Author Topic: Discussing steampunk (was Re: What's good in Sci-Fi Lately?)  (Read 15210 times)

Anarquistador

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Also not crazy about Steampunk. While it can be fun, I think at bottom it's a negative critique of the failure of the Space Age and science in general. But that's beyond the scope of this thread.

That's my feeling about it too. I mean, I like it when it's done well, but taken as a trend it just seems like Sci-Fi writers have given up trying to paint visions of tomorrow, and have instead turned to alternate yesterdays. It's like speculative fiction has entered it Romantic phase. But yeah, probably beyond the scope of this thread.

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Talia

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Reply #1 on: January 04, 2012, 01:18:40 PM
Also not crazy about Steampunk. While it can be fun, I think at bottom it's a negative critique of the failure of the Space Age and science in general. But that's beyond the scope of this thread.

That's my feeling about it too. I mean, I like it when it's done well, but taken as a trend it just seems like Sci-Fi writers have given up trying to paint visions of tomorrow, and have instead turned to alternate yesterdays. It's like speculative fiction has entered it Romantic phase. But yeah, probably beyond the scope of this thread.

I completely and totally disagree. It's a subgenre,  nothing more and nothing less. It's hardly like everyone's stopped writing "regular" sci-fi and is only writing steampunk now. :P Plenty of "regular"/"mainstream" sci-fi has been and continues to be written. Some people (myself included) enjoy the genre though, and it's getting a larger amount of attention. That being considered, it is any surprise more writers want to give it a shot?

Rest assured, regular sci-fi isn't going anywhere (people have been saying sci-fi is dying, it's DYING!!! For at least 60 years).



Anarquistador

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Reply #2 on: January 04, 2012, 04:03:08 PM
It's the cranky old Trekkie in me. I want to believe the future is something to look forward to. It's good to know, though, that there are still people writing that kind of thing.

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eytanz

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Reply #3 on: January 04, 2012, 04:11:43 PM
I split the thread out, mostly because this is an interesting discussion and it's a shame if people hold out on their opinions because they don't want to derail the original thread.

I have rather a lot to say in response to Infinitemonkey's original claim - I think there's definitely something to it, but it's also very reductive - but I don't have the time right now to write it up properly. Hopefully, I'll be able to get to it tomorrow.



InfiniteMonkey

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Reply #4 on: January 04, 2012, 07:07:05 PM
Since this seems to be my fault, allow me to elaborate....  :)

I know a number of people in the publishing industry who think steampunk's an outgrowth of an aesthetics and costuming movement. (Cherie Priest said in a reading I was at that in the end, steampunk boils down to gears on hats. I think that was a joke). Me, I've always thought of it as an outgrowth of "The Difference Engine", so there's a lot of alternate history is steampunk, and alt-hist is a legitimate SF form. Certainly *I* enjoy it.

But, yeah, there's a LOT of bleed between fantasy and SF in steampunk (Hellloooo, Parasol Protectorate!). So calling it strictly SF is not exact.

However, this isn't my problem with steampunk. My problem is that buried inside it is the implicit criticism - almost a mocking - that says "See, the brass and steam of the Industrial Revolution didn't produce this fantastic world... who are you to think that the science of the Atomic Age would be any different?" What it reminds me of most are the comments of the creators of "The Venture Bros." (which I love) that their characters live in the midst of a monument to failure, failure of the Space Age.

Yeah, boys and girls, it's the year 2000, and nobody has flying cars or a ticket to a Moon colony. Let alone real space travel or, hell, a robot butler or an alien pal.

The irony is that (IMHO) the subgenre got kicked off by an alt-historical piece about the one place the future DID deliver - beyond almost anybody's dreams - the computer.

Now, I'm not saying that this criticism is foremost in the minds of all the writers, and certainly not the fans. But this subtext isn't terribly difficult to uncover.


It's hardly like everyone's stopped writing "regular" sci-fi and is only writing steampunk now.


Yeah, but its success heavily influences publishers. It's a simple return on investment calculation. If steampunk is selling, say, 5 times better than "standard" SF, the editors are not gonna be trawling the slushpile for genetic engineering or the latest epic space opera. This even worse with fantasy vs. SF (which is a whole DIFFERENT topic *again*), and since you can dress up steampunk as fantasy - or at least, "not the future" - along with its historical romance trappings, it sprints to the head of the line.

This is not theoretical (though possibly anecdotal) - I know writers who can't get "straight" SF published.

Now, that said, I don't *hate* steampunk. As with most things, if it's done well, I'll enjoy it. Even as I scoff at the idea that Victorian science could have pulled off genetic engineering, even if they *did* know about Mendel.



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Reply #5 on: January 04, 2012, 07:58:59 PM
My understanding is that steampunk actually originated a bit earlier than The Difference Engine - in the 80s by Tim Powers, James Blaylock, and K.W. Jeter - but yeah, the Gibson/Sterling novel was the big breakthrough.

I'm one of those weirdos who still thinks China Miéville's Bas Lag books are very much steampunk, despite the secondary world setting.

What steampunk books are we talking about here? I haven't read the majority of stuff out there (Parasol Protectorate, etc.) but I've read some of them (Priest's Boneshaker, Westerfeld's Leviathan). I'd be incredibly curious to hear what steampunk books are AWESOME. (Incidentally, I'm not sure Priest was joking about her definition of steampunk.)

I think the current trend of steampunk is all about fun. I mean, that's what sold Boneshaker. It has zeppelins and goggle and zombies OH MY! And I think that it's good to have a subset SF/F just shooting to have fun. However, the newer steampunk crop I've only enjoyed to varying degrees, and haven't loved any of it yet the way I did Miéville's. Maybe I'm waiting for the next steampunk book that has a lot of substance beneath the shiny brass and leather goggles?

InfiniteMonkey, I'm guessing these SF authors who can't sell straight SF that you know are writing novels or short fiction?


Anarquistador

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Reply #6 on: January 04, 2012, 09:29:00 PM
I'm with InfiniteMonkey on the implicit criticism aspect of steampunk. I've always been of the opinion that science fiction is more about the present than the future: that a sci-fi writer takes the hopes and concerns of his or her day, and magnifies them into a speculative - or cautionary - tale of a possible conclusion. So what does it say when a sci-fi writer looks backward? Or, I suppose more properly, SIDEWAYS? It's a little disheartening. It almost puts me in mind of those polemic 1970's sci-fi films, where everyone's pretty sure the future is going to suck, and Charlton Heston is our only hope.

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eytanz

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Reply #7 on: January 05, 2012, 12:11:29 AM
So.

Where I agree with InfiniteMonkey and Anarquistador is that there is a seed of dissatisfaction that underlies a lot of the move towards steampunk. But I don't think it is dissatisfaction with the failures of science. I think it is a dissatisfaction with science's success.

We live in a world that is known to us. Satellite imagery means that even those parts of the world that are largely inaccessible are known. And certainly, there are no unknown countries or even civilisations on Earth. In the twentieth century, mankind has successfully uncovered the secrets of our globe.

We know what awaits us in space. Not past the solar system - though that knowledge is expanding in a rapid way - but definitely, the solar system holds little surprises. There's plenty to learn, sure, but very little of it is dramatic. Indeed, one of the main reasons space exploration has mostly fizzled is because it stopped being exciting.

We are surrounded by computers that even twenty years ago were the stuff of SF. They are not mysterious or scary. Between my office and my flat, I have six computers (two laptops, two desktops, an iPod touch and a smartphone) which I use for work, entertainment, communication and learning. I can instantly communicate with practically any place on Earth. If I have a question whose answer I don't know, I can type a few words - heck, I can just say a few words to the right device - and I'll get an answer.

You can call this a failure because we haven't met a checklist of items that people half a century ago imagined their future will bring, but that's because their imagination was naive and impractical, not because our existence failed them. We don't have jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers, but that's because jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers are stupid. The reason I like steampunk is not because I yearn for them.

The reason I enjoy steampunk is because I yearn for a time in which there was still mystery. In which there was still much to be discovered. In which there were still unexplored continents (at least, unexplored by our society), where, if I boarded a trip to the moon or Mars, I wouldn't know what I'd find there. Steampunk harkens  to an era in which science was starting out - not because we're not happy with where it went, but because we're not happy with how mature it is. We miss the days when science was fresh.

Now, historical fiction is one thing - but it is limited as well, since the problem with going back in time is that you lose all the cool toys. Steampunk, essentially, is a playground - it is a domain where science is developed enough to give us whatever gadgets we want, yet at the same time is alien enough to be unknown to us, while also having a cool aesthetic.

Of course, every trend in SF is built on a dissatisfaction with the status quo. The Space-age SF literature in the 1950s and 60s was a clear response to the failures of the national movements of the late 19th century to bring peace and prosperity; instead, we got two world wars and a cold war to follow. The Earth suddenly felt crowded and dangerous, and people wanted to escape its confines. But at the same time, what we get out of literature depends on what we bring into it. Whether or not one sees a subtext of the failure of science in Steampunk depends a lot, I think, on how much one thinks science has failed to deliver.



InfiniteMonkey

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Reply #8 on: January 05, 2012, 03:50:07 AM
Dave:


I'm one of those weirdos who still thinks China Miéville's Bas Lag books are very much steampunk, despite the secondary world setting.


I would agree.


What steampunk books are we talking about here? I haven't read the majority of stuff out there (Parasol Protectorate, etc.) but I've read some of them (Priest's Boneshaker, Westerfeld's Leviathan). I'd be incredibly curious to hear what steampunk books are AWESOME. (Incidentally, I'm not sure Priest was joking about her definition of steampunk.)


Well, I can say that i/we have read Soulless (the first of the Parasol Protectorate - mostly included in "steampunk because of the Victorian setting and a dirigible; It's not perfect, IMHO), Priest's Boneshaker, Westerfeld's Leviathan, and Hodder's Spring-Heeled Jack (which is more than just steampunk, and which we also had problems with, but is rollicking fun in places)

For me, the best and most fun isn't text, and is also a secondary world setting - sort of - and that's Phil and Kaja Folgio's Girl Genius.


I think the current trend of steampunk is all about fun. I mean, that's what sold Boneshaker. It has zeppelins and goggle and zombies OH MY!


And yet, it's pretty grim throughout most of the book. Dark and foreboding. Plus it doesn't sound like you live in Seattle :-)


InfiniteMonkey, I'm guessing these SF authors who can't sell straight SF that you know are writing novels or short fiction?

Well, either, but I'm thinking about a novel that someone (not me) can't get published. Someone who can get published in fantasy. But, as I said, that's a completely different topic.



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Reply #9 on: January 05, 2012, 05:23:00 AM
Dave:


What steampunk books are we talking about here? I haven't read the majority of stuff out there (Parasol Protectorate, etc.) but I've read some of them (Priest's Boneshaker, Westerfeld's Leviathan). I'd be incredibly curious to hear what steampunk books are AWESOME. (Incidentally, I'm not sure Priest was joking about her definition of steampunk.)


Well, I can say that i/we have read Soulless (the first of the Parasol Protectorate - mostly included in "steampunk because of the Victorian setting and a dirigible; It's not perfect, IMHO), Priest's Boneshaker, Westerfeld's Leviathan, and Hodder's Spring-Heeled Jack (which is more than just steampunk, and which we also had problems with, but is rollicking fun in places)

For me, the best and most fun isn't text, and is also a secondary world setting - sort of - and that's Phil and Kaja Folgio's Girl Genius.


Cool, thanks. I really need to invest more time in Girl Genius. I dug Leviathan well-enough, and the illustrations were honestly worth the price of the book. But I was put off by the blatant cliffhanger ending. I'm curious about the Hodder and I hear a lot of people talking about Soulless, etc. I may check them out at some point.



I think the current trend of steampunk is all about fun. I mean, that's what sold Boneshaker. It has zeppelins and goggle and zombies OH MY!


And yet, it's pretty grim throughout most of the book. Dark and foreboding. Plus it doesn't sound like you live in Seattle :-)

Well, heh. I dig Seattle, but no. Don't live there :) The underground tour is awesome, though. But I dunno. I guess Boneshaker was supposed to be dark and foreboding, it just never felt that way to me. Like, compared to the Mieville books, or even some of Priest's other books (Four and Twenty Blackbirds, in particular). It was like a first person zombie shooter with gears and and goggles and hats.


InfiniteMonkey, I'm guessing these SF authors who can't sell straight SF that you know are writing novels or short fiction?

Well, either, but I'm thinking about a novel that someone (not me) can't get published. Someone who can get published in fantasy. But, as I said, that's a completely different topic.


Fair enough. I guess the question is whether said author can write steampunk  ;)


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Reply #10 on: January 05, 2012, 05:47:09 AM
We don't have jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers, but that's because jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers are stupid.

Flying cars are awesome. This is incontrovertible fact.

I have a framed print with a flying car in my living room. And regularly I lament my lack of one.

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Anarquistador

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Reply #11 on: January 05, 2012, 01:02:50 PM
We don't have jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers, but that's because jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers are stupid.

Flying cars are awesome. This is incontrovertible fact.

No they are not. Spend some time in Boston traffic, and you'll realize that not having a third dimension of idiocy to worry about it is a very good thing.

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Reply #12 on: January 05, 2012, 03:33:26 PM
We don't have jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers, but that's because jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers are stupid.

Flying cars are awesome. This is incontrovertible fact.

No they are not. Spend some time in Boston traffic, and you'll realize that not having a third dimension of idiocy to worry about it is a very good thing.

My trade is traffic, and I sill hold this belief. Before too long, we'll have a significant portion of driving tasks handled by computer.

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Devoted135

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Reply #13 on: January 05, 2012, 03:37:39 PM
So.

Where I agree with InfiniteMonkey and Anarquistador is that there is a seed of dissatisfaction that underlies a lot of the move towards steampunk. But I don't think it is dissatisfaction with the failures of science. I think it is a dissatisfaction with science's success.

<large snip>

You can call this a failure because we haven't met a checklist of items that people half a century ago imagined their future will bring, but that's because their imagination was naive and impractical, not because our existence failed them. We don't have jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers, but that's because jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers are stupid. The reason I like steampunk is not because I yearn for them.

I tend to agree with you here. You're right that what drove a lot of science fiction was an anticipation of what mankind would be able to discover in space, or even in the next continent over. As you rightly point out, a lot of this sense of possibility has been disenfranchised, essentially hamstringing science fiction's ability to project forward. However, I would add that directly coupled with that anticipation of what we could discover was the optimistic belief that Science would get us there, would be a force for good in the universe and generally not let us down.

It seems to me that people nowadays lack this optimism, replacing it with a cynicism that even if cool technologies are invented (assuming that they can miraculously find sufficient funding) they will simply be abused by corrupt corporations or governments. I observe an inherent distrust of business, government, and science that I don't believe was present 50, or even 20 years ago.

In this view of the future, jetpacks would be used to round up the occupy protesters and robot butlers would be used to dehumanize the care of our growing elderly population. And nanotechnology? Clearly that will be coupled with a viral vector that will wipe out 30-50% of the population (especially in Africa and India).* It's all worst-case, doomsday scenarios, which is a stark contrast from "venturing where no man has gone before!" So, I don't think that it is purely a dissatisfaction with science's success. Maybe it's not exactly that society thinks science has failed, but I do think it is general feeling of dissatisfaction with where we've arrived and are currently heading.



*I'm extrapolating to the point of being ridiculous, and in no way do I actually think this will happen. I hope. ::)




Anarquistador

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Reply #14 on: January 05, 2012, 04:23:22 PM
We don't have jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers, but that's because jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers are stupid.

Flying cars are awesome. This is incontrovertible fact.

No they are not. Spend some time in Boston traffic, and you'll realize that not having a third dimension of idiocy to worry about it is a very good thing.

My trade is traffic, and I sill hold this belief. Before too long, we'll have a significant portion of driving tasks handled by computer.

All hail thy Googly overlords!

Oh Dear God, NO! I don't want Google ruling the world!

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eytanz

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Reply #15 on: January 05, 2012, 04:29:26 PM
Calling flying cars stupid was perhaps overselling the point. The problem with flying cars is exactly that the traffic will be managable; but that the managing means that the flying car experience will be more or less equivalent to the current driving experience. They will have advantages - clearing up the real estate taken by roads, for example - but those will mostly be relatively mundane. Getting excited about a future of flying cars makes as much sense to me as getting excited about a future of electric cars, or a future of better washer/dryers.

Now, if one were the *only* person with a flying car, that would be awesome. But that's not the old SF dream.



Talia

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Reply #16 on: January 05, 2012, 05:19:27 PM
getting excited about a future of electric cars

I think that's kind of exciting myself. :P

I rather disagree, though. I think even were it micromanaged for safety concerns, flying would still be super-awesome, at least at first. I'm sure 200 years down the road or something when everyone became immune to the novelty, it'd be dull, but until then, wheee.

Because soaring through the air is way more awesome than trundling along a road. :P



eytanz

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Reply #17 on: January 05, 2012, 07:52:43 PM
Quote
Because soaring through the air is way more awesome than trundling along a road

Have you been in a plane lately? Flying is pretty much one of the worst ways to travel.

Now, I know that's not what you meant. But it demonstrates my point, which is that being in the air doesn't really add that much to an experience that's otherwise not that great or different. Flying cars sound cool to you because you haven't been in them. The novelty of flying in a car won't wear off in 200 years. It will wear off in 2 weeks.



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Reply #18 on: January 05, 2012, 08:00:45 PM
The old SF dream of flying cars wouldn't correlate to the current experience of driving. The American perspective of it built on the foundation of the old highway system of amazing road trips with roadside wonders. Pixar's "Cars" provides a decent analogy between what used to be the view of driving and what it is now.

Flying in a commercial airplane right now is more equivalent to the experience of riding a packed bus. This isn't nearly the same freedom as driving a car.

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Talia

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Reply #19 on: January 05, 2012, 08:03:41 PM
Quote
Because soaring through the air is way more awesome than trundling along a road

Have you been in a plane lately? Flying is pretty much one of the worst ways to travel.

Now, I know that's not what you meant. But it demonstrates my point, which is that being in the air doesn't really add that much to an experience that's otherwise not that great or different. Flying cars sound cool to you because you haven't been in them. The novelty of flying in a car won't wear off in 200 years. It will wear off in 2 weeks.

Well, I tend to disagree. I personally always find looking out the window of an airplane an amazing experience. The downside of flying is the TSA and all the pre-flight nonsense and hassle. (and annoying fellow passengers. Flying WITHOUT other passengers? Yes please!) I guess the amount of novelty would depend on the individual. Obviously you and I have very different opinions of flying. :P

Although it's probably fortunate it  doesn't look like flying cars are something we'll have to contend with in our lifetimes (I'm pretty sure initial growing pains of implementing any such system would include many casualties :P).



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Reply #20 on: January 05, 2012, 08:17:05 PM
I'm starting to worry I'll have to split out flying cars to their own thread. But just to say my personal last word on the subject; the dream of having a flying car that I can fly in total freedom and have amazing cross-country trips in is, indeed, wonderful. It's also a dream that assumes that flying cars will be a lot less ubiquitous than cars are now. In the 1950s, America's population was smaller, and most families had one car - and many had none. But the dream was that flying cars will replace cars. So, in 2012, we have to think what it would mean to replace cars, and that means that everything we find frustrating about our driving experience will be translated to our flying car experience.

I love driving, when I'm alone on an open road. I detest it when I'm crawling at 5 kph in the middle of traffic. The same will be true in the air.

Talia - as to the novelty of flying - with family on three continents, and a job that requires me to go to conferences, I average around 10 plane rides per year (5 round trips). I do enjoy looking out of the window, and I have seen some amazing sights (I once was flying over Greenland in a cloud free day, chasing the sunset. I have some amazing pictures taken out of the plane window from that trip, and they don't compare to the experience). But most plane trips are painful. If I used my flying car once a year on my trip to the Scottish highlands, I'd be excited about it. If I used it for my morning commute and to go to the supermarket, I stand by my earlier prediction.

So yeah, the dream of flying cars as a luxury item is a



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Reply #21 on: January 06, 2012, 01:39:24 AM
Flying cars? Pfft. I'm waiting for my own personal jetpack or anti-grav belt!! Seriously, for sheer freedom, what could beat flying without the aid of an enclosing machine?

As an aside, there's a great story involving anti-grav belts called Terminal Velocity by Bob Shaw. You may know him from the short story "Light of Other Days".


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Reply #22 on: January 06, 2012, 04:45:34 AM

You can call this a failure because we haven't met a checklist of items that people half a century ago imagined their future will bring, but that's because their imagination was naive and impractical, not because our existence failed them. We don't have jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers, but that's because jetpacks and flying cars and robot butlers are stupid. The reason I like steampunk is not because I yearn for them.


I don't really think it's because we don't have a list of toys. That was supposed to be shorthand for the bright, shiny Futurama that was sold at the World's Fairs (particularly 1939 and 1962) and the Jetsons (the beauty of the Jetsons of course was that things worked just as poorly in the future as they do now). And, well, the failure of the year 2000 to be The World of the Future and be pretty much like the years before it. And there's a part of me that wonders that there's a critique of that Wonderful Future in the alternate world of Steampunk.

I agree with the responders that feel part of the problem that these are not stories about the future. Unfortunately I also agree with the notion that this has to do with pessimism. And I can't argue with that. And the pessimism puzzles me. Honestly. We are so much safer as a world with the end of the Cold War. We are much more connected because of technology. OK, yeah, global warming, corporate domination, some things didn't work out all that well. But still...

I'm also not sure the falloff of space fiction is because we know what's in the Solar System, but more because we've stopped manned exploration. Now, this isn't a simple question - I think robot explorers are more efficient, but we're not really even doing that very aggressively. But we stopped. The SF geeks seemed to have forgotten that the important part of the "Space Race" was the Race part. We won. Why were we still running? We didn't really do it for exploration or settlement (not that those things are easy).

At bottom, it just seems to be a failure of nerve about the future.



eytanz

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Reply #23 on: January 06, 2012, 08:30:40 AM
At bottom, it just seems to be a failure of nerve about the future.

I do not disagree that a lot of the general Zeitgeist in speculative fiction these days is predicated on a pessimistic view of the future. But I think that singling out Steampunk as an indicator of this is odd. I mean, one of the other successful subgenres these days is post-apocalyptic SF - a genre which wears this pessimism on its sleeve, rather than as a deeply veiled subtext. Supernatural fantasy is also highly successful in nearly all its forms, a genre that even more than steampunk is about escapism and alternatives to reality; especially the current popularity of Urban and Romance novel fantasy that take place in alternate versions of our present.

So I don't disagree with your general premise; but I think it's an explanation of the whole state of the field, not a subtext that's special in any way to steampunk specifically - and, as I argue above, of all the sub-genres that are in fashion these days, steampunk is the one that arose as a response to how mundane technology has become, not a direct response to the lack of faith in the future. Would steampunk have arisen if there was still a commitment to future in space? I think there's a good chance it would have; but I can't deny that the current pessimism about the future is a fertile ground for it, because it left a gap in SF that needed to be filled with something.

To put it another way, I think you have cause and effect reversed - you point out earlier than old-fashioned SF has a hard time to be published, and claim that it's, at least partially, because of the popularity of steampunk. I say it's the other way round - people don't want to publish old fashioned optimisitc SF, and Steampunk, being the sub-genre that is among the least pessimistic without being overtly optimistic, is benefiting.



kibitzer

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Reply #24 on: January 06, 2012, 09:57:51 AM
Anti-grav belts, I say!!

You and your over-analysing.