I admit shaking my head whenever I read the work of a reporter proclaiming the “death of steampunk,” thinking that someone has negligently ignored his or her bosses’ deadline and found themselves scrambling for topic.
Quite to the contrary, steampunk appears to have been enjoying a slow but steady climb in popularity throughout the past half decade or so, for many reasons.
Continue reading “A Steampunk Party”This article is outdated. Click here for a more recent take.
Reactions to the Victoriental issue of the Gatehouse Gazette (March 2010) have been pretty fierce. The opinions of those provoked by it may best be summarized by Ay-leen, who noted that using the phrase “Victorientalism” to imply a “positive, transcultural blend” of cultures is “misguided.”
Others have been less nuanced in their renunciations of what they assume to be our position.
Continue reading “In Defense of Victorientalism”As a genre, steampunk was hardly political. Cyberpunk, in its reverence of alienated hackers and all sorts of outcasts, might carry some political weight, but the very term “steampunk” was coined as a joke (by author K.W. Jeter in 1987) and never meant to describe the sort of movement we know today.
Because of its newly-acquired subculture status, steampunk has made bold fashion and design statements, but it struggles to find an ideology. While some recognize anarchist potential in putting the “punk” back in steampunk, others emphasize that steampunk is inherently apolitical. Others yet seek a middle way by interpreting the “punk” as a broad rejection of modern-day consumerism and the loss of individualism associated with twenty-first-century industrial society.
Continue reading “Steampunk Politics Anno 2010”
