The Mind of Bryan Lee Peterson

So a couple years before steampunk hit, I predicted it would be big, and my prediction and timing were just about perfect. I wasn’t at the time certain if it would be here to stay or not. I’m back to give you another prediction. We’ve had a great boom, but it’s about to wane. And this is a good thing.

I’m not saying it will wane immediately. We have a couple years at this rate, maybe three. After that, I think it will recede into yet another genre in a crowded field. The costuming trend will also fade at cons.

We simply got too saturated too quickly, and my prescient mind saw the slow descent today.

But here’s why it’s a good thing. In terms of writing, fewer books means better books. Cherie Priest will still be around, I think there’s a couple books left coming out in the Boneshaker universe, and who knows, may she’ll keep on with it. Scott Westerfield will keep up with his series, Girl Genius will continue to genius through her universe. Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine will be working on their series which I think will do well. But there’s been a lot of dreck. This will fade and thankfully so. Some of the second tier purveyors I saw failed because they got caught up in the aesthetic without recognizing or requiring substance. I think the Steampod Podcast died because every story I heard on it spent more time choosing a name for the featured device than actually worrying about plot, character, or sentence construction. I’ll be glad to see this level of steampunk go.

And costuming. There’s brilliant work out there, and it will survive. People will keep working on it, and keep showing up to cons with it. Eventually, though, we’ll lose the “make it in brown and brass and put some gears somewhere” crowd.

I’m rarely wrong on these things. It could be saved by a really brilliant movie, something good enough to appeal to a mass market and still really please the aficionado. I can’t foresee that.

So the secret is to find the next thing. Not sure yet. I hope it’s good horror, or good dark fantasy. We’ll see.

So here’s the first output on the Friday Flash from this week. A little revision and it might be a bit more historically accurate in terms of the dialects and details. Certainly there’s a big difference between post-Cromwell styles and dialects and Industrial revolution era dress and speech.

I left the theatre district when I’d picked enough coin for the day and the sun was setting for home, but never made it. The gent chasing me had fallen far behind, I’d ducked between the public house and a stable, place I knew well I could use to slip my hunter, came out into a safe and quiet street and it went all fast and blurred. I found myself here, still moving fast, but now in a rainy mist, and the street was bricked. I tried to stop, but slipped, fell landed flat on my back.

At first I wondered where the hell I’d gotten off to. I didn’t recognize the street, but then, when you’re running like that, sometimes you mistake a street for another, and who knows where you end up. Still, this didn’t look like anything I’d ever come across. I picked myself up and straightened my doublet.

“Oh no, no, no. This isn’t right.”

“I beg thy pardon, what street is this?”

“Maybe if I reverse the flow of…,”

“I say, what street is this?”

“No, no, that isn’t it, the reaction would be imbalanced.”

“Beg your pardon, master, but what street is this?”

“Tonbridge Street. Shh.”

Then he went back to what he was doing. I didn’t recognize his dress. He wore a long overcoat, and a hat of a fashion and construction I’d never seen before.

“Not any Tonbridge Street I’ve ever seen before.”

“That may be, but it is Tonbridge, I assure you. Now please, be quiet.”

“You did this.”

“Well I thought that much was obvious. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m trying to figure out what went wrong.”

Still, he muttered about, and every time he moved, yellow smoke puffed out from under that long coat.

“To invert the field, I’d have to-,” he said, but then he turned away, and I began to see the outline of something under that coat of his.

“What went wrong? Pray sir, please tell me what went wrong.”

“I believe the time field I created worked the wrong way.”

“For a commoner, sir, what do you mean?”

“Instead of sending me back in time, it pulled something from back in time to me. It worked backwards.”

“Something? You mean me? It pulled me?”

“Who is King?”

“Charles the second.”

“Then yes, you.”

“What do you mean, ‘back in time’?”

“From where you were, you’re now, uh, roughly two hundred fifteen years in the future.”

“Well, how do you send me back.”

“Back? I don’t know. This didn’t exactly work as I had planned. Maybe after some experimentation, I can do it, I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

“Yes, well, good day.”

“Wait, sir. Um, what do I do?”

“Do? It’s a wonderful world. Explore it. You can make something of yourself now. Just stay away from the fog. Not good for you.”

Times like this, survival instincts kick in. I was about to ply my trade, if you will, man just starting off’s got to have something to start off with, when he reached into his pocket, handed me two coins.

“Here you go. For your trouble. Doesn’t go as far as it once did, now. On with you, then, and mind you, don’t stay out in the fog. No good for you.”

“Ey, where’s that leave me?”

He turned around again, “That leaves you, er, now, I guess.” And he kept on walking, little puffs of yellow smoke coming from under that coat of his.

I have a new pair of goggles up at my etsy shop, The Workshop at the Haunted Schoolhouse.

I have a sort of love/hate relationship with steampunk. About five years ago, I told Kirin that Steampunk was about to get really big, to which she replied, “What’s steampunk?” I’ve always liked the aesthetic. I remember being in grammar school and watching Wild Wild West. My parents had never heard of it. I loved moments of it I’d get in movies, but I didn’t have the words for it. I called it “Victorian Technology.” When I predicted Steampunk would get big in a year or so, I was dead on. I just wasn’t sure if it was going to stay or burn out after a year or so. The term is about 20 years old now, so it’s coming of age, getting drunk at college and causing trouble, so I guess it will probably be around for good.

Like any college student’s art, there’s a certain exuberance to it, but also a certain inexperience and unfinished edge to a lot of it. It hasn’t matured into an art of refined skill. I’m a crafter and a writer, and a musician, and it is rare for so many ends of a genre to blossom in any so strongly as steampunk has. It’s practically an invasive species, and that’s what makes me fear it will burn itself out.

Let’s start with the craft end of it. There’s some amazing work out there. I mean, staggering in the skill and variety of it. It has branched into its own subgenres, the more factual Neo-Edwardians, the more scifi fantasy end which embraces the lineage of H.G. Wells and the current trends towards sky pirates and dirigibles. Either is good with me.

The problem is that the genre and style have become so big and so fast, everybody is trying to cash in. Major design houses are making fashion for the mainstream in the style of the Edwardians. It may not have jumped the shark yet, but we’re beginning the run. The crafters have so far held the genre hostage, and rightfully so, it thrives on individual creation. Much like the scientists of the day, steampunk gets much of its vitality from one-upsmanship. But the growth also means many people are trying to paint anything brass and call it steampunk. This is to be expected, but it is disappointing.

Turning to music, I think it is a shame that one of the biggest bands that the genre has is getting by on aesthetics, and not music. Really, too much of the music is obviously a bad goth band that, like the joke, found brown. There are some fun bands out there, bands that went back and found some bawdy stylings to emulate, but you know, I’ve heard the Squirrel Nut Zippers, and they did it better. I have been hoping for something more, something actually steamy, and punky, maybe with industrial instruments made actually from brass.

But the literature is really where I’m most disappointed. There’s some brilliant work out there. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine. Paul di Filippo’s 1995 trilogy. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (I like the movie better than most, though it is quite flawed). And there’s good new fiction, The Dream of Perpetual Motion, Steamboy.

Then there’s the people trying to break into writing steampunk. The Escape Pod group of podcasts were pretty good. Steampod died. Why? I never heard a story on it that put character ahead of making a very long and improbable name for a machine. So many of the young practitioners are caught up in the trappings, style over substance never works, and so I try hard to like it, but until this genre gets out of college and finds a real job, it’s just not happening.

I have a steampunk book in my head, and it has this problem. I have a lot of cute lines, and a plot and some really good characters, but I haven’t begun to write it, because I haven’t quite found the reason for it. I haven’t found what it says about us, it’s a story without meaning, and I won’t write it until it finds its deeper layers. Until then, you’ll just have to wait. Guess I’ll have to work on some music too.