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.
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