Just walked a few miles in the Autumn sunshine around Stanley Ferry marina and canal with Missus Moonbase. Very pleasant. There were lots of beautiful houseboats moored up, which inevitabley make you think of a new life away from the crowds slowly meandering along still waterways. Will this canal romance last another hundred years or will new techno networks fill our dreams. In 1981 the great Japanese Sci Fi artist Shigeru Komatsuzaki was dreaming about trains travellling the 93 millions miles on his moonline!
Ten years before Harry Harrison spanned that similar void, the 'Pond', with his undersea railway in 'A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah' painted here on the cover for Analog in 1972 by the great Kelly Freas. I love the fish welders and the T in a Circle tunnel! Apparently the story can be seen as one of the roots of steampunk. Anyone know what that is in simple english?
Funny, the word steampunk makes me think of steam-driven things and tank girl. I used to listen to Steamhammer and String Driven Thing, when I was a headbanger but I digress. Can regular space vehicles be steamed or punked-up 'Pimp My Ride' style? Steampimped even! How about the standard Lunar Climber, in this case the Paramount Astro Car pictured here below?
Maybe flatten the wheels, add a drill-bit
and a cool blue paint job....
Or maybe inflate the tyres, beef-up the body
and stick some guns at each end
...eh voila, SWORDpunk! A whole new sub-genre! Needs a definition and it's first short story! Anyone?
Steampunk :- science fiction utilising victorian era technology e.g. rivets not welds,coal not petrol and gears not microprocessors in computers ( Disney's Nautilus is a steampunk submarine, Have a look at the roleplaying game 'Space 1889' for some teriffic concepts and imagery Woodsy! Oh and when you were a headbanger? just remember the old saying...."If it's too loud, you're too old!"
ReplyDeleteHey Steve, that's fascinating. Did Disney know it was a steampunk ship? Your definition makes me think of Hell Boy but that was WWII onwards. What about The Time Machine by HG Wells or the First Men in the Moon [ on TV as a mini-series soon with Mark Gatiss]?
ReplyDeletethink the Nautilus pre-dates the concept of Steampunk by a wide margin.
ReplyDeleteThink were looking at 'Swordpimped' here!
It's an interesting thought, applying a modern term like steampunk retrospectively to the Nautilus etc. I suppose we do it all the time when classifying things. I understand there are sub-genres: Clockpunk for clockwork technology, Wild Westpunk [The Wild Wild West], Atompunk for the atomic age leading up to the end of WWII [HellBoy?] and Deiselpunk, though this strikes me as very close to the internal combustion engine, which is the opposite of steampunk! I'm all steamed up! Space 1889 is amazing, Steve's right! All we need now is a Steam Ferry rather than a Nuclear one!
ReplyDeleteTrue enough about the Nautilus Wotan, but I really meant it as a visible proof of concept-as Woodsy said it was indeed a retroactive application! Glad you liked the look of Space 1889 Woodsy, that's one rpg I really would have liked to have. And I'm loking forward to first men in the Moon next Tuesday (as well as the next part of Mark Gattiss's Horror series too)
ReplyDelete