What "steampunk" genre?
Ken Veto
China Mieville - Perdido Street Station. It is touted as an
excellent example of the steampunk genre. What is "Steampunk"?
TIA
The Shifter
Al Griffith
Steampunk is a mix of cyberage high-tech like computers with steam age
technology. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote a book called _The
Difference Engine_, which was based on the idea of the computer age beginning
in the mid-19th century. Since they were known as cyberpunk writers, the book
was labelled steampunk. There's steampunk with magic (like James Blaylock's
_Homunculus_) and steampunk without magic.
Al
John Pelan
wrote:
You'll get all kinds of definitions from folks here, but since I was
there when the term was coined I might as well point out that the term
was a joke, a riff on "splatterpunk" (which was also not meant to be
taken seriously, but folks do love labels).
The term is generally taken to mean SF/Fantasy set in the 19th century
ala INFERNAL DEVICES by K.W. Jeter, HOMUNCULOUS by James P. Blaylock,
THE STEAMPUNK TRILOGY by Paul DiFillipo, and similar works. China's
book is a very fine novel, but I certainly don't see how it could be
construed to be "Steampunk".
Cheers,
John
>
Matt Austern
It's not clear that the term means anything. I've heard it applied to
Perdido Street Station, The Difference Engine, Girl Genius, The Anubis
Gates, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. If you think those
works are similar in some nontrivial way, then you can use the word
"steampunk" to describe whatever it is you think they have in common.
Richard Shewmaker
Yow! Who called PSS steampunk? He deserves to have his entire body
thrashed until it's black and blue. Miéville does not write steampunk.
In his words, he writes "weird fiction." It's a combination of science
fiction, (dark) fantasy, horror.
David Bilek
Luckily, Mieville doesn't get to dictate what category we put his
fiction into any more than Harlan Ellison or Margaret Atwood do.
PSS is the poster-child for steampunk.
-David
Andrew Plotkin
>> I recently picked up and started reading the book by
>> China Mieville - Perdido Street Station. It is touted as an
>> excellent example of the steampunk genre. What is "Steampunk"?
> It's not clear that the term means anything. I've heard it applied to
> Perdido Street Station, The Difference Engine, Girl Genius, The Anubis
> Gates, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. If you think those
> works are similar in some nontrivial way
They are -- except for _The Anubis Gates_, which I wouldn't have
associated with the term "steampunk" if I hadn't read the previous
thread on the subject. It doesn't fit in the category in my view,
anyhow.
The similarity is stylistic -- mostly the style of the physical
milieu, not writing style. It's what the place feels like, what sort
of technology you see, how people dress. There's also a similarity of
attitude -- technology rah-rah, more and better, though not violating
the stylistic conventions. (Huge powerful computers which are
nevertheless made of brass clockwork. Immense fleets of
lighter-than-air dirigibles. Etc.)
I have no problem using a label to categorize fiction at a purely
stylistic, looks-like-feels-like level. I think that "cyberpunk" --
and, indeed, "science fiction" -- is a stylistic category in exactly
the same way. (A broader stylistic category in the case of "science
fiction", of course.)
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Frank
<ar...@takeawildguess.com> wrote:
>Ken Veto wrote:
>> I recently picked up and started reading the book by
>> China Mieville - Perdido Street Station. It is touted as an
>> excellent example of the steampunk genre. What is "Steampunk"?
>>
>> TIA
>> The Shifter
>
>Yow! Who called PSS steampunk?
John Clute, in a blurb on the back of the book.
Walter Jon Williams
news:ar9ef9$34e$6...@reader1.panix.com:
>>> I recently picked up and started reading the book by
>>> China Mieville - Perdido Street Station. It is touted as an
>>> excellent example of the steampunk genre. What is "Steampunk"?
>
A pity that Howard Waldrop, the author who invented steampunk, is not
being mentioned. If "Fin de Cycle'" is not a steampunk story, I know not
what steampunk is.
Matt Austern
I don't care what he writes, I just want to read more of it.
Richard Shewmaker
:-) -- I'm not saying a word.
Richard Shewmaker
Interesting. Took me a while to find this. It's not on the British hb;
it's on the American oversize paperback. I wonder if Clute actually read
the book -- I certainly would not line up Gibson, Sterling and Miéville
in any sort of comparison: I can't offhand think of anything I've read
which would connect #1 and #2 to #3. Certainly if he had, and he went by
the more standard definitions of steampunk, I don't think he would have
used that word (given what I've come to understand steampunk to be,
i.e., the Victorian thing, etc.). Maybe my view of the Victorian era is
off, but I'd expect something more along the lines of sections of
Moorcock's "The Dancers at the End of Time," a Sherlock Holmes-type
novel, or some of Moorcock's other works.
Weird fiction has been around for a long time -- search the Internet. I
don't know whether or not Miéville is using or redefining that term or
using it in a new way, although I'd suspect the first.
Charlie Stross
as <ar...@takeawildguess.com> declared:
>>>Yow! Who called PSS steampunk?
>>
>> John Clute, in a blurb on the back of the book.
>
> Interesting. Took me a while to find this. It's not on the British hb;
> it's on the American oversize paperback. I wonder if Clute actually read
> the book
Almost certainly he did. (Clute's breadth and depth of reading is somewhat
awe-inspiring.)
> -- I certainly would not line up Gibson, Sterling and Miéville
> in any sort of comparison: I can't offhand think of anything I've read
> which would connect #1 and #2 to #3.
I'd line them up -- and yes, there's a connection you seem to have missed:
the ur-London setting that imprints its rhythm and feel on all their
works. In fact, I can barely think of a steampunk novel that *isn't*
set largely in some version of London, albeit a distorted 19th century
vision of London through a glass smeared with engine soot. "The Difference
Engine" -- check. "Perdido Street Station" -- check. "Infernal Devices"
-- check. Remember, London was the hub of empire, largest city in the
world (for much of the century), a vast pulsating core of exotic, oily,
black new technologies crawling forth to cover the earth. I'd say that
this vision of the City is, if anything, more archetypical and definitive
of steampunk than the actual steam engines themselves (of which, you
will note, there are many in PSS -- including steam-powered robots, for
that matter).
> Certainly if he had, and he went by
> the more standard definitions of steampunk, I don't think he would have
> used that word (given what I've come to understand steampunk to be,
> i.e., the Victorian thing, etc.). Maybe my view of the Victorian era is
> off, but I'd expect something more along the lines of sections of
> Moorcock's "The Dancers at the End of Time," a Sherlock Holmes-type
> novel, or some of Moorcock's other works.
Your view of steampunk is slightly off -- Moorcock was doing a pastiche
of our own century's preconceptions of the Victorian era, and Sherlock
Holmes was straight crime fiction in a then-contemporary setting with
virtually no element of the fantastic. Steampunk, in contrast, is to the
first industrial revolution what cyberpunk was to the second industrial
revolution. The overt integration of Victoriana is secondary to the
vision of the industrial, mechanised, energetic sprawl expanding over
the green fields/wastelands beyond, and the characters who are adjusting
to the new order of machines rather than suffering from the ennui and
alienation of the typical cyberpunk protagonist.
(In other words, steampunk explores adjustment to an industrial culture
from the opposite direction to cyberpunk -- but has very much the same
agenda. Me, I'm trying to write dieselpunk ...)
-- Charlie
Richard Shewmaker
Charlie, hey, you're good. Thanks. This helped. More below.
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
I particularly liked this since I've been daydreaming about going to
Australia next year. :-)
Which newsreader does that? I've always wondered.
> as <ar...@takeawildguess.com> declared:
>
>>>>Yow! Who called PSS steampunk?
>>>
>>>John Clute, in a blurb on the back of the book.
>>
>>Interesting. Took me a while to find this. It's not on the British hb;
>>it's on the American oversize paperback. I wonder if Clute actually read
>>the book
>
> Almost certainly he did. (Clute's breadth and depth of reading is somewhat
> awe-inspiring.)
You sound like you know what you're talking about, so I'll moderate my
doubt.
>> -- I certainly would not line up Gibson, Sterling and Miéville
>>in any sort of comparison: I can't offhand think of anything I've read
>>which would connect #1 and #2 to #3.
>
> I'd line them up -- and yes, there's a connection you seem to have missed:
> the ur-London setting that imprints its rhythm and feel on all their
> works. In fact, I can barely think of a steampunk novel that *isn't*
> set largely in some version of London, albeit a distorted 19th century
> vision of London through a glass smeared with engine soot. "The Difference
> Engine" -- check. "Perdido Street Station" -- check. "Infernal Devices"
> -- check. Remember, London was the hub of empire, largest city in the
> world (for much of the century), a vast pulsating core of exotic, oily,
> black new technologies crawling forth to cover the earth. I'd say that
> this vision of the City is, if anything, more archetypical and definitive
> of steampunk than the actual steam engines themselves (of which, you
> will note, there are many in PSS -- including steam-powered robots, for
> that matter).
You're definitely right on with this. I don't much care for either
Gibson or Sterling (which is definitely part of my Angst at comparing
Miéville with them!) and have not read either in quite some time. I
don't like Sterling's writing style and could not "connect" to Gibson's
books (and I tried: I read "Neuromancer," "Mona Lisa Overdrive,"
"Virtual Light," and "Burning Chrome"). I'd be interested to know which
books have a London thing going on in them. If recent, maybe even try
one again. I don't recall anything like that, but like I said, I've not
tried to read anything by either lately and remember very little of what
I did read. I also confuse Saberhagen with Gibson (gasp) -- that is to
say, what little I retain -- because I started reading him at the same
time I started Gibson, and I was even less compelled to read S. than G.
>>Certainly if he had, and he went by
>>the more standard definitions of steampunk, I don't think he would have
>>used that word (given what I've come to understand steampunk to be,
>>i.e., the Victorian thing, etc.). Maybe my view of the Victorian era is
>>off, but I'd expect something more along the lines of sections of
>>Moorcock's "The Dancers at the End of Time," a Sherlock Holmes-type
>>novel, or some of Moorcock's other works.
>
> Your view of steampunk is slightly off -- Moorcock was doing a pastiche
> of our own century's preconceptions of the Victorian era, and Sherlock
> Holmes was straight crime fiction in a then-contemporary setting with
> virtually no element of the fantastic. Steampunk, in contrast, is to the
> first industrial revolution what cyberpunk was to the second industrial
> revolution. The overt integration of Victoriana is secondary to the
> vision of the industrial, mechanised, energetic sprawl expanding over
> the green fields/wastelands beyond, and the characters who are adjusting
> to the new order of machines rather than suffering from the ennui and
> alienation of the typical cyberpunk protagonist.
No doubt. Just one thing, I wasn't applying steampunk to Moorcock or
Holmes-type stuff! Sorry, I meant that I would expect steampunk to
contain Victorian elements like those I see in books like the ones I
mentioned. I've never read anything to which I thought steampunk would
apply. If Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" were changed to a
steam-driven-based technology, the stuffy British elements were expanded
upon, and lots of Victorian era "props" (I don't know, hats, walking
sticks, pocket watches with fobs, pipes, stuff like that), then I'd
finally have a book which I'd feel the label would fit. I'd need punks,
too, so Bud would be perfect (I liked him and was bummed when he got
wiped so early in the book -- although I seriously appreciated the way
he went). Take the above and lightly salt with "A Clockwork Orange" and
I'd be on a street corner yelling "Steampunk rules!" Of course, my take
is probably still way, way off.
I don't recall anything particularly Victorian in Miéville's PSS (not
discounting steam stuff but I don't associate that just with Victorian
England -- it's been all over the world), and I can't single out any
sort of punk element in any of his characters (w/comparison to
Stephenson's, Calder's or Ings', for examples). Granted, I may still not
have the definition down right, so PSS and "The Scar" might be textbook
examples of steampunk, but I'd need a bit more help to be convinced. :-)
> (In other words, steampunk explores adjustment to an industrial culture
> from the opposite direction to cyberpunk -- but has very much the same
> agenda. Me, I'm trying to write dieselpunk ...)
>
> -- Charlie
Yow. OK, what's dieselpunk? And what do I read (yours or someone else's)
to get a great example of it?
Darn, for that matter, is there a great example of steampunk? (I'll kill
myself if you tell me to re-read PSS.)
BTW, I'm on vacation right now or would never have the time to do all
this yacking. I'm having surgery Friday on a shoulder and suspect that
will cut me back for a while. Then in another week I'll be back to work.
Ah well.
Charlie Stross
>
> Which newsreader does that? I've always wondered.
> You're definitely right on with this. I don't much care for either
> Gibson or Sterling
> ... I'd be interested to know which
> books have a London thing going on in them.
Their collaboration, "The Difference Engine" (which is intended as
steampunk).
> Sorry, I meant that I would expect steampunk to
> contain Victorian elements like those I see in books like the ones I
> mentioned. I've never read anything to which I thought steampunk would
> apply. If Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" were changed to a
> steam-driven-based technology, the stuffy British elements were expanded
> upon, and lots of Victorian era "props"
> ... I'd need punks, too,
Hmm. I think that's too narrow and prescriptive a definition of steampunk
for most people, insofar as it rules out anything that isn't based inside
a Victorian novel; by this definition, Oliver Twist is steampunk!
> so Bud would be perfect (I liked him and was bummed when he got
> wiped so early in the book -- although I seriously appreciated the way
> he went).
Ahem: Bud was a classic cyberpunk novel protagonist -- I suspect the
author has having a little bit of fun, there. As someone (I think John
Shirley, but I may be wrong) pointed out in SF Eye some years ago, the
average cyberpunk protagonist couldn't convince anyone they could hack
their way into a microwave overn, much less a multinational corporation's
black labs. The point Stephenson was making is that wearing black leather
gear and carrying built-in weapons may look cool, but all it means is
you're a street punk and The Man is *always* going to be one jump ahead
of you.
> I don't recall anything particularly Victorian in Miéville's PSS (not
> discounting steam stuff but I don't associate that just with Victorian
> England -- it's been all over the world), and I can't single out any
> sort of punk element in any of his characters (w/comparison to
> Stephenson's, Calder's or Ings', for examples).
Victorianism is not the same as steampunk. PSS is set in a world with
strong echoes of the post-restoration age, that period in English
political life that stretched from about 1661 through to 1776. That's
when the bipolar political discourse we're familiar with today first
took shape, the Enlightenment flourished, and the roots of the industrial
revolution took hold. (The 19th century wasn't the start of the industrial
society by any means.) We have the academics (and hints of the invisible
college), the search for enlightenment by any means possible, flea-pits
and gangsters and dog-robbers familiar to anyone who's read "The Road to
Tyburn" or "The Newgate Chronicles", and a level of political oppression
and dissent heart-warmingly familiar from histories of the time. We even
have the prison hulks in the bay and the gangsters in the east end. New
Crobuzon _is_ London, festering in a very familiar way. Everything
*screams* London (especially if you've lived there).
> Yow. OK, what's dieselpunk? And what do I read (yours or someone else's)
> to get a great example of it?
Doesn't exist. Yet :) (When it does it will probably contain lots of
zeppelins ...)
> Darn, for that matter, is there a great example of steampunk? (I'll kill
> myself if you tell me to re-read PSS.)
The obligatory steampunk reading list:
Infernal Devices (K. W. Jeter)
The Difference Engine (Gibson and Sterling)
Perdido Street Station (China Mieville)
The Anubis Gates (Tim Powers) [debatable]
The Steampunk Trilogy (Paul diFilipo)
...
Anyone else want to contribute?
-- Charlie
J.B. Moreno
> Charlie Stross wrote:
>
> > Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>
> I particularly liked this since I've been daydreaming about going to
> Australia next year. :-)
>
> Which newsreader does that? I've always wondered.
He's using slrn, you might want to check out Dialog or Xnews:
<http://www.newsreaders.com/win/clients.html>
--
JBM
"Your depression will be added to my own" -- Marvin of Borg
Walter Jon Williams
>
> The obligatory steampunk reading list:
>
> Infernal Devices (K. W. Jeter)
> The Difference Engine (Gibson and Sterling)
> Perdido Street Station (China Mieville)
> The Anubis Gates (Tim Powers) [debatable]
> The Steampunk Trilogy (Paul diFilipo)
>
> ...
>
> Anyone else want to contribute?
Homunculus by James Blaylock is archetypical steampunk, and one of the
best. (In fact it's possible to make an argument [though I wouldn't,
myself] that unless a book mentions the Romantic poet William Ashbless,
it's not steampunk.) Blaylock also wrote books set in contemporary
California that have that weird reek of Victoriana, such as The Digging
Leviathan or The Last Coin.
I wonder why you consider Anubis Gates debatable? Because it's set
earlier than Victoria's reign, or because it gets London wrong? Certainly
it was the first steampunk novel to achieve wide public attention.
I also like Powers' The Stress of Her Regard, though again he gets a lot
of the British stuff wrong.
We have the following, all by Howard Waldrop
" . . . the World, as We Know't" (1977)
Green Brother (1982)
God's Hooks (1982)
What Makes Heironymous Run? (1985)
The Lions Are Asleep This Night (1986)
The Adventure of the Grinder's Whistle (1977)
Fin de Cycle (1990)
Heart of Whitenesse (don't have a date)
The dates demonstrate that Howard invented steampunk. He also invented
alternate history as a distinctive subgenre, but that's another topic.
Mike McKeown
produced the following intriguing effect:
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as <ar...@takeawildguess.com> declared:
>>
>> Which newsreader does that? I've always wondered.
>
> slrn. (On UNIX systems.)
>
Even sad old Outlook Express can do it, mind. Just install OE-Quotefix,
which in addition to letting you muck about with the attribution lines
also fixes a lot of other little "quirks" OE has, such as fixing its
broken .sig operation, rewrapping the quoted text properly, and moving
the cursor to the bottom of the message to discourage top-posting.
http://jump.to/oe-quotefix ... as recommended by a satisfied and very
lazy customer (I have to use MS products in the office, so can't be
bothered to rebuild my home PCs to use anything else). Watch out though,
that shortcut does now try to install the dreaded Gator spyware.
Remember kids, just say NO.
>
> The obligatory steampunk reading list:
>
> Infernal Devices (K. W. Jeter)
> The Difference Engine (Gibson and Sterling)
> Perdido Street Station (China Mieville)
> The Anubis Gates (Tim Powers) [debatable]
All pretty good stuff, debatable steampunk or no.
> The Steampunk Trilogy (Paul diFilipo)
I've just read his "A Year in the Linear City". Very distinctive, very
odd. Must look out for these, now.
> Anyone else want to contribute?
I'd love to, but I haven't written any obligatory steampunk ...
--
Mike M
www.xenocyte.org.uk. SF for people with a very short span of ...
Ooh look! An offog!
Mike McKeown
produced the following intriguing effect:
Harry Harrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!"(1970 ish? I know I
read it in the early seventies) (there was some naff US title for the
book as well, but I forget it) may well be considered as a precursor of
both steampunk and alternate-history-as-genre, though the mode's wrong
for steampunk and the history is, as usual with Harrison's attempts,
extraordinarily unbelievable.
Nix
> Ahem: Bud was a classic cyberpunk novel protagonist -- I suspect the
> author has having a little bit of fun, there.
Oh yes. I was cheering when he got cookie-cuttered; I *hate* cyberpunk
protagonists, implausible bastards that they are. (I mean, techies with
*street smarts*?! Not in this universe, boyo. At least, not commonly.)
> Victorianism is not the same as steampunk. PSS is set in a world with
> strong echoes of the post-restoration age, that period in English
> political life that stretched from about 1661 through to 1776. That's
... aaah, I *knew* I vaguely recognised the historical milieu, but the
Victorian age didn't feel right, nor did Regency London... I was looking
a little too late.
> We even
> have the prison hulks in the bay and the gangsters in the east end. New
> Crobuzon _is_ London, festering in a very familiar way. Everything
> *screams* London (especially if you've lived there).
Absolutely agreed. Hell, even the map makes it obvious. :)
One of PSS's greatest triumphs, to me, is that it gets me *liking* New
Crobuzon --- even though I live in London and despise it, and cities in
general. But PSS gets me *enjoying* a city many times worse than London
(well, except for the traffic).
>> Darn, for that matter, is there a great example of steampunk? (I'll kill
>> myself if you tell me to re-read PSS.)
If someone tried to stop me rereading it I think I'd kill *him*. :)
--
`I keep hearing about SF writers dying, but I never hear about SF
writers being born. So I guess eventually there'll be none left.'
-- Keith F. Lynch
Richard Horton
<mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> wrote:
>Harry Harrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!"(1970 ish? I know I
>read it in the early seventies) (there was some naff US title for the
>book as well, but I forget it) may well be considered as a precursor of
>both steampunk and alternate-history-as-genre, though the mode's wrong
>for steampunk and the history is, as usual with Harrison's attempts,
>extraordinarily unbelievable.
1972. The US book title was _Tunnel Through the Deeps_, which I have
to agree would qualify as "naff".
Predecessor to steampunk I would accept, but AH, no. _Pavane_ (quiet,
Dan, quiet! I know it's not STRICTLY SPEAKING AH, OK?) preceded it, as
well as _Bring the Jubilee_, and MacKinlay Kantor's thing, and all
those essays that are now called "counterfactual".
As for steampunk predecessors, Garrett's Lord Darcy stories kind of
fit -- not exactly, no, but they hint in that direction at any rate.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Tom Scudder
> >
> > The obligatory steampunk reading list:
> >
> > Infernal Devices (K. W. Jeter)
> > The Difference Engine (Gibson and Sterling)
> > Perdido Street Station (China Mieville)
> > The Anubis Gates (Tim Powers) [debatable]
> > The Steampunk Trilogy (Paul diFilipo)
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Anyone else want to contribute?
>
> Homunculus by James Blaylock is archetypical steampunk, and one of the
> best. (In fact it's possible to make an argument [though I wouldn't,
> myself] that unless a book mentions the Romantic poet William Ashbless,
> it's not steampunk.) Blaylock also wrote books set in contemporary
> California that have that weird reek of Victoriana, such as The Digging
> Leviathan or The Last Coin.
Second Blaylock for the nomination.
> I wonder why you consider Anubis Gates debatable? Because it's set
> earlier than Victoria's reign, or because it gets London wrong?
But it doesn't have the technological bent that most of steampunk does
- spinning wheels and meshing gears and venting steam and all that
good stuff. Which may not have been a part of the genre to begin with,
but which has accreted on since then.
Oh, the DINOTOPIA books have a sort of steam-punky atmosphere to them.
Charlie Stross
> I wonder why you consider Anubis Gates debatable? Because it's set
> earlier than Victoria's reign, or because it gets London wrong? Certainly
> it was the first steampunk novel to achieve wide public attention.
It's the magical-realist overtones -- same with The Stress of Her
Regard and On Stranger Shores. Not to say they aren't excellent
novels, but depending on where you draw the line steampunk may be
defined as an SFnal subtype, in which case they're outside the
border. (Or not. Depends on taste, I guess.)
> The dates demonstrate that Howard invented steampunk. He also invented
> alternate history as a distinctive subgenre, but that's another topic.
No arguments that he's an incredibly creative guy from this quarter.
-- Charlie
Andrew Plotkin
> Walter Jon Williams <walt...@thuntek.net> wrote in message news:<Xns92CD8E167317D...@198.59.136.3>...
>> I wonder why you consider Anubis Gates debatable? Because it's set
>> earlier than Victoria's reign, or because it gets London wrong?
> But it doesn't have the technological bent that most of steampunk does
> - spinning wheels and meshing gears and venting steam and all that
> good stuff.
Not only does it lack the stylistic emphasis on technological *bits*,
it lacks the thematic emphasis on technology being important. Magical
"technology" does not serve the same role -- magic is old, cranky,
degenerate, degenerates *you*, mostly forgotten, and probably soon to
be entirely lost.
Walter Jon Williams
>> a classic cyberpunk novel protagonist -- I suspect the author has
>> having a little bit of fun, there.
>
> Oh yes. I was cheering when he got cookie-cuttered; I *hate* cyberpunk
> protagonists, implausible bastards that they are. (I mean, techies with
> *street smarts*?! Not in this universe, boyo. At least, not commonly.)
>
I have to give Gibson immense credit for coming up with one of the great
commercial tactics of the era: Flatter the Digerati.
If you know ahead of time that your audience is composed largely of nerds,
you write books that tell them that Nerds are Cool. Nerds are Cooler than
Anybody. Nerds are Existential Heroes.
The nerd-readers ate up the flattery and made Gibson a superstar. And
others observed the success of the technique--- look at Wired magazine,
the whole premise of which is Nerds are Cooler than Anybody.
While it's legitimate to praise Stephenson for his implicit criticism of
this approach in Diamond Age, I think Stephenson's critique would have a
bit more legitimacy if, in Snow Crash, he hadn't turned his nerd hero into
a superstar pizza deliveryman with a James Bond car who also happened to
be an invincible Zen swordsman.
Walter Jon Williams
>> I wonder why you consider Anubis Gates debatable? Because it's set
>> earlier than Victoria's reign, or because it gets London wrong?
>> Certainly it was the first steampunk novel to achieve wide public
>> attention.
>
> It's the magical-realist overtones -- same with The Stress of Her
> Regard and On Stranger Shores. Not to say they aren't excellent
> novels, but depending on where you draw the line steampunk may be
> defined as an SFnal subtype, in which case they're outside the
> border. (Or not. Depends on taste, I guess.)
I can certainly see the point that steampunk novels should be expected to
deal with, er, steam, but that element appeared rather late in the
evolution of the genre, with (I think) The Difference Engine. If
steampunk is required to deal in some vital way with the tech, the
subgenre shrinks to just a few volumes. Just as if you insist that SF has
to deal in some significant way with tech, the genre shrinks amazingly.
>
> Harry Harrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!"(1970 ish? I know I
> read it in the early seventies) (there was some naff US title for the
> book as well, but I forget it) may well be considered as a precursor of
> both steampunk and alternate-history-as-genre, though the mode's wrong
> for steampunk and the history is, as usual with Harrison's attempts,
> extraordinarily unbelievable.
>
>
My argument wasn't that steampunk didn't have precursors, but that Howard
turned it into a vital subgenre in which authors could specialize. Just
as he also turned alternate history into a subgenre in which other others
are now making very good livings.
Andrew Plotkin
>>
>>> I wonder why you consider Anubis Gates debatable? Because it's set
>>> earlier than Victoria's reign, or because it gets London wrong?
>>> Certainly it was the first steampunk novel to achieve wide public
>>> attention.
>>
>> It's the magical-realist overtones -- same with The Stress of Her
>> Regard and On Stranger Shores. Not to say they aren't excellent
>> novels, but depending on where you draw the line steampunk may be
>> defined as an SFnal subtype, in which case they're outside the
>> border. (Or not. Depends on taste, I guess.)
> I can certainly see the point that steampunk novels should be expected to
> deal with, er, steam, but that element appeared rather late in the
> evolution of the genre, with (I think) The Difference Engine.
Surely _Infernal Devices_, four years earlier.
> If steampunk is required to deal in some vital way with the tech,
> the subgenre shrinks to just a few volumes. Just as if you insist
> that SF has to deal in some significant way with tech, the genre
> shrinks amazingly.
And if you eat turnips with prune sauce... never mind. I *don't*
insist that SF is significantly about technology, but I *do* think
that both steampunk and cyberpunk are. (And both subgenres *are* a lot
smaller than sci-fi in general.)
Mike McKeown
produced the following intriguing effect:
> <mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> Harry Harrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!"(1970 ish? I know I
>> read it in the early seventies) (there was some naff US title for the
>> book as well, but I forget it) may well be considered as a precursor
>> of both steampunk and alternate-history-as-genre, though the mode's
>> wrong for steampunk and the history is, as usual with Harrison's
>> attempts, extraordinarily unbelievable.
>
> 1972. The US book title was _Tunnel Through the Deeps_, which I have
> to agree would qualify as "naff".
>
> Predecessor to steampunk I would accept, but AH, no. _Pavane_ (quiet,
> Dan, quiet! I know it's not STRICTLY SPEAKING AH, OK?) preceded it, as
> well as _Bring the Jubilee_, and MacKinlay Kantor's thing, and all
> those essays that are now called "counterfactual".
A precursor to the AH genre, not the first. Counterfactuals, yes, but a
lot of the others kinda disqualify themselves in a way - I tend to
think of AH as being those stories that stay with one world they
describe - so _Bring the Jubilee_, while an excellent and early example,
fails the AH acid test by invoking time travel and resulting in our
world - same for the novellas making up Brunner's _Times Without Number_
(1962, it says on my, much later, remaindered Ace reprint) - _The Man in
the High Castle_ plays some of Dick's favourite games with the nature of
reality, and so may or may not be an AH - _Pavane_'s quirk you already
mentioned. The Harrison book is one of the first I can think of to play
it with a straight bat, and be a pure novel in its own timeline that
doesn't invoke parallel universes (alright, there's a seance but that
tiny glimpse of our own world is dismissed as sf, basically).
> As for steampunk predecessors, Garrett's Lord Darcy stories kind of
> fit -- not exactly, no, but they hint in that direction at any rate.
Yeah, but I'm uncomfortable with the whole magic thing being deemed
steampunk. Others clearly aren't - hence _Anubis Gates_, for example.
(Must track down Lord Darcy books - I've had a copy of _Murder and
Magic_ for 20 years and always meant to get the others, but this was in
the dark days before Internet and they used to be impossible to find
Over Here)
--
Mike M
www.xenocyte.org.uk. SF for people with a very short span of ...
Ooh look! A stobor!
Just one more reviewer at www.thealienonline.net.
Richard Horton
<mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> wrote:
>The Harrison book is one of the first I can think of to play
>it with a straight bat, and be a pure novel in its own timeline that
>doesn't invoke parallel universes (alright, there's a seance but that
>tiny glimpse of our own world is dismissed as sf, basically).
Ah I take your point now, and I should have read you more carefully.
("precursor to the AH-as-genre" is pretty well put, if I think about
it.)
Charlie Stross
> While it's legitimate to praise Stephenson for his implicit criticism of
> this approach in Diamond Age, I think Stephenson's critique would have a
> bit more legitimacy if, in Snow Crash, he hadn't turned his nerd hero into
> a superstar pizza deliveryman with a James Bond car who also happened to
> be an invincible Zen swordsman.
... half-Greek, half-Japanese, called Hiro Protagonist? (Like, he's the
protagonist of the novel and he's a hero, nudge nudge ... ah, forget it!)
I think Stephenson's approach to cyberpunk is so tongue-in-cheek he's in
danger of developing a fistula.
-- Charlie
Bill Snyder
? I thought he was half Negro, half Korean? Whatever, Stephenson
likes playing tricks with names. Bobby Shaftoe's out of an old
nursery rhyme; it may be A Clue that Enoch Root is named for one of
the Biblical long-lived patriarchs, and one who didn't physically die,
at that.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Chris Camfield
[snip snip snip]
>(Must track down Lord Darcy books - I've had a copy of _Murder and
>Magic_ for 20 years and always meant to get the others, but this was in
>the dark days before Internet and they used to be impossible to find
>Over Here)
I _think_ they're all in a Baen paperback called Lord Darcy that was published
this year. Should be available in the UK since it's listed at amazon.co.uk.
Chris
Martin Wisse
<cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
>Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>as <ar...@takeawildguess.com> declared:
>> Yow. OK, what's dieselpunk? And what do I read (yours or someone else's)
>> to get a great example of it?
>
>Doesn't exist. Yet :) (When it does it will probably contain lots of
>zeppelins ...)
Ahem. _Doc Sidhe_ could be called dieselpunk, though the fantasy
elements take a bit away from it.
Dieselpunk: zeppelins (cause zeppelins are cool) weird and very advanced
prop planes, Depression, gleaming cool thirties styled automobiles and
nazi analogues. Fringe politics in general, actually.
Martin Wisse
--
The Dutch aren't an advanced form of life. But if I've got to be tied
naked, covered in $100 bills and dropped in the middle of a city, I'd
rather it be Amsterdam than New York.
-William Davis, rasfw
Robert Sneddon
astra.demon.nl> writes
>
>Dieselpunk: zeppelins (cause zeppelins are cool) weird and very advanced
>prop planes, Depression, gleaming cool thirties styled automobiles and
>nazi analogues. Fringe politics in general, actually.
_Porco Rosso_ would fit right into that description.
--
Robert Sneddon nojay (at) nojay (dot) fsnet (dot) co (dot) uk
David Cowie
> In article <3de6c441....@news.demon.nl>, Martin Wisse <mwisse@ad-
> astra.demon.nl> writes
>>
>>Dieselpunk: zeppelins (cause zeppelins are cool) weird and very advanced
>>prop planes, Depression, gleaming cool thirties styled automobiles and
>>nazi analogues. Fringe politics in general, actually.
>
> _Porco Rosso_ would fit right into that description.
This also sounds like the PC game _Crimson Skies_.
If you're not familiar with it ... it's set in a balkanised 1930's USA,
with zeppelins and weird and very advanced prop planes. And sky pirates
flying said prop planes out of the zeppelins.
--
David Cowie david_cowie at lineone dot net
So high, so low, so many things to know.
David Cowie
<snippage ahoy!>
> Charlie Stross wrote:
>
>
>> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>
> Which newsreader does that? I've always wondered.
>
At a guess, most of them except for MS Outlook Express. And anything
built into a web browser.
Robert Sneddon
<david_co...@lineone.net> writes
>On Sun, 24 Nov 2002 16:21:06 +0000, Robert Sneddon wrote:
>
>> In article <3de6c441....@news.demon.nl>, Martin Wisse <mwisse@ad-
>> astra.demon.nl> writes
>>>
>>>Dieselpunk: zeppelins (cause zeppelins are cool) weird and very advanced
>>>prop planes, Depression, gleaming cool thirties styled automobiles and
>>>nazi analogues. Fringe politics in general, actually.
>>
>> _Porco Rosso_ would fit right into that description.
>
>This also sounds like the PC game _Crimson Skies_.
When I first saw that game I was immediately reminded of _The Crimson
Pig_.
William December Starr
Walter Jon Williams <walt...@thuntek.net> said:
> Homunculus by James Blaylock is archetypical steampunk, and one of
> the best. (In fact it's possible to make an argument [though I
> wouldn't, myself] that unless a book mentions the Romantic poet
> William Ashbless, it's not steampunk.) Blaylock also wrote books
> set in contemporary California that have that weird reek of
> Victoriana, such as The Digging Leviathan or The Last Coin.
Is _Homunculus_ the one that involves, as one of its minor bad guys,
a young man with a case of acne which he is constantly seeking to
cure? I know I read _a_ Blaylock Victorian-era book, and all I
remember about it are (1) that character and (2) the fact that I
couldn't recognize anything remotely human in any of the characters,
the latter of which has kept me off of Blaylock ever since.
-- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
Another Silly Rabbit
"Mike McKeown" <mi...@xenocyte.org.uk> wrote in message
news:arjmp1$jg122$1...@ID-73063.news.dfncis.de...
> Eddies in the space-time continuum, or Charlie Stross,
> produced the following intriguing effect:
> > Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> > as <ar...@takeawildguess.com> declared:
> >>
> >> Which newsreader does that? I've always wondered.
> >
> > slrn. (On UNIX systems.)
> >
>
> Even sad old Outlook Express can do it, mind. Just install OE-Quotefix,
> which in addition to letting you muck about with the attribution lines
> also fixes a lot of other little "quirks" OE has, such as fixing its
> broken .sig operation, rewrapping the quoted text properly, and moving
> the cursor to the bottom of the message to discourage top-posting.
> http://jump.to/oe-quotefix ... as recommended by a satisfied and very
> lazy customer (I have to use MS products in the office, so can't be
> bothered to rebuild my home PCs to use anything else). Watch out though,
> that shortcut does now try to install the dreaded Gator spyware.
> Remember kids, just say NO.
======================
OE-Quotefix won't install on my computer. Attempts cause a Runtime error
message. AdAware seems to work just fine though.
David K -------------
>
> >
> > The obligatory steampunk reading list:
> >
> > Infernal Devices (K. W. Jeter)
> > The Difference Engine (Gibson and Sterling)
> > Perdido Street Station (China Mieville)
> > The Anubis Gates (Tim Powers) [debatable]
>
> All pretty good stuff, debatable steampunk or no.
>
> > The Steampunk Trilogy (Paul diFilipo)
>
> I've just read his "A Year in the Linear City". Very distinctive, very
> odd. Must look out for these, now.
>
> > Anyone else want to contribute?
>
======================
Not me. I'm on another wavelength or different drugs or something than
those who consider The Anubis Gates (or The Last Coin) to be steampunk.
David K