#steampunk scifi

[strangegeez]

The Last Days of...

A series of pulp sci-fi fiction. Fun alternative reality stories set in the H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds universe of Victorian Britain 1898. Five stories so far with a sixth on editorial production. In book format or Kindle with the first two on #Audible.

Go4it NOW!

[steampunktendencies]

Saw this on Reddit with this question. Why don't our cities look like this?

[scifiseries]

A little experiment I’ve been working on - some Victorian street lamp inspired earrings that actually light up 💡

[nestedneons]

By notonote1000

[tk-sketches]

welder? I hardly know her!

[scipunk]

Love, Death & Robots - S1E8 - Good Hunting (2019)

[hyolks]

You wasteland au is giving me huge Trigun vibes!

I love the way you draw everyone it’s so good! The designs are so cool!

did u know that vash is a whole foot taller than ed

THANK YOU SO MUCH i thought of the au and was like. jesus. isnt this just like trigun. whatever. blonde boys with mech arms UNITE

[existing-caregiver]

[dangiuz]

Age Quod Agis, by Dangiuz.

[soranatus]

I just wanted to make a post showcasing some of my favorite illustrations by Keith Thompson for the Leviathan Trilogy.

The art went so hard in these books, it’s crazy. The plot is basically an alternate universe WW1 about the major two powers, the Darwinists, and the Clankers. The Darwinists genetically engineered animals to fight for them creating huge flying whale battleships, while the Clankers made huge robot mechs and powerful guns. A few historical people and places show up in these books, like Nikola Tesla.

But my favorite parts of the books were the art, truly breathtaking, it was beautifully grotesque at times. But that’s not unexpected, after all Keith Thompson helped create the design of Moder from The Ritual!

[alpaca-clouds]

The History of Cyberpunk

Or why every other SciFi Genre is called [something]punk

You know what? Let's do this. Because I have seen the discussion on whether or not Solarpunk is "punk" over the last few days and... people really gotta learn their history.

The first time a genre took the "punk" name was Cyberpunk. And for context we gotta talk a bit about the history of the Cyberpunk genre.

While some books that we in hindsight call "Cyberpunk" were released as early as the 1960s, the start of Cyberpunk as a genre got its start in the late 70s and early 80s.

The term was invented by Bruce Bethke, who published a short story in 1983 with the name "Cyberpunk". His idea was to juxtapose the term "punk" for both the mentality and the punk protagonists in his short story with the term cyber, short for the cybernetics they were wearing. And while the cybernetics have become a main stay in the genre, the punk attitudes are not always carried through...

Well, the title Bethke invented stuck, though. When 1984 Neuromancer was published, one of the most influencial works in the early days of the genre, he called it "a Cyberpunk novel" in the marketing. And from there... Well, the genre was suddenly named like that.

The 80s were definitely the decade that had the most influence on the genre, given that a lot of the big novels and graphic novels of the genre were released here.

A big influence was, no doubt, that 1982 the Blade Runner movie had released and had inspired quite a few writers and artists. (And yes, this makes Blade Runner a movie that released not only before the term Cyberpunk was coined, but also before the genre had a chance to define itself.)

Given that the genre was defined in the 80s, there are a lot of 80s anxiety kept within it about the rise of the Japanese economy, that are these days rarely questioned within the western Cyberpunk movement.

When the genre was coined and developed, Japan was the fastest growing economy in the world, being so influencial that they got to buy out several things in America. Something that kinda jerked white people in the US a lot. This is, why Cyberpunk originally depicted not only a capitalist hellscape - but specifically a capitalist hellscape were everything was bought out by Japanese companies, with many of those early antagonists being Japanese companies. And yeah... there was a lot of both anti-japanese racism, but also cultural appropriation of Japanese things in early Cyberpunk, at time surviving to this day. (But that is a story for another day.)

The general sense that Western Cyberpunk had, was always the idea of: We have a capitalist hellscape where the world is slowly dying and people are exploited with no end, while we have those kinda punky protagonists, who stand outside of the society and try to work against it. This being where the punk comes from.

Now, I could talk for length about how a lot of that punky attitude has been lost in more modern Cyberpunk media, but that, too, is a story for another day.

So, let me just talk about what happened then.

The term Cyberpunk really is darn catchy, right? So just when that name took hold, writer K.W. Jeter retroactively called his 1979 novel Morlock Night "steampunk". And guess what: This stuck, too. Though while the 80s Cyberpunk still stuck to the punk attitude, a lot of Steampunk did not. While for certain there is quite a bit of Steampunk that has kinda punky characters go against the quasi Victorian society of steampunk books (something most common in the air pirate novels I have read), a lot of other stories are more focused on a general sense of adventure.

But never the less... The genre names stuck and gave a nice baseline for naming other genre. We got Dieselpunk, Atompunk, Nanopunk, Arcanepunk, Dustpunk, Silkpunk and of course also Solarpunk and Lunarpunk.

And for the most part... The "punk" names mostly communicate: "It is SciFi with this kinda aesthetic/twist going on". Which is just how it turned out.

Funnily enough Solarpunk is for once a genre that brings back the punk, as it tends to include a lot of the ideals aspired to by the Punk counter culture of the 1970s: Anarchism, anti-capitalism, anti-consumerism, anti-classism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism and so on. Though other than with Cyberpunk and the real world punk movement, Solarpunk for the most part imagines a place, where those things are culture instead of counter culture.

I personally find it kinda sad, how for the most part Cyberpunk kinda lost a lot of the counter-cultural, revolutionary mindset. And how fucking defeatist the genre often is.

But again, it is a story for another day. Just as the story of Japanese Cyberpunk is.

[wakingdreamworld]

Sailing Ships - With and Without Anti-Grav - Pt 5

Harsh industrial style

[steampunktendencies]

A cool butterfly created from scrap metal and recycled electronics!

by Zak Miskry

[scifiseries]

A steampunk butterfly I made out of recycled electronics! (My first ever commission!)

[nestedneons]

By xidpix

[20kmemesunderthesea]