2000).
Continue reading “Lady Liberty in Ruins”This article is outdated. Click here for a more recent take.
With the increasing contact with the East and its ensuing colonization, people in the West became fascinated by this strange new world. For centuries, adventurers, novelists and romantics had been interested in the lands beyond the horizon. Europe had all been explored and people became more and more familiar with the world they lived in. The Orient was still a realm of mystery, inhabited by alien people, exotic and sometimes cruel, with customs that Enlightened Europeans thought of as barbaric; a place where time had stood still.
An age-long Orientalist tradition of those who studied the East has in our times been criticized for its presumed bias and even racism. In the realm of steampunk, however, we can safely recreate the Orient as it was described and depicted by nineteenth-century authors and artists who might never have seen it. All the myths and miracles of the East that enchanted the Victorians can come true.
Continue reading “Introduction to Victorientalism”
