Zebulon Vitruvius Pike (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dime_novel_hero) wrote2025-02-02 07:16 am
dime_novel_hero) wrote2025-02-02 07:16 am
The Punk in Steampunk
The slide of major social media platforms into wall-to-wall fascist propaganda and AI slop has caused me to shift my presence more and more to BlueSky (link). There I have been searching for a steampunk community. Because BlueSky is a mirror of the Twitter platform, it doesn’t do forums in the same way that, for example, Facebook does with groups that can, by a group’s name alone, be a place for people to coalesce around a given interest. BlueSky does have a few Starter Packs (link) and Feeds (link) but I am also doing more regular searches on the term “steampunk.”
The results of those searches have been varied. It will pick up steampunk writers, artists, and enthusiasts (not many). It will pick up the cosplayers (even fewer). It will find the artist-wanna-bes pumping out AI slop tagged with steampunk (instantly blocked). It finds the crypto-bros hawking their latest steampunk NFTs (blockety blocked).
It also finds a lot of people critiquing the genre. Not trolling, as you will get critiques in established forums, but people who are voicing genuine opinions.
The majority of these comments seem to me to come from the outside. Certainly people not in the steampunk community but also people who have not read a lot of steampunk. As if they saw “Wild Wild West” or did a search of “steampunk”, found the cosplayers, crypto-bros, and AI slop and, from that, formed an opinion of the entire genre.
Is that fair? Are they superficial and wrong or am I biased in my view because I am looking at it from the inside?
Introspection requires deconstruction.
What is Punk?
Punk is a “1970’s British working class youth subculture centered around an anti-establishment political ideology, music, fashion, and art scene.” Working class rebels. Anti-imperialists. Anti-capitalists. Socialists. Anarchists. Mostly expressed as a musical genre it seems, though that is me speaking as an outside observer. The most punk that I learned of was how the neo-nazis attempted to co-op the punk skinheads’ fashion, inserting themselves into punk as if it was theirs, and getting curb-stomped for it.
What is Cyberpunk?
Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner.” William Gibson’s “Neuromancer.” “Johnny Mnemonic.” “Masamune Shirow’s “Ghost in the Shell.” “The Matrix.” Cyberpunk is a literary genre that takes that working-class punk rebellion of the 70s into the future. Mega-corporations dominate society and subvert government to their will. Hackers. Cyborgs. Transhumanists. Anti-capitalists. Anarchists. The R. Talsorian role-playing game had its “Cyberpunk” setting in the far distant future of five years ago. At least, that is the more superficial impression given by the movies in the genre. Cyberpunk, before that, was a literary genre.
Steampunk Origins
K. W. Jeter, writing to Locus in 1979 introducing his novel “Morlock Nights” said;
And thus the genre of Steampunk was coined. No-one, not even the authors of the genre, gave much though to what Steampunk was specifically about, they certainly didn’t have a definition for it but, honestly, no genre of writing (or music, or art, or architecture) really starts with a definition. It flows organically out of the genre itself. Because it was punks, of a sort, writing the early Cyberpunk, the “punk” part of it was almost foundational and defined the genre. Jeter’s definition was almost a throwaway suggestion.
The Punks of Early Steampunk.
Jeter’s steampunk novel “Morlock Nights” was a sequel to H. G. Wells’ “The Time Machine.” The protagonist is a gentleman of the period, an associate of the Time Traveler, and the reincarnation of King Arthur. Jeter is a long time writer of anti-establishment fiction and “Morlock Nights” has its share of criticism of period social norms but, honestly, when your main character is a reincarnation of mythic royalty, your not saying punk to me.
This is not necessarily surprising or outside of type. Wells was a socialist and was very clearly criticizing capitalism in advancing the class divide into the far future where that division has rightfully evolved the working class to rulership, breeding the ignorant and otherwise useless owner class into literal cattle. But even then, his protagonist, an English gentleman, returns to the future to rebuild society with the former owner-class Eloi.
Jeter, like Wells, is “punk light.”
I’ll be honest, I have read Tim Powers’ “The Anubis Gates” but it was early on and so I don’t remember much of it, and I haven’t read James Blaylock’s “Homunculus” but, from the reviews and summaries, these foundations of the steampunk genre don’t seem very punk either, at least in the context of Working class rebels, anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, socialists, and anarchists.
That is not to say that there isn’t any punk at all in steampunk. Gail Carriger’s “Parasol Protectorate” series exists outside a lot of the 19th Century’s gender roles but it does so in building a world where those things are already more normal rather than having a narrative that tears down established but outdated mores.
Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” leans harder into a critique of the era, certainly more so than the movie adaptation.
A. J. Hartly’s “Steeplejack” features one of the few lowest-class protagonists in a steampunk fantasy word and has that class conflict as a central feature of the narrative.
I’m not going to sift through my entire bookshelf, but you get the idea. The critics are correct in that steampunk is not, by definition, very much punk. Victorian fantasies, as Jeter called them. No punk required, but only heavily implied by the name. But not being as punk as you would like doesn’t mean that it then glorifies colonialism. And while I am sure there are a few of those jingoistic steampunk screeds out there (written perhaps by the people who saw “Ashoka” and wondered when Star Wars had gone woke), and probably plenty of stories that are steampunk because they glued some gears on it, steampunk is probably like any and every science-fiction genera ever written in having a lot of different stories across the entire spectrum of qualities.
Science fiction (any fiction, really), when at its best, uses the fantastic setting to critique contemporary society in a way that gets past people’s contemporary biases.
The Gilded Age that came at the end of the 19th Century is a broad canvas that has many opportunities to critique the new Gilded Age we are being pushed into by a president who literally shits on a gilded toilet.
The Punks of the 19th Century
Socialists. Communists. Anarchists. Cowboy unionists. Luddites. Fenians. Suffragists. These were the people challenging the establishment and, honestly, not the people you see a lot of in steampunk. At least, not in the fiction.
Among the fans, though, this group of people seem well represented. I have been in a lot of different fandoms over the years and I have found the steampunk fans to be the most diverse, the most inclusive, and the most left-leaning of all of them. It does lead me to wonder then why the literary genre hasn’t become more punk at the urging of the fans.
A more punky steampunk, I think, might look more like the spaghetti westerns. The directors of many of the spaghetti westerns were Italian socialists. Having grown up with fascism, they were using the western genre to comment on the challenges their society was facing in post-war Italy. Their villains were robber barons, greedy bankers and railroad men, and corrupt governments dominating society and subverting the law to their will. Their heroes were people who had had enough.
Punks.
The results of those searches have been varied. It will pick up steampunk writers, artists, and enthusiasts (not many). It will pick up the cosplayers (even fewer). It will find the artist-wanna-bes pumping out AI slop tagged with steampunk (instantly blocked). It finds the crypto-bros hawking their latest steampunk NFTs (blockety blocked).
It also finds a lot of people critiquing the genre. Not trolling, as you will get critiques in established forums, but people who are voicing genuine opinions.
“Steampunk is like "what if all technology was just hot water and clocks but we get real horny with it"
“Victorian steampunk will always feel wrong to me, like someone getting real into the aesthetics of the Reagan era”
“I remember one time many years ago at a convention I nearly caused a small brawl. Simply for saying that Cyberpunk was a movement with style while Steampunk was just a style with no movement.”
“Steampunk is only counter-culture if you view it through the lens of most people being normal and going, "Here comes that Willy-Wonka-ass MF'er and his flying calliope boat."
“Steampunk manages to continually be just the most vapid and embarrassing of the 'punk' subgenres. Steampunk is just Victorian and Edwardian adventure stories with exaggerated technology, which are told from the perspective of the well off. Hell, worse than just an aesthetic, it usually ends up implicitly holding up outdated social structures. Hell, most of them don't even critique anything to begin with. Steampunk is *at best* just alt-history cyberpunk, but usually it's just "what if Victorian gentlemen were covered in cogs.”
“Victorian steampunk will always feel wrong to me, like someone getting real into the aesthetics of the Reagan era”
“I remember one time many years ago at a convention I nearly caused a small brawl. Simply for saying that Cyberpunk was a movement with style while Steampunk was just a style with no movement.”
“Steampunk is only counter-culture if you view it through the lens of most people being normal and going, "Here comes that Willy-Wonka-ass MF'er and his flying calliope boat."
“Steampunk manages to continually be just the most vapid and embarrassing of the 'punk' subgenres. Steampunk is just Victorian and Edwardian adventure stories with exaggerated technology, which are told from the perspective of the well off. Hell, worse than just an aesthetic, it usually ends up implicitly holding up outdated social structures. Hell, most of them don't even critique anything to begin with. Steampunk is *at best* just alt-history cyberpunk, but usually it's just "what if Victorian gentlemen were covered in cogs.”
The majority of these comments seem to me to come from the outside. Certainly people not in the steampunk community but also people who have not read a lot of steampunk. As if they saw “Wild Wild West” or did a search of “steampunk”, found the cosplayers, crypto-bros, and AI slop and, from that, formed an opinion of the entire genre.
Is that fair? Are they superficial and wrong or am I biased in my view because I am looking at it from the inside?
Introspection requires deconstruction.
What is Punk?
Punk is a “1970’s British working class youth subculture centered around an anti-establishment political ideology, music, fashion, and art scene.” Working class rebels. Anti-imperialists. Anti-capitalists. Socialists. Anarchists. Mostly expressed as a musical genre it seems, though that is me speaking as an outside observer. The most punk that I learned of was how the neo-nazis attempted to co-op the punk skinheads’ fashion, inserting themselves into punk as if it was theirs, and getting curb-stomped for it.
What is Cyberpunk?
Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner.” William Gibson’s “Neuromancer.” “Johnny Mnemonic.” “Masamune Shirow’s “Ghost in the Shell.” “The Matrix.” Cyberpunk is a literary genre that takes that working-class punk rebellion of the 70s into the future. Mega-corporations dominate society and subvert government to their will. Hackers. Cyborgs. Transhumanists. Anti-capitalists. Anarchists. The R. Talsorian role-playing game had its “Cyberpunk” setting in the far distant future of five years ago. At least, that is the more superficial impression given by the movies in the genre. Cyberpunk, before that, was a literary genre.
Steampunk Origins
K. W. Jeter, writing to Locus in 1979 introducing his novel “Morlock Nights” said;
“Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for Powers, Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like "steam-punks," perhaps. . . “
And thus the genre of Steampunk was coined. No-one, not even the authors of the genre, gave much though to what Steampunk was specifically about, they certainly didn’t have a definition for it but, honestly, no genre of writing (or music, or art, or architecture) really starts with a definition. It flows organically out of the genre itself. Because it was punks, of a sort, writing the early Cyberpunk, the “punk” part of it was almost foundational and defined the genre. Jeter’s definition was almost a throwaway suggestion.
The Punks of Early Steampunk.
Jeter’s steampunk novel “Morlock Nights” was a sequel to H. G. Wells’ “The Time Machine.” The protagonist is a gentleman of the period, an associate of the Time Traveler, and the reincarnation of King Arthur. Jeter is a long time writer of anti-establishment fiction and “Morlock Nights” has its share of criticism of period social norms but, honestly, when your main character is a reincarnation of mythic royalty, your not saying punk to me.
This is not necessarily surprising or outside of type. Wells was a socialist and was very clearly criticizing capitalism in advancing the class divide into the far future where that division has rightfully evolved the working class to rulership, breeding the ignorant and otherwise useless owner class into literal cattle. But even then, his protagonist, an English gentleman, returns to the future to rebuild society with the former owner-class Eloi.
Jeter, like Wells, is “punk light.”
I’ll be honest, I have read Tim Powers’ “The Anubis Gates” but it was early on and so I don’t remember much of it, and I haven’t read James Blaylock’s “Homunculus” but, from the reviews and summaries, these foundations of the steampunk genre don’t seem very punk either, at least in the context of Working class rebels, anti-imperialists, anti-capitalists, socialists, and anarchists.
That is not to say that there isn’t any punk at all in steampunk. Gail Carriger’s “Parasol Protectorate” series exists outside a lot of the 19th Century’s gender roles but it does so in building a world where those things are already more normal rather than having a narrative that tears down established but outdated mores.
Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill’s “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” leans harder into a critique of the era, certainly more so than the movie adaptation.
A. J. Hartly’s “Steeplejack” features one of the few lowest-class protagonists in a steampunk fantasy word and has that class conflict as a central feature of the narrative.
I’m not going to sift through my entire bookshelf, but you get the idea. The critics are correct in that steampunk is not, by definition, very much punk. Victorian fantasies, as Jeter called them. No punk required, but only heavily implied by the name. But not being as punk as you would like doesn’t mean that it then glorifies colonialism. And while I am sure there are a few of those jingoistic steampunk screeds out there (written perhaps by the people who saw “Ashoka” and wondered when Star Wars had gone woke), and probably plenty of stories that are steampunk because they glued some gears on it, steampunk is probably like any and every science-fiction genera ever written in having a lot of different stories across the entire spectrum of qualities.
Science fiction (any fiction, really), when at its best, uses the fantastic setting to critique contemporary society in a way that gets past people’s contemporary biases.
The Gilded Age that came at the end of the 19th Century is a broad canvas that has many opportunities to critique the new Gilded Age we are being pushed into by a president who literally shits on a gilded toilet.
The Punks of the 19th Century
Socialists. Communists. Anarchists. Cowboy unionists. Luddites. Fenians. Suffragists. These were the people challenging the establishment and, honestly, not the people you see a lot of in steampunk. At least, not in the fiction.
Among the fans, though, this group of people seem well represented. I have been in a lot of different fandoms over the years and I have found the steampunk fans to be the most diverse, the most inclusive, and the most left-leaning of all of them. It does lead me to wonder then why the literary genre hasn’t become more punk at the urging of the fans.
A more punky steampunk, I think, might look more like the spaghetti westerns. The directors of many of the spaghetti westerns were Italian socialists. Having grown up with fascism, they were using the western genre to comment on the challenges their society was facing in post-war Italy. Their villains were robber barons, greedy bankers and railroad men, and corrupt governments dominating society and subverting the law to their will. Their heroes were people who had had enough.
Punks.