Post by Steam Girl on Oct 23, 2008 8:00:49 GMT -5
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/06/LVL211GOO2.DTL
Were we hiding? Well San Francisco Times writer, Damon Poeter, has found us.
While I'm not a huge fan of the tone of this articel it does have quite a bit of information.
What I'll be taking from it
"G.D. Falksen, creator of steampunk magazine serials 'The Strange Case of the All-Seeing Ear' and 'An Unfortunate Engagement,' credits a conversation between sci-fi authors Kevin Jeter and Paul Di Filippo as the origin of the term. "
"While steampunk is very strongly informed by history, it approaches that history from a set of modern sensibilities. The historical Steam Age was plagued by racism, sexism, concepts of national superiority and Manifest Destiny, and witnessed the horrors of colonialism, slavery and the murder of native peoples, along with terrible pollution and dreadful class tension," Falksen says. "In many cases, steampunk literature approaches these historical realities on their own terms and deals with them with a mixture of realism and idealism.
"Social steampunk, however, takes the visual qualities of the Steam Age and reapplies them to modern political and social sensibilities. Just because steampunk enthusiasts like the grandeur of the British Empire does not mean they are willing to accept the racism and colonialism upon which it was built."
and
"In fashion, steampunk has a natural constituency in the decades-old Goth culture, she says, pointing to Neo-Victorian fashion on parade at recent Goth Convergence festivals, and the rise of steampunk bands like Abney Park and San Francisco's Vernian Process. Describing the assorted retro-vampire hunters and airship pirates turning up at such events as "broken Victorian," [Evelyn] Kriete says this increasingly popular trend is going largely unnoticed by media chroniclers of steampunk, who focus almost entirely on tech modders like Von Slatt, Nagy and Sepe."
Were we hiding? Well San Francisco Times writer, Damon Poeter, has found us.
While I'm not a huge fan of the tone of this articel it does have quite a bit of information.
What I'll be taking from it
"G.D. Falksen, creator of steampunk magazine serials 'The Strange Case of the All-Seeing Ear' and 'An Unfortunate Engagement,' credits a conversation between sci-fi authors Kevin Jeter and Paul Di Filippo as the origin of the term. "
"While steampunk is very strongly informed by history, it approaches that history from a set of modern sensibilities. The historical Steam Age was plagued by racism, sexism, concepts of national superiority and Manifest Destiny, and witnessed the horrors of colonialism, slavery and the murder of native peoples, along with terrible pollution and dreadful class tension," Falksen says. "In many cases, steampunk literature approaches these historical realities on their own terms and deals with them with a mixture of realism and idealism.
"Social steampunk, however, takes the visual qualities of the Steam Age and reapplies them to modern political and social sensibilities. Just because steampunk enthusiasts like the grandeur of the British Empire does not mean they are willing to accept the racism and colonialism upon which it was built."
and
"In fashion, steampunk has a natural constituency in the decades-old Goth culture, she says, pointing to Neo-Victorian fashion on parade at recent Goth Convergence festivals, and the rise of steampunk bands like Abney Park and San Francisco's Vernian Process. Describing the assorted retro-vampire hunters and airship pirates turning up at such events as "broken Victorian," [Evelyn] Kriete says this increasingly popular trend is going largely unnoticed by media chroniclers of steampunk, who focus almost entirely on tech modders like Von Slatt, Nagy and Sepe."