Post by Steam Girl on Nov 20, 2008 15:37:36 GMT -5
The Prolepsis Project
Steampunk is a rapidly growing sub-culture that is hitting the media harder and faster than a steam train. There have been interviews with Steampunk bands broadcasted on MTV, articles in the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, and the internet is booming with blogs and forums. The film industry certainly knows a good thing when they see it; using Steampunk in major pictures like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Stardust, and The Golden Compass. With all the hype, a need to go back and examine the subculture at its beginnings arises as well as a need to understand why it began.
Ruth Ferla, of the New York Times, states that Steampunk is “ a subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world.” Steampunk first appeared in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s and has since picked up momentum, transitioning from “a literary taste to a Web-propagated way of life.” Damon Poeter, of the San Francisco Chronicle, says that Steampunk “kickstarted” as a social movement in the mid-1990’s through a group of science fiction writers who were bored with the technologically futuristic and high digitized world of the cyberpunk sub-genre. In basic terms, the Steampunk sub-culture is made up of a group of people who follow a new sci-fi genre of literature and have in interest in the Victorian era, which they bring out in their dress and art, but they aren’t necessarily willing to live without today’s modern technology.
William Scheuerle, professor and dean at University of South Florida, depicts the Victorian era as a time of leisure with the middle class relaxing at tabletop games like backgammon, chess, and cards (17-19). This time of leisure and recreation is reflected in today’s middle class with computerized solitaire, chat-room pool, and World of Warcraft. The internet has vast accessibility to new inventions, finds from across the world, and art uploaded in seconds. The world-wide-web has become a 24 hour, modern version of the Great Exhibition of 1851 with it’s machinery, manufactures, raw materials, and fine arts.
The Victorian era (1837-1901) is known as a time of Industrial Revolution, gentlemanliness, and a beginning of inventions like electricity. The Victorian era saw a rise in professional and non-professional antiquarians and historians. Laura Novo comments on the rise and split amongst antiquarians in the Victorian era, referring to the time’s local antiquarian societies and their conservation efforts in her article in Victorian Britain (encyclopedia). She explains that local societies were made up of self-made members of England’s middle-class society (some of which were women). Their work reflected a trend that became common among Victorians, “interpreting society and modern culture with reference to ideas of the past.” (29)
Gentlemanliness, the Victorian version of chivalry, is another notable point in the era. Gail Savage, Professor of British History at St. Mary’s College, states that the gentleman stood at the foremost ideal of manliness. With its roots in the medieval chivalric ideal the Victorians added courtesy, wit and education to the attributes of loyalty, warrior prowess, and bravery. Character, in the 19th century, was now a factor in status and birth alone could not guarantee a person’s stature in society (325-326).
Steampunks, like the antiquarians of the 19th century, pull from the past in their wardrobe, literature, movies, etc. Jess Nevins, Steampunk Magazine writer, believes that the emphasis on aristocratic thinkers and gentlemen adventurers is historically laughable. He states:
The image of the Victorians and their culture passed on to us by popular culture is incredibly misleading…the male inventor, in his comfortable lab, is outnumbered by the prostitutes…and the coal miners dying of black lung.
However, the sub-culture does seem to reject a few things from the centuries that they draw from, in the same way that those who attend Renaissance and Medieval Fairs do not follow those time period’s ways of not bathing or common thievery. Author of the Steampunk serial novel, An Unfortunate Engagement, G.D. Falksen, defends the sub-culture by stating:
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 goes on to explain that “in many cases, Steampunk literature approaches these historical realities on their own terms and deals with them with a mixture of realism and idealism.”
The reasons why Steampunks created their subculture vary by individuals, (much like the followers of the subcultures like Goth) however, an underlying, yet strong, theme of Do-It-Yourself and reconnecting to the past is evident. One of the most well known Steampunk contraptionists, Heironymous Isambard “Jake” von Slatt a.k.a Sean Slattery says that, to him, Steampunk is “essentially the intersection of technology and romance.” Ferla re-iterates this idea by saying it is a “desire to return to ritual and formality.” As Rosemary Jann, professor of English and cultural studies at George Mason Univeristy, explains the rise of historians in the Victorian era by their need to return to the past to find “explanations, guidance, and authority,” Steampunks to today are reacting to their own Industrial Revolution, the Age of Technology, by seeking guidance from the Victorians.
Today people are segregated and isolated by technology, communicating through the digital and the wireless rather than face to face, using machine made products with no individual touch, and quickly creating “art” with a computerized tablet. Ferla explains, “if Steampunk has a mission, it is, in part, to restore a sense of wonder to a technology-jaded world.” She goes on to call Steampunk a “metaphoric coping devise.” In today’s world everything is mainstream, immediate, and passed through an assembly line. Steampunk reconnects people to their crafts.
An art form as simple as traditional photography has become digitized and the art demolished by three-second internet uploads. Renown Steampunk photographer, Nicu Ilfoveanu, in an interview with Romanian online magazine, EgoPhobia, says he uses traditional photography as a reaction to the “stampede of glossy commercial imagery we were flooded with.” In response to the EgoPhobia interviewer’s question about over industrialization and the Steampunk view of it Ilfoveanu responded that his reaction was to digitalization; “On the other hand, I use digital techniques to implement my analogical works.” Here is shown a common Steampunk theme, in not only reconnecting to the artwork but also creating a connection between the old and the new. Ilfoveanu went on to say that a “change in lifestyle affects the social structure of our society.” Steampunk could in this way bring social focus back on the individual and reconnect people to the world around them and to each other in this technologically advanced society.
In this reconnection, a DIY mentality penetrates the sub-culture not only with it’s Contraptionists like Jake von Slatt, Doktor A, and Vladislaus Dantes but also in it’s music, such as the Clockwork Cabaret, and fashion designers like Evelyn Kriete and Kato.
Contraptionists create weapons (usually fake), ways to disguise modern appliances, and costume accessories such as goggles. Contraptionists are modern day creative civil engineers, reconnecting with the Victorian era’s heroic age of Engineering. In the 18th century the engineering profession emerged in Britain and developed rapidly in the industrial revolution until engineers became anonymous workers. Today the engineer becomes the hero of Steampunk. Jake von Slatt is famous throughout the web, at conventions, and in magazines and newspapers. His re-vamping of modern technologies such as iPods and laptops started of a trend of brass etching and reconstructing among Steampunk hobbyists.
Colin Campbell, of Coborror Commons, interviewed Steampunk radio station hosts, Kara O’Dor and Emma Cabrera of Clockwork Caberet on WCOM-FM 103.5. O’Dor and Cabrera created Clockwork Cabaret in response to Steampunk as it moved from a literary movement to a sub-culture. Campbell characterizes Steampunk with a definition for neo-Victorianism: “affinity for the fashion and literature of the Victorian era as well as modern and futuristic technologies.” O’Dor confides that Steampunk appeals to her lifetime interests such as collecting rare books and vintage clothes. Both O’Dor and Cabrera create their Steampunk outfits in DIY fashion using garments they fine at vintage and used clothing stores.
Steampunk fashion is compelling, Ferla says, calling it “quaint to some eyes, or outright bizarre to others.” She explains that the draw to the subcultures fashion is due to the fact that Steampunk designers offer a “genteel and disciplined alternative” to the “slack look of hip-hop” and the dark and “menacing” look of Goth. Designer and Steampunk project promoter, Evelyn Kriete, has another opinion.:
A major reason for the interest in Steampunk and Victorian fashion is that it looks good on anyone, male or female, regardless of build or body type. The same can’t be said about most 20th century fashions, which heavily favor tall and thin women and very muscular men.
Poeter sets the beginnings of Steampunk fashion in the rise of Punk with it’s “make-it-yourself ethos.” Steampunk fashion, unlike the destroyed and grungy look of Punk, varies from Victorian formal wear to retro-vampire hunters and gentlemanly airship pirates, pulling from the Victorian ideals of a Gentlean and Lady. Savage explains that in the Victorian era the saying, “the clothes make the man,” is adopted my Steampunk designers. Steampunks use their clothes to show their character, who they have become in their Steampunk ideals.
Kriete believes that the media focuses mainly on Contraptionists and leaves the fashion and traditional art areas unnoticed. However, Steampunk fashion, with its mechanized accouterments like brass goggles, is very closely connection to Steampunk contraptions and their makers. There is hardly a costume or dress sold by Steampunk designers that does not have a metal accessory or is printed with gears in metallic fabric or fabric paint.
Ferla asserts that Steampunk is growing out of its “niche status.” “Hollywood caught the Steampunk bug,” says Poeter, referring to films like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Wild Wild West, as the gadgetry used in films by Guillermo Del Toro (director of Pans Labyrinth and The Orphanage), Marco Caro, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and animes (Japanese animation) like Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy and Rasuto Eguzairu’s Last Exile.
However, Steampunk has been in the movies since before 1999. Movies such as Walter Murch’s Return to Oz (the sequel to Wizard of Oz), (1985) and Caro and Jeunet’s City of Lost Children (1991). Both of these cult classics contain Steampunk gadgetry, dark and pre-modern scenery, and the distressed themes found in Steampunk literature.
Like film, music of the Steampunk subculture is getting a lot of attention. Abney Park recently did an interview with MTV and is starring at conventions like DragonCon, which had over 40,000 attendees this year; MetroCon, with it’s 10,000 members; and the first annual San Francisco Steampunk Convention. The band’s back-story is based on the pirate crew of the airship, H.M.S. Ophelia. Their online market is filled with militarian Steampunk products such as vintage-like air force hats, dog-tags, modified safari vests and leather and brass corsets printed with a fictional map of Ophelia’s travels.
Goth-Steampunk band, Ego-Likeness draws influence and inspiration from sci-fi and fantasy works such as Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, Frank Herbert’s Dune and Children of Dune, as well as the works of Jules Verne, author of Around the World in 80 Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Ego-Likeness creator Steven Archer is an avid contributor to Steampunk Magazine and a Steampunk artist having graduated from The Corcoran School of Art.
Goth comedian and musician, Voltaire is another name in the Steampunk subculture. While his work is not necessarily Steampunk in nature, Voltaire’s persona as an artist carries on the Steampunk theme of Neo-Victorian characters. A gentleman, usually in nice Victorian dress and a top hat, the artist pulls from the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire in his name. However, rather than an affected political satirist, the musician Voltaire pokes fun at the Goth sub-culture in a light and playful way. He is also a sub-culture spokesperson who premiered on CNN after the Columbine shootings to defend sub-cultures, declaring that, as a whole, they were not violent or dangerous people.
Steampunk musician’s have intricate back stories and larger than life characters, many inspired by works of literature or brilliant minds from the Pre-Victorian or Victorian era. They use these stories and characters to help draw their fans in with their art, contraptions, and music.
The question is, where is Steampunk going and how mainstream is it becoming? Poeter believes that those who live the Steampunk lifestyle, like Jake von Slatt and Robert Brown of Abney Park, will always remain few. However, “old timey” fashions can be seen in clothing stores and Ralph-Lauren fashion magazines as well as on VH1 top bands.
The subculture has reached far and wide, beyond America and the UK to France, Romania, Japan, Australia, and the Middle-East. Japanese anime and manga (comic books) such as Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland by Masami Hata, Steam Detectives by Kia Asamiya, and D. Gray-man by Katsura Hoshino are filled with Steampunk influence such as Victorian clothing, clockwork enemies, steam-engine trains, and odd contraptions. These manga are as popular and avidly read as American Steampunk books and comics such as Lemony Snicket’s oddly written and well-illustrated Series of Unfortunate Events and the popular web-comic Girl Genius by Phil and Kala Foglio.
EgoPhobia’s Steampunk journalist, Adrian Ionita of Romania, discusses in his article, We Aim to Be Rather than to Seem, covers stories of French sculptor and mathematician, Pierre Matter and Israeli blacksmith, Uri Hofi. Both of these men are famous Steampunk names, both of which were not meaning to be titled this, on the net along with American Steampunks such as Joe Rosato, founder of the Nimrods Theatre Company, and Dr. Julius T. Roundbottom, fictional web-propagated adventurer and fantasy botanist.
In Australia, comic artist, Madeleine Rosca, adds to the Steampunk literary movement with her comic, Hollow Fields. The work is filled with steam-powered drones, Frankenstein-esqu mad-scientists, Gothic mansions, and clockwork assassins all of which are used to teach children from a modern world how to become “ethically unfettered,” drawing from the moral ideals of the Victorian era.
Poeter explains that the movement has evolved enough to cause a backlash. There are critiques such as the one form Jess Nevins that call the idealistic Neo-Victorian followers “laughable.” Also, YouTube and MySpace videos are beginning to mock contraptionists and their work. Jake von Slatt laughs at the backlash, taking it lightly and with a sense of triumph, believing that it proves that “We [Steampunks] must be doing something right.”
Steampunk is a rapidly growing sub-culture that is hitting the media harder and faster than a steam train. There have been interviews with Steampunk bands broadcasted on MTV, articles in the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, and the internet is booming with blogs and forums. The film industry certainly knows a good thing when they see it; using Steampunk in major pictures like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Stardust, and The Golden Compass. With all the hype, a need to go back and examine the subculture at its beginnings arises as well as a need to understand why it began.
Ruth Ferla, of the New York Times, states that Steampunk is “ a subculture that is the aesthetic expression of a time-traveling fantasy world.” Steampunk first appeared in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s and has since picked up momentum, transitioning from “a literary taste to a Web-propagated way of life.” Damon Poeter, of the San Francisco Chronicle, says that Steampunk “kickstarted” as a social movement in the mid-1990’s through a group of science fiction writers who were bored with the technologically futuristic and high digitized world of the cyberpunk sub-genre. In basic terms, the Steampunk sub-culture is made up of a group of people who follow a new sci-fi genre of literature and have in interest in the Victorian era, which they bring out in their dress and art, but they aren’t necessarily willing to live without today’s modern technology.
William Scheuerle, professor and dean at University of South Florida, depicts the Victorian era as a time of leisure with the middle class relaxing at tabletop games like backgammon, chess, and cards (17-19). This time of leisure and recreation is reflected in today’s middle class with computerized solitaire, chat-room pool, and World of Warcraft. The internet has vast accessibility to new inventions, finds from across the world, and art uploaded in seconds. The world-wide-web has become a 24 hour, modern version of the Great Exhibition of 1851 with it’s machinery, manufactures, raw materials, and fine arts.
The Victorian era (1837-1901) is known as a time of Industrial Revolution, gentlemanliness, and a beginning of inventions like electricity. The Victorian era saw a rise in professional and non-professional antiquarians and historians. Laura Novo comments on the rise and split amongst antiquarians in the Victorian era, referring to the time’s local antiquarian societies and their conservation efforts in her article in Victorian Britain (encyclopedia). She explains that local societies were made up of self-made members of England’s middle-class society (some of which were women). Their work reflected a trend that became common among Victorians, “interpreting society and modern culture with reference to ideas of the past.” (29)
Gentlemanliness, the Victorian version of chivalry, is another notable point in the era. Gail Savage, Professor of British History at St. Mary’s College, states that the gentleman stood at the foremost ideal of manliness. With its roots in the medieval chivalric ideal the Victorians added courtesy, wit and education to the attributes of loyalty, warrior prowess, and bravery. Character, in the 19th century, was now a factor in status and birth alone could not guarantee a person’s stature in society (325-326).
Steampunks, like the antiquarians of the 19th century, pull from the past in their wardrobe, literature, movies, etc. Jess Nevins, Steampunk Magazine writer, believes that the emphasis on aristocratic thinkers and gentlemen adventurers is historically laughable. He states:
The image of the Victorians and their culture passed on to us by popular culture is incredibly misleading…the male inventor, in his comfortable lab, is outnumbered by the prostitutes…and the coal miners dying of black lung.
However, the sub-culture does seem to reject a few things from the centuries that they draw from, in the same way that those who attend Renaissance and Medieval Fairs do not follow those time period’s ways of not bathing or common thievery. Author of the Steampunk serial novel, An Unfortunate Engagement, G.D. Falksen, defends the sub-culture by stating:
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 goes on to explain that “in many cases, Steampunk literature approaches these historical realities on their own terms and deals with them with a mixture of realism and idealism.”
The reasons why Steampunks created their subculture vary by individuals, (much like the followers of the subcultures like Goth) however, an underlying, yet strong, theme of Do-It-Yourself and reconnecting to the past is evident. One of the most well known Steampunk contraptionists, Heironymous Isambard “Jake” von Slatt a.k.a Sean Slattery says that, to him, Steampunk is “essentially the intersection of technology and romance.” Ferla re-iterates this idea by saying it is a “desire to return to ritual and formality.” As Rosemary Jann, professor of English and cultural studies at George Mason Univeristy, explains the rise of historians in the Victorian era by their need to return to the past to find “explanations, guidance, and authority,” Steampunks to today are reacting to their own Industrial Revolution, the Age of Technology, by seeking guidance from the Victorians.
Today people are segregated and isolated by technology, communicating through the digital and the wireless rather than face to face, using machine made products with no individual touch, and quickly creating “art” with a computerized tablet. Ferla explains, “if Steampunk has a mission, it is, in part, to restore a sense of wonder to a technology-jaded world.” She goes on to call Steampunk a “metaphoric coping devise.” In today’s world everything is mainstream, immediate, and passed through an assembly line. Steampunk reconnects people to their crafts.
An art form as simple as traditional photography has become digitized and the art demolished by three-second internet uploads. Renown Steampunk photographer, Nicu Ilfoveanu, in an interview with Romanian online magazine, EgoPhobia, says he uses traditional photography as a reaction to the “stampede of glossy commercial imagery we were flooded with.” In response to the EgoPhobia interviewer’s question about over industrialization and the Steampunk view of it Ilfoveanu responded that his reaction was to digitalization; “On the other hand, I use digital techniques to implement my analogical works.” Here is shown a common Steampunk theme, in not only reconnecting to the artwork but also creating a connection between the old and the new. Ilfoveanu went on to say that a “change in lifestyle affects the social structure of our society.” Steampunk could in this way bring social focus back on the individual and reconnect people to the world around them and to each other in this technologically advanced society.
In this reconnection, a DIY mentality penetrates the sub-culture not only with it’s Contraptionists like Jake von Slatt, Doktor A, and Vladislaus Dantes but also in it’s music, such as the Clockwork Cabaret, and fashion designers like Evelyn Kriete and Kato.
Contraptionists create weapons (usually fake), ways to disguise modern appliances, and costume accessories such as goggles. Contraptionists are modern day creative civil engineers, reconnecting with the Victorian era’s heroic age of Engineering. In the 18th century the engineering profession emerged in Britain and developed rapidly in the industrial revolution until engineers became anonymous workers. Today the engineer becomes the hero of Steampunk. Jake von Slatt is famous throughout the web, at conventions, and in magazines and newspapers. His re-vamping of modern technologies such as iPods and laptops started of a trend of brass etching and reconstructing among Steampunk hobbyists.
Colin Campbell, of Coborror Commons, interviewed Steampunk radio station hosts, Kara O’Dor and Emma Cabrera of Clockwork Caberet on WCOM-FM 103.5. O’Dor and Cabrera created Clockwork Cabaret in response to Steampunk as it moved from a literary movement to a sub-culture. Campbell characterizes Steampunk with a definition for neo-Victorianism: “affinity for the fashion and literature of the Victorian era as well as modern and futuristic technologies.” O’Dor confides that Steampunk appeals to her lifetime interests such as collecting rare books and vintage clothes. Both O’Dor and Cabrera create their Steampunk outfits in DIY fashion using garments they fine at vintage and used clothing stores.
Steampunk fashion is compelling, Ferla says, calling it “quaint to some eyes, or outright bizarre to others.” She explains that the draw to the subcultures fashion is due to the fact that Steampunk designers offer a “genteel and disciplined alternative” to the “slack look of hip-hop” and the dark and “menacing” look of Goth. Designer and Steampunk project promoter, Evelyn Kriete, has another opinion.:
A major reason for the interest in Steampunk and Victorian fashion is that it looks good on anyone, male or female, regardless of build or body type. The same can’t be said about most 20th century fashions, which heavily favor tall and thin women and very muscular men.
Poeter sets the beginnings of Steampunk fashion in the rise of Punk with it’s “make-it-yourself ethos.” Steampunk fashion, unlike the destroyed and grungy look of Punk, varies from Victorian formal wear to retro-vampire hunters and gentlemanly airship pirates, pulling from the Victorian ideals of a Gentlean and Lady. Savage explains that in the Victorian era the saying, “the clothes make the man,” is adopted my Steampunk designers. Steampunks use their clothes to show their character, who they have become in their Steampunk ideals.
Kriete believes that the media focuses mainly on Contraptionists and leaves the fashion and traditional art areas unnoticed. However, Steampunk fashion, with its mechanized accouterments like brass goggles, is very closely connection to Steampunk contraptions and their makers. There is hardly a costume or dress sold by Steampunk designers that does not have a metal accessory or is printed with gears in metallic fabric or fabric paint.
Ferla asserts that Steampunk is growing out of its “niche status.” “Hollywood caught the Steampunk bug,” says Poeter, referring to films like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Wild Wild West, as the gadgetry used in films by Guillermo Del Toro (director of Pans Labyrinth and The Orphanage), Marco Caro, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and animes (Japanese animation) like Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy and Rasuto Eguzairu’s Last Exile.
However, Steampunk has been in the movies since before 1999. Movies such as Walter Murch’s Return to Oz (the sequel to Wizard of Oz), (1985) and Caro and Jeunet’s City of Lost Children (1991). Both of these cult classics contain Steampunk gadgetry, dark and pre-modern scenery, and the distressed themes found in Steampunk literature.
Like film, music of the Steampunk subculture is getting a lot of attention. Abney Park recently did an interview with MTV and is starring at conventions like DragonCon, which had over 40,000 attendees this year; MetroCon, with it’s 10,000 members; and the first annual San Francisco Steampunk Convention. The band’s back-story is based on the pirate crew of the airship, H.M.S. Ophelia. Their online market is filled with militarian Steampunk products such as vintage-like air force hats, dog-tags, modified safari vests and leather and brass corsets printed with a fictional map of Ophelia’s travels.
Goth-Steampunk band, Ego-Likeness draws influence and inspiration from sci-fi and fantasy works such as Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, Frank Herbert’s Dune and Children of Dune, as well as the works of Jules Verne, author of Around the World in 80 Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Ego-Likeness creator Steven Archer is an avid contributor to Steampunk Magazine and a Steampunk artist having graduated from The Corcoran School of Art.
Goth comedian and musician, Voltaire is another name in the Steampunk subculture. While his work is not necessarily Steampunk in nature, Voltaire’s persona as an artist carries on the Steampunk theme of Neo-Victorian characters. A gentleman, usually in nice Victorian dress and a top hat, the artist pulls from the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire in his name. However, rather than an affected political satirist, the musician Voltaire pokes fun at the Goth sub-culture in a light and playful way. He is also a sub-culture spokesperson who premiered on CNN after the Columbine shootings to defend sub-cultures, declaring that, as a whole, they were not violent or dangerous people.
Steampunk musician’s have intricate back stories and larger than life characters, many inspired by works of literature or brilliant minds from the Pre-Victorian or Victorian era. They use these stories and characters to help draw their fans in with their art, contraptions, and music.
The question is, where is Steampunk going and how mainstream is it becoming? Poeter believes that those who live the Steampunk lifestyle, like Jake von Slatt and Robert Brown of Abney Park, will always remain few. However, “old timey” fashions can be seen in clothing stores and Ralph-Lauren fashion magazines as well as on VH1 top bands.
The subculture has reached far and wide, beyond America and the UK to France, Romania, Japan, Australia, and the Middle-East. Japanese anime and manga (comic books) such as Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland by Masami Hata, Steam Detectives by Kia Asamiya, and D. Gray-man by Katsura Hoshino are filled with Steampunk influence such as Victorian clothing, clockwork enemies, steam-engine trains, and odd contraptions. These manga are as popular and avidly read as American Steampunk books and comics such as Lemony Snicket’s oddly written and well-illustrated Series of Unfortunate Events and the popular web-comic Girl Genius by Phil and Kala Foglio.
EgoPhobia’s Steampunk journalist, Adrian Ionita of Romania, discusses in his article, We Aim to Be Rather than to Seem, covers stories of French sculptor and mathematician, Pierre Matter and Israeli blacksmith, Uri Hofi. Both of these men are famous Steampunk names, both of which were not meaning to be titled this, on the net along with American Steampunks such as Joe Rosato, founder of the Nimrods Theatre Company, and Dr. Julius T. Roundbottom, fictional web-propagated adventurer and fantasy botanist.
In Australia, comic artist, Madeleine Rosca, adds to the Steampunk literary movement with her comic, Hollow Fields. The work is filled with steam-powered drones, Frankenstein-esqu mad-scientists, Gothic mansions, and clockwork assassins all of which are used to teach children from a modern world how to become “ethically unfettered,” drawing from the moral ideals of the Victorian era.
Poeter explains that the movement has evolved enough to cause a backlash. There are critiques such as the one form Jess Nevins that call the idealistic Neo-Victorian followers “laughable.” Also, YouTube and MySpace videos are beginning to mock contraptionists and their work. Jake von Slatt laughs at the backlash, taking it lightly and with a sense of triumph, believing that it proves that “We [Steampunks] must be doing something right.”
