Okay, so I've had an interest in steampunk for several years but haven't done much to indulge in it. I've read one or two titles here and there and I've seen a couple of Miyazaki films that seem to fit the bill, but I'm looking for something I can really sink my teeth into, ideally with a graphic element to it.

So. Any recommendations?

Also...which aspects of steampunk do you find most appealing? And do you prefer the Victorian stuff or the non-Victorian stuff?

I rather enjoyed League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the graphic novel, not the movie.) But that's really all I'm familiar with.
I like it as a concept though.

(Odd, The Boyâ„¢ and I were just talking about this earlier today.)

Edited to add: The movie Steamboy was ok. Not great. Just ok.

I did too (ditto re: the comic, not the film). It made me very, very happy.

This all started up because we watched Howl's Moving Castle last night and Becca wasn't familiar with the genre. And then I remembered that I love this stuff and don't spend enough time with it.

Other steampunky stuff I've seen/read/played (of varying time periods):
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
- Syberia
- Battle Chasers
- The Diamond Age
- The Time Machine
- Myst
- Dark City
- Princess Mononoke
- Spirited Away

Most of them are nontraditional, non-Victorian, which makes me kind of sad. I like the Victorian era stuff but am not really sure where to start.

See, I wouldn't categorize Howl's as steampunk. It's magic. I don't think steampunk has anything to do with magic. It's science.

Myst is very steampunk. I wouldn't call Baron Munchausen steampunk either. It's more sort of late enlightenment fantasy.

It's a strange category. I don't know the rules of it, but I know (or at least think I know) what doesn't fall into it.

Does actual gaslight-era sci-fi count as "steampunk" really? I think steampunk assumes modern fiction in the style of old science fiction. Some genre stuff to get you into the setting: the space pulp-fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Most of those novels can be had from the Gutenberg Project for free.

I love the idea of steampunk, but I think it is a genre that hasn't had its definitive work yet.

I need to read Diamond Age, but I haven't gotten around to it.

I saw an old copy of Space:1889 in a bookstore in NH, but with no one to play with I didn't get it. That was a great setting (Victorian-era colonial settlement of space in vessels that sailed in luminiferous aether.)

It's interesting--this question of what steampunk really is. I pored over the Wikipedia entry just to get an idea of how people define it. Oddly, they seem to be pretty broad in their conceptualization of it.

I'm honestly kind of torn on the definition, simply because there often seems to be an element of magic, and it's hard to draw the line sometimes.

I definitely need to read Burroughs. I've never actually read anything of his.

Diamond Age is very, very good. I liked it better than Snow Crash, but it's just a very different book.

I didn't agree with a lot of the wiki article.

I don't think steampunk has much to do with magic at all (others may disagree.) I think it's science. Science that, in the period, seemed a lot like magic because they didn't understand it as we do today.
Full Metal Alchemist for example. Not really magic. Just science. An alternate science, but science.

Oh. My lovely wife just brought up Fullmetal Alchemist.
*Has total geek-gasm*

Time for an avatar change.

I fell *so* far behind while you were watching that, babe. What I saw of it, I enjoyed, though.
Circus, if you have Netflix, you can get it there.

quote:

Originally posted by Giabow:
I fell *so* far behind while you were watching that, babe. What I saw of it, I enjoyed, though.
Circus, if you have Netflix, you can get it there.

I couldn't wait to see the next one. We can reorder them, I wouldn't mind. I think the only thing from Netflix that I've watched faster has been Avatar the Last Airbender.

*adds to Netflix queue*

Awesome.

Let me know what you think of it, Circus.

Will do!

Best part about Snow Crash.

quote:

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

A page-turner, but just okay. I was going to write Stephenson off as a pale imitation of Gibson based on it, and then I read Cryptonomicon and changed my mind.

I'm not sure Diamond Age is exactly steampunk since it is a little early. But Enlightenment sci-fi definitely.

I can't recommend anything by Stephenson; his endings are all just crappy.

Phil Foglio is putting Girl Genius, self-described as Gaslamp Fantasy, online.

For me Steampunk is a style of alternate history where the difference with the real world lies on a change in physical properties/technological development that either develop steam too early or it becomes able to displace the alternatives that appeared in the real world. No magic (except the subtle magic that could work in the real world)

Works I would call Steampunk (and liked):

• Girl Genius, for sure.
  
• The Difference Engine, Gibson-Sterling
  
• Homunculus, James P. Blaylock (Tim Powers friend, with similar themes)

Works I liked that others call Steampunk (usually with much magic):

• The Light Ages, Ian R MacLeod (pseudo Victorian with magic and steam
  
• The Gates of Anubis, Tim Powers (Real magic)
  
• Arcanum, a Computer RPG. Quite nice, for its time
  

And we should not forget some works of the New Weird, as they use most of the supposed Steampunk setting. The closer to the steampunk position, while still being good, for me:

• Anything by China Mieville, starting by Perdido Street Station. Just see New Crobuzon as London.
  
• The Etched City, KJ Bishop. Magic is subtle, almost all the time.

And two modern Victorian tales that I enjoyed,

• Anno Dracula, Kim Newman.
  
• A Night in the Lonesome October, Roger Zelazny.

Massimiliano Frezzato's Keepers of the Maser series, serialized in Heavy Metal. I missed the first one, but a friend of mine and I tracked this series over the years. There's this huge tower, and it feels huge, the panoramic views give you a real sense of scale.

I agree that Steampunk doesn't necessarily have to be steam powered. A view of an alternative history where technological advances occurred in different places at different times feels like the best broad definition. It doesn't have to exclude magic. In some ways, even Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS fits as does Stephenson's QUICKSILVER even though it seems more or less historically accurate.

Has anyone read the AGE OF UNREASON series of novels where Newton's alchemical experiments are successful rather than his more "scientific" ones? I'm trying to decide if they are worth picking up.

I don't know about the magic. I think there should be another category name if the setting allows for outright magic.

One of the key features of the real late-Victorian age was a faith in science and reason and the confidence that science would bring a utopia. Steampunk and retrofuture genres try to evoke that feeling.

Of course the "punk" half of the setting knows that the utopian potential of tech is not true so steampunk (and cyberpunk) can be dystopian. Unlike cyberpunk, though, the characters in steampunk aren't as jaded. They still have the optimism of the pre-20th century Enlightenment.

If you allow for magic, though, you change the tone subtly by diverting focus from the science and reason, which was a key to the culture and driving force of the age.

On the other hand, it is possible to create an alternate science. Age of Unreason and Fullmetal Alchemist assumes that alchemy works instead of standard physics. Space:1889 assumes that the luminiferous aether was real.

Yeah, and in Pullman's trilogy, there is a scientific element to the Theological and "Magical" elements as well.

I think that it should exclude fantastic Harry Potter style magic where you say a magic word and "ala kazam!" something happens, but if the magic is given a rational context, like a "what if Paracelsus was right?" sorta concept, then it doesn't necessarily move into the fantasy genre.