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dime_novel_heroThe Huffington Post had an article by Paul Di Filippo entitles “5 Things You Didn't Know About Steampunk” which was of course, reposted on a number of steampunk forums. Before we get into the kerfuffle that resulted, lets' go through that list of five things:
#1 Victorian science fiction isn't steampunk.
#2 The term “steampunk” is a sneering putdown.
#3 I wrote a novella.
#4 The steampunk genre is not monolithic.
#5 Steampunk appropriates past fiction.
You can read the article for yourself but the first thing that I responded to was his assessment of steampunk being a putdown. Apparently, Di Filippo never read K. W. Jeter's own account of the creation of the term as more of a shrug of the shoulders as he fumbled about for a term to name the new genre he was writing. Steampunk was suggested not as some sneering putdown of cyberpunk but simply because cyberpunk was big and he thought of the steampunk name as a “tongue-in-cheek” variation.
My second response was to the “I wrote a novella” flag. Great there, Paul. You wrote in the genere when it was young and, since you were the first person to actually say that you were writing “steampunk” people mistakenly believed you invented the term. Something about that whole thing, while true and likely not known by many, somehow doesn't seem to measure up to the informative potential that I think the “5 things you didn't know” article should aspire to.
To me they seemed reasonable criticisms of the content. Other people on the forum didn't care. They immediately jumped to “another self appointed talking head telling us mere mortals what is and is not Steampunk,” and “nothing more than self serving ego, motivated, attempts to make themselves seem important in a genre that is metamorphosising into a sub-culture.”
Now, in the past I have credited the steampunk community as being more open and more welcoming than many other fandoms. In part I think it is because unlike other fandoms ('Star Trek" and "Star Wars" for example) steampunk lacks the single incoming vector of a movie or book series. People come into steampunk from scores of different directions and brings with it a very broad variety of perspectives. But, apparently, that open door can get slammed pretty hard when you step on someone else's idea of what steampunk is.
And it's a very fine line that Di Filippo unwittingly crossed.
So, I thought that I would perform a little research. What actually ARE the five things that people don't know about steampunk? Rather than relying on my own opinion for the list and getting in trouble as Paul Di Filippo seemed to have done, I though I would reach out to the community and see what they thought. What do people in general not know about steampunk but probably should? What do steampunks not know about their own fandom that they probably should?
I didn't leave it at that, though. I figured I should "prime the pump" with an example of one thing that I had noticed. A lot of steampunks I have spoken to didn't know anything about Victorian science fiction, the inspiration for their entire fandom. I might mention Mary Shelly, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Rive Burroughs and I will often get quizzical looks. The unfamiliarity extends even to the modern day. I'll mention K. W. Jeter and James Blaylock and get no response. (I'll be honest here, I haven't read either of those, either, but I know who they are.) I'll mention Cherie Priest and Scott Westerfeld and get the same lack of response. I'll cite “Girl Genius” and they've never heard of it. It's like a “Star Trek” mega-fan never having heard of Gene Roddenberry.
Well, apparently the bile levied against “self serving egos” such as Paul Di Filippo also extends to those asking a question and offering a sample answer from personal experience. In short order, I was accused of condescension, snobbery, "unmitigated arrogance", and the eminently anti-intellectual "delusional superiority."
Uh. . . .what?
OK. You know what? Now you've gotten me mad. These are the sorts of personal attacks I get from creationists, neo-confederates and other anti-intellectuals. You don't like steampunk defined? Let me give you a definition:
argumentum ad hominem, Suggesting that the person who is making the argument is biased, or predisposed to take a particular stance, and therefore, the argument is necessarily invalid.
I'll spell it out for you. . . your entire response was not to challenge what I said but to claim that I (and Paul Di Filippo) were wrong because of our own motivations. Motivations you know fuck all about. So, call us self serving, call us snobbish, call us arrogant, call us all sorts of names only to protect yourself from a perceived threat. Even when I was critical of Di Filippo's article, I merely thought he was wrong. Here, the conversation seemed to go more like this:
Question: “What is something you think people don't know about steampunk?”
Answer: “How dare you hate on my fandom. You are a horrible, selfish person bent on destroying the thing that I love.”
I expect this kind of shit from theocrats, not from the open and welcoming steampunks I thought I was amongst.
So, in the end my research revealed one thing about steampunk that I didn't know but probably should have: Steampunk fans can be just as vicious as other fans. Because they don't have a defined corpus that they can rail against in the form of “authenticity police”, anyone who dares to ask a question can be redefined as the enemy, threatening their precious and personal definition of steampunk.
So. . . what is something YOU think people don't know about steampunk?
#1 Victorian science fiction isn't steampunk.
#2 The term “steampunk” is a sneering putdown.
#3 I wrote a novella.
#4 The steampunk genre is not monolithic.
#5 Steampunk appropriates past fiction.
You can read the article for yourself but the first thing that I responded to was his assessment of steampunk being a putdown. Apparently, Di Filippo never read K. W. Jeter's own account of the creation of the term as more of a shrug of the shoulders as he fumbled about for a term to name the new genre he was writing. Steampunk was suggested not as some sneering putdown of cyberpunk but simply because cyberpunk was big and he thought of the steampunk name as a “tongue-in-cheek” variation.
My second response was to the “I wrote a novella” flag. Great there, Paul. You wrote in the genere when it was young and, since you were the first person to actually say that you were writing “steampunk” people mistakenly believed you invented the term. Something about that whole thing, while true and likely not known by many, somehow doesn't seem to measure up to the informative potential that I think the “5 things you didn't know” article should aspire to.
To me they seemed reasonable criticisms of the content. Other people on the forum didn't care. They immediately jumped to “another self appointed talking head telling us mere mortals what is and is not Steampunk,” and “nothing more than self serving ego, motivated, attempts to make themselves seem important in a genre that is metamorphosising into a sub-culture.”
Now, in the past I have credited the steampunk community as being more open and more welcoming than many other fandoms. In part I think it is because unlike other fandoms ('Star Trek" and "Star Wars" for example) steampunk lacks the single incoming vector of a movie or book series. People come into steampunk from scores of different directions and brings with it a very broad variety of perspectives. But, apparently, that open door can get slammed pretty hard when you step on someone else's idea of what steampunk is.
And it's a very fine line that Di Filippo unwittingly crossed.
So, I thought that I would perform a little research. What actually ARE the five things that people don't know about steampunk? Rather than relying on my own opinion for the list and getting in trouble as Paul Di Filippo seemed to have done, I though I would reach out to the community and see what they thought. What do people in general not know about steampunk but probably should? What do steampunks not know about their own fandom that they probably should?
I didn't leave it at that, though. I figured I should "prime the pump" with an example of one thing that I had noticed. A lot of steampunks I have spoken to didn't know anything about Victorian science fiction, the inspiration for their entire fandom. I might mention Mary Shelly, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Rive Burroughs and I will often get quizzical looks. The unfamiliarity extends even to the modern day. I'll mention K. W. Jeter and James Blaylock and get no response. (I'll be honest here, I haven't read either of those, either, but I know who they are.) I'll mention Cherie Priest and Scott Westerfeld and get the same lack of response. I'll cite “Girl Genius” and they've never heard of it. It's like a “Star Trek” mega-fan never having heard of Gene Roddenberry.
Well, apparently the bile levied against “self serving egos” such as Paul Di Filippo also extends to those asking a question and offering a sample answer from personal experience. In short order, I was accused of condescension, snobbery, "unmitigated arrogance", and the eminently anti-intellectual "delusional superiority."
Uh. . . .what?
OK. You know what? Now you've gotten me mad. These are the sorts of personal attacks I get from creationists, neo-confederates and other anti-intellectuals. You don't like steampunk defined? Let me give you a definition:
argumentum ad hominem, Suggesting that the person who is making the argument is biased, or predisposed to take a particular stance, and therefore, the argument is necessarily invalid.
I'll spell it out for you. . . your entire response was not to challenge what I said but to claim that I (and Paul Di Filippo) were wrong because of our own motivations. Motivations you know fuck all about. So, call us self serving, call us snobbish, call us arrogant, call us all sorts of names only to protect yourself from a perceived threat. Even when I was critical of Di Filippo's article, I merely thought he was wrong. Here, the conversation seemed to go more like this:
Question: “What is something you think people don't know about steampunk?”
Answer: “How dare you hate on my fandom. You are a horrible, selfish person bent on destroying the thing that I love.”
I expect this kind of shit from theocrats, not from the open and welcoming steampunks I thought I was amongst.
So, in the end my research revealed one thing about steampunk that I didn't know but probably should have: Steampunk fans can be just as vicious as other fans. Because they don't have a defined corpus that they can rail against in the form of “authenticity police”, anyone who dares to ask a question can be redefined as the enemy, threatening their precious and personal definition of steampunk.
So. . . what is something YOU think people don't know about steampunk?
