SteamPunk Literature

Good morning bookworms and have a booktastic week ahead! I know you were all eagerly waiting for the next Halloween article, but I thought to have a break from the pumpkin and talk about something else today. I know there's plenty of weirdos out there who love a rare and specific book genre, speam punk! It's a peculiar category that includes literature, movies, clothing style and all different types of art. First, I'll give you the definition of steam punk so we can begin to understand what it is about.

Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American "Wild West", where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power.

Steampunk most recognizably features anachronistic technologies or retrofuturistic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them — distinguishing it from Neo-Victorianism — and is likewise rooted in the era's perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art. Such technologies may include fictional machines like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. Other examples of steampunk contain alternative-history-style presentations of such technology as steam cannons, lighter-than-air airships, analog computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.

Steampunk may also incorporate additional elements from the genres of fantasy, horror, historical fiction, alternate history, or other branches of speculative fiction, making it often a hybrid genre. As a form of speculative fiction, it explores alternative futures or pasts but can also address real-world social issues. The first known appearance of the term steampunk was in 1987, though it now retroactively refers to many works of fiction created as far back as the 1950s or earlier. A popular subgenre is Japanese steampunk, consisting of steampunk-themed manga and anime, with steampunk elements having appeared in mainstream manga since the 1940s.

Steampunk also refers to any of the artistic styles, clothing fashions, or subcultures that have developed from the aesthetics of steampunk fiction, Victorian-era fiction, art nouveau design, and films from the mid-20th century. Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical "steampunk" style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.

The term "steampunk" was first used by K. W. Jeter in 1987 who wrote the novel "Morlock night". It was all about a world which was running exclusively on steam instead of electricity. H.G. Wells and Jules Vernes influenced a lot of great authors since then on our subject and they were the first to have descrribed such worlds.

There's also something else in this universe that has a lot to do with steampunk.. and that is the role playing games and the beginning of it... "Space: 1889". It's a game (role-playing, board and computer) and media setting of Victorian era space-faring, created by Frank Chadwick and originally published by Game Designers' Workshop from 1988 to 1991, and later reprinted by Heliograph, Inc.

The first published description of Space: 1889 was in the "Feedback" column in the TSR/SPI publication Ares Magazine in 1983, as a proposal for a board wargame. The title is both a parody of the television show Space: 1999 and a continuation of the GDW naming convention applied to two of its previous role-playing games, Twilight: 2000 and Traveller: 2300 (the latter of which was later renamed 2300 AD in order to prevent confusion with Traveller), though neither previous game had any connection to the Space: 1889 universe. The name Space: 1889 is a registered trademark belonging to Chadwick.

In addition to H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, other 19th century speculative fiction authors such as Edward Ellis and Mary Shelly are considered precursors to steampunk. Many consider Titus Alone by Mervyn Peake, published in 1959, to be the first full steampunk novel (despite the term, "steampunk" not being coined yet).

Now... let's see some of the best and most definitive SteamPunk book titles:

1) Twenty thousand leagues under the sea ( Jules Verne) - 1870

The novel was originally serialized from March 1869 through June 1870 in Pierre-Jules Hetzel's fortnightly periodical, the Magasin d'éducation et de récréation. A deluxe octavo edition, published by Hetzel in November 1871, included 111 illustrations by Alphonse de Neuville and Édouard Riou. The book was widely acclaimed on its release and remains so; it is regarded as one of the premier adventure novels and one of Verne's greatest works, along with Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Its depiction of Captain Nemo's underwater ship, the Nautilus, is regarded as ahead of its time, since it accurately describes many features of today's submarines, which in the 1860s were comparatively primitive vessels.

A model of the French submarine Plongeur (launched in 1863) figured at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, where Jules Verne examined it and was inspired by it when penning his novel.

Jules Gabriel Verne (8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires, a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels, always very well documented, are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time.

In addition to his novels, he wrote numerous plays, short stories, autobiographical accounts, poetry, songs and scientific, artistic and literary studies. His work has been adapted for film and television since the beginning of cinema, as well as for comic books, theater, opera, music and video games.

Verne is considered to be an important author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism. His reputation was markedly different in the Anglosphere where he had often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children's books, largely because of the highly abridged and altered translations in which his novels have often been printed. Since the 1980s, his literary reputation has improved.

Jules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking between Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare. He has sometimes been called the "Father of Science Fiction", a title that has also been given to H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback. In the 2010s, he is the most translated French author in the world. In France, 2005 was declared "Jules Verne Year" on the occasion of the centenary of the writer's death.

2) The Time Machine (H. .G. Wells) - 1895

The Time Machine is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device.

Utilizing a frame story set in then-present Victorian England, Wells' text focuses on a recount of the otherwise anonymous Time Traveller's journey into the far future. A work of future history and speculative evolution, Time Machine is interpreted in modern times as a commentary on the increasing inequality and class divisions of Wells' era, which he projects as giving rise to two separate human species: the fair, childlike Eloi, and the savage, simian Morlocks, distant descendants of the contemporary upper and lower classes respectively. It is believed that Wells' depiction of the Eloi as a race living in plentitude and abandon was inspired by the utopic romance novel News from Nowhere (1890), though Wells' universe in the novel is notably more savage and brutal.

In his 1931 preface to the book, Wells wrote that The Time Machine seemed "a very undergraduate performance to its now mature writer, as he looks over it once more", though he states that "the writer feels no remorse for this youthful effort". However, critics have praised the novella's handling of its thematic concerns, with Mariana Warner writing that the book was the most significant contribution to understanding fragments of desire before Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, with the novel " how close he felt to the melancholy seeker after a door that he once opened on to a luminous vision and could never find again".

The Time Machine has been adapted into two feature films of the same name, as well as two television versions and many comic book adaptations. It has also indirectly inspired many more works of fiction in many media productions.

Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography and autobiography. His work also included two books on recreational war games. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called the "father of science fiction", along with Jules Verne and the publisher Hugo Gernsback.

During his own lifetime, however, he was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the "Shakespeare of science fiction", while American writer Charles Fort referred to him as a "wild talent".

Wells rendered his works convincing by instilling commonplace detail alongside a single extraordinary assumption – dubbed “Wells's law” – leading Joseph Conrad to hail him in 1898 as "O Realist of the Fantastic!". His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine (1895), which was his first novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898) and the military science fiction The War in the Air (1907). Wells was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times.

Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also an outspoken Socialist from a young age, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote little science fiction, while he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of journalist. Novels such as Kipps and The History of Mr Polly, which describe lower-middle-class life, led to the suggestion that he was a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole. Wells was a diabetic and co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (known today as Diabetes UK) in 1934.

3) Warlord of the Air (Michael Moorcock) - 1971

The Warlord of the Air is a 1971 British alternate history novel written by Michael Moorcock. It concerns the adventures of Oswald Bastable, an Edwardian era soldier stationed in India, and his adventures in an alternate universe, in his own future, wherein the First World War never happened. It is the first part of Moorcock's A Nomad of the Time Streams trilogy and, in its use of speculative technology (such as airships) juxtaposed against an Edwardian setting, it is widely considered to be one of the first steampunk novels. The novel was first published by Ace Books as part of their Ace Science Fiction Specials series.

Michael John Moorcock (born 18 December 1939) is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published literary novels. He is also a successful musician. He is best known for his novels about the character Elric of Melniboné, a seminal influence on the field of fantasy since the 1960s and '70s.

As editor of the British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States, leading to the advent of cyberpunk. His publication of Bug Jack Barron (1969) by Norman Spinrad as a serial novel was notorious; in Parliament, some British MPs condemned the Arts Council for funding the magazine. He is also a recording musician, contributing to the bands Hawkwind, Blue Öyster Cult, Robert Calvert, Spirits Burning, and his own project, Michael Moorcock & The Deep Fix.

In 2008, The Times named Moorcock in its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

4) Morlock night (K. W. Jeter) - 1979

Morlock Night is a science fiction novel by American writer K. W. Jeter. It was published in 1979. In a letter to Locus Magazine in April 1987, Jeter coined the word "steampunk" to describe it and other novels by James Blaylock and Tim Powers.

Morlock Night uses the ideas of H. G. Wells in which the Morlocks of Wells' 1895 novella The Time Machine themselves use the device to travel back into the past and menace Victorian London. King Arthur and Merlin appear as England's saviors.

After The Time Traveler returns to the future world, the Morlocks kill him and take his Time Machine, returning with it to 1890s England. There, they hide in the sewers, plotting an invasion that will destroy Humanity as we know it!

One of The Time Traveler's friends, Edwin Hocker, is warned of this and shown a future where the Morlocks have conquered London. In order to prevent this, he and Tafe, a woman from that apocalyptic future, must seek out a reincarnated form of King Arthur to defeat the Morlocks.

Kevin Wayne Jeter (born March 26, 1950), is an American science fiction and horror author known for his literary writing style, dark themes, and paranoid, unsympathetic characters. He has written novels set in the Star Trek and Star Wars universes, and has written three sequels to Blade Runner. Jeter also gained recognition for coining the term “steampunks.”

Jeter attended college at California State University, Fullerton where he became friends with James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers, and through them, Philip K. Dick. Jeter was actually the inspiration for "Kevin" in Dick's semi-autobiographical novel, Valis. Many of Jeter's books focus on the subjective nature of reality in a way reminiscent of Dick's.

Philip K. Dick enthusiastically recommended Jeter's early cyberpunk novel, Dr. Adder. Due to its violent and sexually provocative content, it took Jeter around ten years to find a publisher for it. Jeter would also coin the term steampunk, in reference to cyberpunk in a letter to Locus in April 1987, in order to describe the steam-technology, alternate-history works that he published along with his friends, Blaylock and Powers. Jeter's steampunk novels are Morlock Night, Infernal Devices, and its sequel Fiendish Schemes (2013).

As well as his own original novels, K. W. Jeter has written three authorized novel sequels to the critically acclaimed 1982 motion picture Blade Runner, which was adapted from Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

5) The Anubis Gates ( Tim Powers) - 1983

The Anubis Gates is a 1983 time travel fantasy novel by American writer Tim Powers. It won the 1983 Philip K. Dick Award and 1984 Science Fiction Chronicle Award.

In 1801 the British have risen to power in Egypt and suppress the worship of the old Egyptian gods. A cabal of magicians plan to drive the British out of Egypt by bringing the gods forward in time from an age when they were still powerful and unleashing them on London, thereby destroying the British Empire. In 1802, a failed attempt by the magicians to summon Anubis opens magical gates in a predictable pattern across time and space.

In 1983, ailing millionaire J. Cochran Darrow has discovered the gates and found that they make time travel possible. Darrow organizes a trip to the past for fellow millionaires to attend a lecture by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810. He hires Professor Brendan Doyle to attend and give expert commentary. One of the magicians, Doctor Romany, happens to spy the time travelers and kidnaps Doyle before he can return. Doyle manages to escape torture and flees back to London, now trapped in the 19th century.

Timothy Thomas Powers (born February 29, 1952) is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare. His 1987 novel On Stranger Tides served as inspiration for the Monkey Island franchise of video games and was optioned for adaptation into the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film.

Most of Powers' novels are "secret histories". He uses actual, documented historical events featuring famous people, but shows another view of them in which occult or supernatural factors heavily influence the motivations and actions of the characters.

Typically, Powers strictly adheres to established historical facts. He reads extensively on a given subject, and the plot develops as he notes inconsistencies, gaps and curious data; regarding his 2001 novel Declare, he stated, "I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar – and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all."

Obviously it's a matter we won't stop discusing and researching about... there's so much more to it, from top literature titles, to movies and artwork. I'll share some of the art with you as a conclusion for today's article.

I hope you all enjoy this... and feel free to share with your friends and become members of our "secret" Gate...

Enjoy, fellow weirdos of alternate realities...